Martin Luther King, Jr.; Winston Churchill; Mahatma Gandhi; Mother Teresa; and Malala Yousafzai are, without question, some of the great leaders of our time. And while they all have different leadership styles — quiet, loud, forceful, peaceful —they all ultimately share four essential characteristics: They are visionaries, they are inspiring, they are honest and they are competent.
In this post, we’re going to explore these four key characteristics of leadership and why they are essential for effective leadership.
Visionary
People and teams function best when they have a clearly defined goal and are led by someone with a vision. In this context, a vision means looking beyond the here and now to what the organization wants to become in the future.
When you think about it, all of the leaders above had powerful visions of the future: civil rights for all Americans, winning a world war, ending British rule in India, serving the poor and educating young women. All lofty goals, but also goals that were clearly defined; easily understood; boldly articulated; and, therefore, easy to support and follow.
Whether it’s a local non-profit organization or a Fortune 500 company, the leader must have a vision for the future. But they must also offer their teams directions for how to achieve the goal. Martin Luther King advocated for non-violent protest, as did Gandhi. Churchill built unity and championed collaboration. Because as a visionary leader, you can’t just give people the destination, you must also give them the map.
Great leaders also are committed to learning and growing themselves along the way. They have a vision, but not tunnel vision. They listen and learn from others as they move their organization forward toward their collective goal.
Motivational and Inspiring
So, to lead you must have a vision or goal and also provide a road map for accomplishing the goal. The next step, and key characteristic of a leader, is to motivate and inspire your teams to want to achieve the goal. You have to be able to get everyone on board and instill in them a desire to work hard to achieve the goal.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be able to give an inspiring speech to rally the troops. Effective communication is important, but there are many ways to be motivational and inspiring.
You can be bold and move people with speech and language, or you can be more subtle and lead by example. Mother Teresa couldn’t give a rousing speech on the Mall in Washington, but she rolled up her sleeves and got to work, which inspired others.
How you motivate and inspire your teams will likely depend on your leadership style, which is how you are most comfortable leading. Because to be inspiring and motivating, you must also be authentic. Your teams need to feel your energy, passion and determination to follow you. And that energy must be real.
Honest and Trustworthy
It’s hard to follow someone you don’t trust. It’s just that simple. In fact, some leadership experts assert that honesty is the most important characteristic of a good leader. A leader must act in a way that shows they have principles, values and integrity. They must walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
There are many ways good leaders demonstrate and prove their honesty and trustworthiness to their teams, including being transparent, fair, credible, reliable, open, humble and willing to invest their time getting to know their teams. Good leaders also stand up for what’s right and important. And, above all, they do this consistently. Only with consistency — team members seeing their leader do the right thing over and over again — will this critical trust be gained.
Competent
This one is a bit of a no-brainer. The lawyers in a firm aren’t going to follow an incompetent lawyer, just as the players on a team don’t typically follow a mediocre player. It is critical to have a keen understanding of what your organization does and how it operates. You don’t have to be the best lawyer or player to lead a team, but you certainly have to understand the law and the game.
For example, let’s consider someone becoming the CEO of a tech company they don’t understand. Because they don’t have an understanding of how the company works, they cannot provide insight, assistance or answer questions. They can’t sit down in a room of software engineers and discuss their jobs with them. They can’t come up with innovative ideas or have a vision for the future. In other words, they cannot lead.
A leader doesn’t have to know the ins and outs of how to write code or operate a machine in a manufacturing plant, but to lead, they must be able to connect, communicate and assist their teams. The team must trust their ability to move the company forward. Simply put: They must be competent.
The Core Four
Many, many more factors contribute to successful leadership. For example, decisiveness, creativity, adaptability and we could go on and on. But, ultimately, when you think about it, all of these other qualities are subsets of these core four characteristics. Our belief at Everybody Leads is this: Everyone is born with these competencies; the key is to learn how to develop these skills to become the best leader you can be.