Leadership | INSYNC Management Solutions

7 Essential Attributes Found in all Great Leaders

Great leaders are characterised by a great number of traits, qualities, and attributes. Here is my pick of the 7 essential attributes found in all great leaders. Developing and applying these 7 attributes will help take you from being a good leader to being a great leader. Reflect on these attributes regularly. Work them into your day-to-day leadership and notice the difference they make straight away.

Wisdom

Wisdom is born of experience, develops as common sense, grows into knowledge, and matures as foresight. Great leaders are lifelong learners who cherish the wisdom of others and constantly look for opportunities to grow their knowledge and share what they’ve learned. If knowledge is power, wisdom is the way leaders share their power.

Optimism

Like master archers of old and the keenest marksmen of today, more often than not we hit the targets we aim for. Hence, it’s best to aim for the results we want rather than to focus on those we don’t. Insidious self-talk and self-doubt are not only destructive to their host but are also damaging in the way they affect others when verbalized. Great leaders know this and look for the good in any situation. Positive, upbeat leaders inspire others with their ability to remain focused on goals and they stay the course in a way that is infectious.

Acceptance of Responsibility

Great leaders accept responsibility. They know the buck stops with them and no one else. They don’t blame market conditions, or the dominance of their competitors and they know there are no bad teams just bad leaders. If their team fails to achieve the results necessary it’s because the leader failed to provide the right direction, guidance, support, tools, funding or opportunities, and may not have provided the correct training or the right resources.

Courage

Leaders are at the helm of all organisations and industries and operate across a large variety of different environments, each with its own unique challenges, threats, and risks. Some environments are physically demanding, remote, or isolated and pose physical dangers such as Defence and law enforcement. Other environments may be less dramatic but can still result in the loss of life or serious injuries such as operating theatres, mining, and firefighting. Regardless of the industry, all leaders need to demonstrate courage and not allow the gravity of the situation to paralyse them and prevent them from taking the necessary action to achieve crucial outcomes. Courage takes many forms, from the Corporal leading his men into battle to the corporate executive briefing shareholders on poor financial results. Courage is an essential quality for any great leader.

Humility

Great leaders are not meek or timid, but they are humble. They don’t speak in terms of “I” or me, they speak in terms of ‘us’ and ‘we’. They know that their role is to set the direction for their team or organisation and then to serve those charged with delivering the outcomes. Humble leaders do not seek the accolades for their success, rather they push them through to their team. When great leaders speak about their success, they praise the hard work and dedication of their team. These leaders are secure in themselves and realise that others know the role they play in setting the direction and supporting their team.

Selflessness

Great leaders are selfless. They put the needs of their team before their own because they understand that the team delivers the outcomes and they merely steer the team in the right direction. Great leaders serve their teams by removing bottlenecks and roadblocks and creating relationships and opportunities. They create a safe environment and encourage their team to stretch themselves knowing they have ‘top cover’ should something go wrong. Great leaders are the first in and last out and always put the welfare of their team ahead of their own. In the military, leaders stay at the back of the line until their troops are fed. If someone is going to miss out, it’s the leader!

Drive

Great leaders set the pace for their organisations. They drive results through their determination, tireless effort, and absolute belief that their plans will yield their desired outcomes. Great leaders monitor the tempo to ensure that they don’t burnout resources or wear out equipment. They are cautious to ensure they maintain ‘one foot on the ground’ as they push forward so they don’t outpace the organisation’s capability or capacity.

Fit not Fix

Good leaders leverage the strengths of those in their charge and render their weaknesses irrelevant. They ‘fit’ them to roles that suit their strengths rather than try to fix their weaknesses.

Too often leaders feel that any employee should be able to do any job that they are tasked with. This is just not right. This is the same as trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Is it any wonder why there are so many performance issues in organisations today.

Leaders need to understand that people possess specific and unique skills that differ from person to person. Some people possess skills more appropriate to working in collaboration in large groups whilst other people possess skills more suited to working individually and on analytic tasks. Effective leaders identify individual’s skills and strengths and match those individuals with the right tasks. Ineffective leaders waste valuable time and effort trying to shape people in ways they aren’t suited.

