What does greatness look like in a business leader? In order to design a powerful development program, you have to answer this question. Development for what? Towards what? How will you know when you get there?
In our work with businesses, we have found three kinds of leader qualities that are associated with greatness:
Constant Leadership Qualities
These qualities and skills are important across a broad range of business situations and challenges. It is difficult to imagine a business context in which they are not critical for effective leadership. They include:
- Intelligence
- Business acumen
- Curiosity
- A strong sense of ethics
- Effective stress management
- Strong listening skills
- Outstanding communication skills
- Clear
- Inspiring
- Honest
- Interesting
- Engaging
- Skilled at persuasion and negotiation
- Able to form relationships with a wide variety of people
- Has a realistic understanding of his/her own strengths, opportunities, and motivations
- Seeks out feedback and uses it
- Understands and cares about what drives and motivates others
- Motivated and skilled at developing his or her people
Flexible Leadership Qualities
These skills and traits need to change in response to the demands of the particular environment or situation. They are dimensions along which an effective leader has the capability to move depending on the contextual demands. They include:
- Broad interests vs. deep, narrow focus
- Open-minded, collaborative leadership style vs. the ability to take individual, decisive action
- Logical and analytical problem-solving vs. intuitive and creative problem-solving
- The ability to tackle challenges of both strategy and execution, and an awareness of which one is his or her strength
- Emotional self-control vs. passion and expressiveness
- Autonomy vs. the ability to take direction
- Skill at developing strategic relationships up, down, and sideways vs. valuing people just for who they are
- Likeable vs. formidable
- The willingness and ability to reflect and introspect vs. the drive to action
- Work comes first vs. work/life balance
- Risk-taker vs. safe steward
Fundamental Leadership Qualities
Two abilities are fundamental for a leader’s effectiveness because they enable him or her to make accurate choices and deploy the most effective leadership behaviors in a wide range of situations:
- Adaptability: The leader is able to flex his or her style and has a broad range of leadership behaviors in his or her repertoire, not a one-size-fits-all approach to leadership. The leader can shift gears quickly and gracefully when the situation requires it. At the same time, the leader has an authentic core that remains the same from one context to the next.
- Judgment: The leader has a finely-honed ability to discriminate between different contexts and determine which leadership style is best suited to which context.
When we assess and develop business leaders, we use this framework to determine the needs of the business, assess the leaders, and design interventions that will enable them to take the business where it needs to go.