Great leaders are developed, not born

By Andrea Hill

One of the things consultants are acutely aware of is that we cannot provide leadership. We can provide excellent guidance to leaders, and we can help average leaders become excellent leaders, but the leadership of any organization must come from within. If the organization suffers from a dearth of leadership or, worse, dysfunctional leadership, all the pricey advice in the world will not help the organization improve. So it is essential for every business owner and executive to make the development of leadership skills a personal priority.

If you subscribe to the idea that people are born leaders, think again. Leadership is a discipline and a skill, a competency that can be developed by any dedicated person. Sure, the leaders that are featured in the news tend to be the most charismatic types, but charisma is not the definition of leadership, nor is it essential to good leadership. Good leaders come in all shapes, sizes, and personality types. Anyone can be a great leader if they develop these five key characteristics:

Consistency

Moodiness and volatility are anathema to leadership (they tend to be hard on good decision making and peace of mind as well). If you want people to follow you, you must give them the same person to follow day in and day out. Inconsistency leads to anxiety, which is a form of fear. If employees, vendors, or customers have to wonder from one day to the next how their leader is going to behave, they tend to withdraw, put up protective walls, and become mildly paranoid. You might think this would be the case only when leaders are volatile or abusive, but the truth is that persistent inconsistency of a much milder sort still leads to these defensive behaviors, and defensive behaviors are death to quality and innovation. If you want your employees and other stakeholders to embrace your vision and help you achieve it, you must strive to be the most consistent, reliable, stable person you can be.

Listening Skills

Listening is the surest way to discover the creativity and smart ideas that surround you. The more effectively and more often a leader listens, the more likely he is to gain the trust and contributions of the very people he is hoping will join him in achieving his vision. The simplest way to learn to listen is to shut one’s mouth and take great care not to open it unless necessary. A deeper form of listening is to take the time to cultivate interest in and respect for the people one is listening to.

Here is a very simple exercise to help you recognize just how much you may be missing in your listening life. Go outside and sit quietly. Start listening to all the sounds around you. Initially you will hear the loud sounds, but after a while you will hear an abundance of small sounds—sounds you realize are always there but that you never actually hear. This is the essence of listening. Once you have done this exercise, take it back into your work environment. Listen more deeply and more often. Excellent leaders are excellent listeners.

Communication Skills

Communication and talking are not the same thing. We all know someone who talks and talks and talks but never gets around to saying anything and certainly doesn’t inspire or inform. Excellent communicators think deeply before talking. They consider what they want to accomplish, what information must be shared, and how to best convey that information. They consider carefully the leanest, most illustrative way to express what must be communicated, and after all that thinking, they communicate. Excellent communicators spend more time thinking—and listening—than talking. As a result, the messages they share are most likely to be embraced.

No Excuses, No Alibis

Strong leaders recognize that mistakes, unnecessary diversions, and errors are an essential part of progress. The question isn’t if you will ever make a mistake, it’s how quickly you will recognize it and correct it. The ability to hold up your own idea to scrutiny, admit it’s not working as well as it should, and re-engineer the approach are the hallmarks of a good leader. This ability creates two important results in any organization: It teaches that mistakes are acceptable and expected, but that they must be addressed quickly and with clarity. And it encourages others to hold up their own mistakes for scrutiny instead of feeling compelled to bury them.

Keep the Ego in Check

Your business isn’t about you—even if it has your name on it. It’s about making a product, contributing to society, creating a profit, and benefiting your employees. But when you’re running the business, it’s easy to let the “I” feel bigger and more important than it should. And when a leader is ego-driven, he becomes self-aggrandizing and jealous, which turns off collaboration and trust within the organization. Strong leaders subordinate ego to the overall goal. They recognize that they are a part of a much larger task, and they make themselves servants to the task and the goal—not the other way around. For some people this is easier to accomplish than for others, but it is absolutely essential to effective leadership.

These five characteristics can be nurtured and developed with discipline and dedication. Take time at least once each week to evaluate your performance and set goals for improving these skills. You may not have entered your business life with the goal of becoming a great leader, but your future success depends on it.