A great sports metaphor speaks of playing to your strengths and this is the same in business. This doesn’t mean it’s OK to ignore weakness; however, believing that you will turn and individual’s weakness into their strength is false hope. It is far better to identify individual areas of strength and to further develop those than it is to expect transformational change based on an amount of ‘gap training’. As it’s rare in organisations for any effort to be based on an individual rather than a team, identifying each person’s strengths and directing them accordingly will return the best results.

Teams are only as strong as their weakest member. Having each member of the team work at their highest and best potential means engaging them in their specific areas of strength. Any perceived weakness of any of the individuals in the team should be addressed by allocating a team member who has the requisite strength in that area. While this may sound like identifying a problem and ignoring it, this is more akin to ensuring that each individual team member is employed to utilise their specific experience, knowledge, and skills to their best effect.

Modern Leadership

Mainstream academic environments define leadership as “a process of social influence in which a person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task“.

Prior to the 19th century, the concept of leadership had far less relevance than it does today. Society expected and obtained traditional deference and obedience to kings, lords, nobles, master-craftsmen, and slave-masters.

In stark contrast, modern leaders face a multitude of challenges their distant predecessors could never have prophesized. Leading in the 21st century is complex and requires the leader to possess a technical mastery of their relevant profession, strategic foresight, socio-political astuteness, emotional intelligence, charisma, and resilience amongst a plethora of other desirable character traits and skills.

It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the magnitude of expectation and burden of responsibility attached to being at the helm of an organisation, be it very large or very small. It’s also far too easy to get caught up in the day-to-day management of the business and lose sight of the bigger picture and what’s truly important to you as the leader.

Taking time out to reflect and reset needs to be a part of every leader’s regular mantra. An effective way to do this is to block out 30 minutes per week in your diary [my preference is Friday afternoons] to stop, review the week, and assess your performance as a leader.

Consider how much time you spend managing vs leading and if the ratio is right? Ask yourself if your leadership provided direction and truly added value or if it caused confusion and increased unnecessary burden? I think you probably get the picture!

Importantly, keep a leadership diary and record your thoughts for regular review, and to gauge if you are learning and evolving from your own experiences.

I recommend including the following acronym on the first page of your leadership diary. Regular review of this simple memory jogger will help keep you focused on what’s important.

Language
Enthusiasm
Attitude
Discipline
Ethics
Responsibility
Strategy
Honesty
Integrity
Professionalism

Modeling positive behavior based on this acronym will help build trust and respect amongst your team, colleagues, and other leaders in your organisation and more widely.

Diversity or Echo Chamber

Staff today, are rightly afraid of expressing their views if they challenge the premise of a leader’s ‘argument’. They are also being compelled to openly support and even promote trending social beliefs and political ideologies adopted by their organisation for fear of losing their jobs.

There’s nothing less diverse than an organisation that is so politically correct that it compels staff to proactively voice support for the ‘company line’ under threat or fear of being dismissed. An example is contained in this article about James Damore who was fired from Google for sending a memo challenging Google’s diversity policy by using evidence-based, deductive reasoning.

I agree with the article calling for organisations to use Chief Contrarian and I’m a huge supporter of free speech, but I caution that everything in life has consequences and it takes a very mature leader, and organisation, to put aside their unconscious (or conscious) bias when eliciting honest views from staff.

It’s ironic that the key benefit gained from the introduction and enforcement of diversity policies is a reduction in the expression of diverse thoughts and in increase in institutionalised ‘Group Think’. It’s all too apparent to anyone who thinks critically about mainstream diversity policies that organisations exploit them in order to promote themselves in a more favorable light to potential clients and the government, not because they are truely serious about diversity.

I’m hopeful that having open conversations with leaders about such things will allow them to recognize their unconscious bias and even dogma. Challenging the status quo as well as new concepts is important. I advocate for leaders to be critical thinkers who employ deductive reasoning when leading discussions and making decisions. Encouraging evidence-based deductive reasoning as part of the decision-making process, removes emotion, and prevents organisations from succumbing to Group Think and blindly piling onto the ‘bandwagon’.

It seems that most organisations that demand their workforce demonstrate their support for diversity are hypocritical in their approach to diversity. True diversity isn’t just about colour, gender, age, race, and religion, it also must include freedom of thought, opinion, and importantly, freedom of speech.

In my mind, the diversity challenge is drawing the line between the right to free speech and the prevention of hate speech.

Leaders should not oppress the views, opinions, or speech of their subordinates otherwise, they are in fact demonstrating the opposite of diversity.

Leading in, and out of a crisis

Despite the day to day challenges faced by business leaders, rarely, very rarely do business leaders have to lead their organisations in what the military refers to as a VUCA environment.

The acronym VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous and was first coined by PROF Warren Bennis in 1987, and quickly adopted by the US Army War College. Hence, the term VUCA is most commonly associate with the chaos of war. The COVID-19 pandemic impacting the world and more narrowly impacting business has produced a VUCA environment.

Most larger organisation have well-developed business continuity and disaster recovery plans able to deal with short term ICT issues, the need to vacate their buildings and work from home or implement some other short term plan. I wonder how many organisations can truly say their plans were developed to cope with prolonged periods operating in a VUCA environment, potentially for months, years, or longer? Plans are absolutely vital, especially in emergencies, but strong, decisive leadership is what will see organistaions through an extended VUCA period.

Leaders leading in a VUCA environment need to possess and demonstrate courage, stoicism, and the ability to apply critical thinking to solve what seems like insurmountable problems. The character traits of great leaders are forged over time based on their experiences, but the ability to stop, observe, gather facts, confirm assumptions and use deductive reasoning to inform decisions, is a process that can be learned and applied to great effect.

This simple process can also be applied during Business as Usual (BAU) to rationally solve any problem by applying logic, void of emotion. This does not mean that the leader should be emotionless, but rather not let their emotions override the logic and their better judgment. The ability to stop, relax, observe, gather facts, confirm assumptions, and used deductive reasoning is an easy process to learn but is even easier to forget when making decisions under pressure.

Planning Process

If you’ve spent time working in middle or upper management in any business, you would have participated in, or possibly led a planning session. I’m also going to bet, most of you have been involved in a planning session where it was crystal clear that the person in charge had absolutely no idea what they were doing and everything seemed made up then and there!

I hear this complaint so often I’m sharing the technique I use, and teach, for how to facilitate a planning session. I’m not talking about the simple, ad hoc ‘who, what, where, when, how, and how much’, planning sessions, although they are also problematic so follow the link to my article on developing Immediate Action Plans. I’m talking about detailed and often complex planning, necessary to effect change, implement a new initiative, or solve a “Wicked Problem“.

Whether the planning needed is very simple or extremely complex you need a process to follow; otherwise, you really don’t know what you are doing! Imagine if you had a simple, repeatable, scalable process to guide you through your planning session anytime you need to be “that person in charge”.

You’d be surprised how many organisations don’t have structured planning processes in place. Some organisations use processes such as the Observe, Orientate, Decide , Act Loop, ( OODA-loop), Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), or even Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA).

Being a former member of the Australian Army, I’ve been trained in the use of the Military Appreciation Process (MAP), and in the years since leaving the military, I have used an adaptation of the MAP to help structure my planning. I have also taught this process to clients to help them add structure to their planning sessions.

I have included my version of the MAP based planning process in this article as a model you can use to guide you through your future planning session. This planning model is deliberately basic on the surface to make it easy to interpret and allow you to start using it straight away. With a little training, you can dive into the detail, unpack its power and use it to guide you through the development of very complex plans to address even the most difficult problems.

To employ the model, start in the centre, work your way out, and then work clockwise from blue to red, to orange, and finally green. Like most processes, this model is iterative, so when you get to the end, you may choose to continue to use the model to further refine your plans over time.

“In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Good Follower?

There can be no leadership without followers. The problem is, some followers are better than others!

Some followers follow a leader out of necessity, such as their lives depend on it, others follow out of a genuine belief in the cause or the message, whilst some follow out of sheer curiosity! Some will refuse to follow or will be disruptive and difficult because they don’t trust or believe in the leader, or they feel they should be the leader. Aristotle said:

“He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.”

This is as true today as at any time in history. But does this mean being a follower is an experience necessary for becoming a good leader?

Many people are able to understand how their subordinates think and feel, and don’t need to experience good or bad leadership to know the difference. They possess the ability to lead well through their empathy, genuine good character, and the application of sound leadership principles. An example of this is Officer training in the military. I have seen some very good leaders who started their careers as Officer Cadets, having never followed a leader outside of the home, school, or sporting teams.

I have also seen some not-so-good leaders who served as soldiers before transferring to become Officers. This is not to say that it plays out one way or the other all of the time and I know many outstanding converts. However, it is likely that effective leaders who start their journey higher up the leadership ladder already possessing the foundations needed to be a good leader will climb higher.

I always stress to clients and mentees that there are no born leaders. Leaders are shaped by their environment, their experience, their conditioning, and the wisdom of their mentors. Starting out higher up the leader ladder doesn’t contradict Aristotle’s notion that you must first be a good follower.

No matter where you start your leadership journey, you will almost always be subordinate to one or more other leaders; thus, you may be a leader to some, but you will likely be a follower to others. Those who ascend directly to positions of leadership still need the ability to be good followers or at least understand what it takes to be loyal to a leader. After all, we all wear different ‘hats’ as we ascend as leaders and it is rare that anyone reports to no one! If you have empathy for those who follow you, you don’t need to spend as much time being a follower in order to become a good leader. However, if you are a leader of some and a follower of others, as most are, you need to be loyal to your leader and always strive to align your leadership of others with your “leader’s intent”.

The risk of being a long-term follower with no leadership responsibility is that it can have the unintended consequence of conditioning you to believe that you are not cut out to be a leader. Being a follower can be a comfortable existence, especially if you are led by a highly competent leader who is truly empathetic and takes care of all your needs. Prolonged periods of ‘servitude’ to such a leader may condition you to need others to make decisions for you and not allow you to develop self-belief and confidence in your ability to lead. If you can’t visualise yourself out in front, taking charge and making decisions, you probably can’t lead.

Whilst you don’t strictly need to have been a follower to be a good leader, you do need to know how to follow first. It’s comparable to being an academic such as a teacher with no real-world experience in the subjects you teach.

As you mature as a leader you will likely come to realise that Servant Leadership is arguably the most effective way to lead. Servant Leaders understand that the role of a leader is to enable and grow your followers by serving them. This is not to say that you are their servant, but rather, you take on the role of the leader who ensures your followers are given every opportunity to succeed and you clear any roadblocks for them. Your position as a leader is both a privilege and a responsibility, not a right or a reward.

Making the Least Worse Decision

Being a leader means you are going to have to make decisions. You can’t sit on the fence or allow fear or inertia to prevent you from taking action. Your decisions won’t always be correct but you must be willing to make them and you must be prepared to be wrong and accept responsibility for any consequences.

There’s an old saying; “a 90% solution on time is better than a 100% solution too late”. I tend to agree with this statement and have applied it to great effect over many years. There is another interesting fact about decisions. They’re seldom 100% correct and almost never 100% wrong. This means your decisions are likely to be praised by those who agree and ridiculed by those who don’t.

Making a decision and acting on it doesn’t mean you are right, but it does mean you must be willing to be wrong. We don’t always have all the information or time needed to make the perfect decision, so we need to learn how to commit to the ‘least worse decision‘ based on the best information available at the time.

Leaders have to be willing to make a decision and stick to it. My caveat for this is “make the RIGHT decision and stick to it”.

So how do you that?

Good decision making is a critical skill for any leader. It’s well documented that most people are not rational when it comes to making decisions and most decisions are emotionally driven and based on individuals or group biases disguised as ‘experience’. You only have to look at the current geopolitical decisions being made by leaders who are not thinking critically and are being pressured by group bias and emotion, to see how bad this problem can get.

Leaders need to hone their decision-making skills and one of the best ways to do this is through the study and application of critical thinking. I highly recommend to anyone responsible for making decisions, that they read Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow”. I also recommend “Think Smarter” by Michael Kallet as it provides some very practical ways to apply critical thinking to decision making. Leaders need to lead with less emotion and cognitive bias, and more critical thought and logic. This is the foundation of good decision making.

At the same time, leaders need to have the courage to lead and that means they must be prepared to make decisions. Collaboration is important but, in the end, if you are in charge you better be prepared to stand up and make a decision, or get out of the way and let the leader make it for you!

Stoic Leadership

Being a leader is hard work. You always need to be out in front, inspiring your followers with your enthusiasm, motivation, and drive. You need to be the one with the vision for where your organisation needs to be in three, five, ten, and thirty years. You need to be a mentor to your peers and subordinate leaders, a teacher for junior leaders, and a role model to all. Intelligent, charismatic, connected, empathetic and compassionate, a great communicator with high integrity; but also self-motivated and driven. The buck stops with you. You are both responsible and accountable for the success or failure of everything you preside over.

How best to cope with this tremendous burden of responsibility? In my view, the answer is not in the future but in the teaching of the great stoics of the past. Embracing the wisdom and teaching of the stoics gives leaders the ability to remain calm and focus on what they can control and accept what they can not. It provides clarity of mind and resilience of character, especially in times of crisis.

For leaders, stoicism is the ability to separate emotions from feelings and disassociate emotions from the situation. This is not to say that stoics ignore emotions, rather they acknowledge them but choose not to allow them, or those of others, to direct their decisions or actions. Emotions are judgements that involve beliefs about value. We often apply disproportionate value to things we deem important or sacred to us and this drives our behaviour. Being stoic is to remain objective and use logic rather than emotion to shape action.

This is often easier said than done as the more important the issue or sacred the artefact, the higher the emotional response will be and the harder it is to remain objective.

Centred around the time of the Vietnam War, society was transforming from a generation that valued morality and self-control to one where freedom of expression was paramount. Young people were disenfranchised and resorted to the use of mind-altering drugs and spiritual pursuits. The influence of Libertarianism, the Hippie Movement and the expression of free love saw a shift from the ’stiff upper lip’ mindset of the WWII generation to that of the more emotionally expressive Baby Boomers. The push for people, men in particular, to express their feelings and share their emotions has continued to be the advice of psychologists and gurus alike.

The belief that bottling up your emotions will result in you becoming overwhelmed by them and eventually ‘exploding’ is widely held. However, practitioners of stoicism seem to miraculously and relatively easily cope with their emotions by understanding that they are nothing more than feelings that can be acknowledged, understood, and moved past.

This is not to say that strong feelings and emotions don’t have a chemical impact on the body, they do, if you let them. However, those who can control their emotions are also able to greatly reduce the rise of cortisol and take advantage of the power of adrenaline, rather than being reduced to a whimpering mess lying in a corner in the foetal position.

Research shows that leaders who are able to control their emotions and respond effectively to difficult situations are more likely to be successful. This is because they are better equipped to handle stress, make objective decisions, communicate effectively, and build trust with their team. These skills are crucial for success as a leader and are associated with higher levels of emotional intelligence and self-awareness.

Additionally, leaders who can regulate their emotions and respond appropriately in challenging situations are perceived as more credible, trustworthy, and effective by their followers.

However, the increased representation and impact of diverse perspectives in the workforce has contributed to a growing emphasis on emotional expression in the workplace. Historically, the vast majority of leadership positions in corporations were dominated by men, with many women pursuing careers in caring fields such as nursing, teaching, and childcare. As more women have taken on leadership positions in corporations, norms regarding emotional expression and expectations have shifted.

Nowadays, it is more widely accepted for individuals of all genders to express their emotions in the workplace, including crying. However, this does not necessarily reflect a healthy response to adversity and can stem from a wider cultural influence that reflects a sort of social neuroticism that has become prevalent in modern times.

The push for emotional expression in the workplace aims to create a more inclusive and equal environment, where all individuals feel comfortable sharing their feelings. This shift has been facilitated by the increased prominence of Human Resource Management (HR), as a trusted leadership advisory function within the boardroom and has likely been influenced by the growing dominance of women in senior HR roles.

Emotions drive us and can be involuntary responses to stimuli. Adopting a stoic approach to leadership does not mean ignoring emotions, but rather recognising and acknowledging them while choosing to make decisions based on logic and without excessive displays of emotions.

Displaying these and succumbing to your emotions will not help you deal with the situation or be a better leader. Rather, they will weigh heavily on you in the future when you reflect on how you handled the situation and how you conducted yourself. Being stoic means remaining true to your values and beliefs but not falling apart if these are challenged or threatened by an external force. It means being true to yourself and maintaining your moral character and virtue above all else.

The four Stoic Virtues are courage, justice, moderation (temperance), and wisdom.

Courage: Leaders can exhibit courage by standing up for what they believe in and not being afraid to take calculated risks.

Justice: Leaders can embody justice by being fair and impartial in their decision-making and treating others with respect and kindness.

Moderation: Leaders can practice moderation by avoiding excess and finding balance in their actions and decisions.

Wisdom: Leaders can incorporate wisdom by continually seeking out knowledge and understanding, as well as using reason and critical thinking when making decisions.

Incorporating these virtues can help leaders make ethical decisions, inspire trust and respect among their team members, and lead by example. They can also help leaders stay calm and level-headed during difficult times.

The ability to remain calm and stay focused also has a way of soothing others and is a powerful form of leading by example. Being a stoic leader does not mean leading without empathy or compassion and requires the leader to possess a high degree of Emotional Intelligence.

Stoicism is the ultimate form of self-regulation and when coupled with the other elements of Emotional Intelligence sets the leader apart from those with less self-control.

We could all benefit from more stoic leadership. If you want to know more about leading in a more stoic manner, I recommend checking out the Daily Stoic

Management, Command and Leadership…

Most business professionals are familiar with the terms ‘management’ and ‘leadership’ and some even understand the difference. You know the old adages, ‘leaders do the right things – managers do things right’ and ‘we lead people and manage things’. Robert Sutton’s 2010 HBR article describes the distinction between leadership and management and proposes that leaders who distance themselves from management, as though it’s beneath them are out of touch. To use a popular project management saying, they’re ‘throwing dead cats over the fence’.

In my view, I believe we need to dive a little deeper. When I look at the iconic leaders of the past, I see an obvious distinction that I don’t see today. There’s a glaring difference between great leaders of the past such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela compared with Winston Churchill, Napoleon, or Genghis khan. The difference is that Dr. King, Gandhi, and Mandela led with the absence of authority and had to rely on their ability to influence their followers. When your followers have no choice but to follow your directions or suffer consequences, you are not leading per se. Rather, you are exercising your authority through command.

Unless you’ve served time in the military or similar emergency services, you probably wouldn’t think you’ve worked for a commander. In fact, you’ve probably never contemplated the differences between a leader and a commander, which is ironic as ‘command’ is what most people in “leadership positions” actually exercise – not leadership.

For true leadership to occur, there needs to be an absence of ‘authority’. An example of this is Dr. Martin Luther King, who was able to lead a generation of African Americans, of whom he had absolutely no authority over. He achieved this through his vision for equality and his ability to effectively articulate that vision.

So, if you have authority over the people you lead, that is, there are consequences for them not following your directions, you are a commander, not a leader! Maybe not in the military sense where insubordination and failure to comply with a lawful order is a summary offence and deserters can be shot. Rather, failing to follow your direction could result in the ‘offender’ being reprimanded or potentially fired.

In today’s world of Millennials and political correctness (PC), exercising command is seen as inappropriate; however, command is exactly what is needed. This doesn’t mean a dictatorial form of command such as Directive Control, where it’s “do as I say”, although the reality of business is that this type of command certainly still has a place. What it means in the business sense, is the employment of Mission Command, also known as “workplace empowerment”.

Mission Command provides direction by setting objectives (the Mission) and providing a set of parameters or ‘freedoms and constraints’ and a limit of exploitation known in business as delegation.

So are you a manager, a leader, or a commander? Now that you know the difference, I hope this will help you to ‘lead’ your followers better?

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