7 Personal Characteristics Of A Good Leader

How often have you heard the comment, "He or she is a born leader?" There are certain characteristics found in some people that seem to naturally put them in a position where they're looked up to as a leader.
Whether in fact a person is born a leader or develops skills and abilities to become a leader is open for debate. There are some clear characteristics that are found in good leaders. These qualities can be developed or may be naturally part of their personality. Let us explore them further.
SEVEN PERSONAL QUALITIES FOUND IN A GOOD LEADER
1. A good leader has an exemplary character. It is of utmost importance that a leader is trustworthy to lead others. A leader needs to be trusted and be known to live their life with honestly and integrity. A good leader "walks the talk" and in doing so earns the right to have responsibility for others. True authority is born from respect for the good character and trustworthiness of the person who leads.
2. A good leader is enthusiastic about their work or cause and also about their role as leader. People will respond more openly to a person of passion and dedication. Leaders need to be able to be a source of inspiration, and be a motivator towards the required action or cause. Although the responsibilities and roles of a leader may be different, the leader needs to be seen to be part of the team working towards the goal. This kind of leader will not be afraid to roll up their sleeves and get dirty.
3. A good leader is confident. In order to lead and set direction a leader needs to appear confident as a person and in the leadership role. Such a person inspires confidence in others and draws out the trust and best efforts of the team to complete the task well. A leader who conveys confidence towards the proposed objective inspires the best effort from team members.
4. A leader also needs to function in an orderly and purposeful manner in situations of uncertainty. People look to the leader during times of uncertainty and unfamiliarity and find reassurance and security when the leader portrays confidence and a positive demeanor.
5. Good leaders are tolerant of ambiguity and remain calm, composed and steadfast to the main purpose. Storms, emotions, and crises come and go and a good leader takes these as part of the journey and keeps a cool head.
6. A good leader, as well as keeping the main goal in focus, is able to think analytically. Not only does a good leader view a situation as a whole, but is able to break it down into sub parts for closer inspection. While keeping the goal in view, a good leader can break it down into manageable steps and make progress towards it.
7. A good leader is committed to excellence. Second best does not lead to success. The good leader not only maintains high standards, but also is proactive in raising the bar in order to achieve excellence in all areas.
These seven personal characteristics are foundational to good leadership. Some characteristics may be more naturally present in the personality of a leader. However, each of these characteristics can also be developed and strengthened. A good leader whether they naturally possess these qualities or not, will be diligent to consistently develop and strengthen them in their leadership role.

Barbara White President of Beyond Better Development has over twenty years experience in leadership. Beyond Better Development works with organizations who want their leaders to develop towards their potential and stay on the cutting edge. More about Leadership Development and Good Leadership Skills [http://www.beyondbetterleadership.com]

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Barbara_White

What Makes a Good Leader?

To be successful as a leader, you need a combination of two ingredients: character and competence. You need to be a person of integrity. Someone people trust and are willing to follow.
To be trusted in business, you must be trustworthy. You must believe in yourself, your company, the essential goodness of your products and services, and in your people. You need to
believe that you are offering an excellent product or service in every way, one that makes a difference in the lives of your customers. You must lead by example and obtain management skills that inspire others to join you in the exciting project of building a great company.
At the same time, you must become excellent at the key capabilities and functions of leadership and set yourself on a course of continuous improvement throughout your career.
“You need the humility to remind yourself that you’ve got to get better at everything you do,” insisted Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, when we spoke with him. “I don’t know about you, but I’m never done growing my company or myself.”

Character in Leadership

        The late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. encouraged his followers not to judge people by their appearance, but by the content of their character. A person's character, good or bad, can inspire others to greatness or discourage them from trying. In small business, the role of leadership character can't be understated. Authentic leaders lead from a strong, personal, moral value that can have a profound effect on your organization. You need to understand how character affects your organization and how it can attract top performers.

16 Traits You Need to Be a Great Leader

1. Intelligence and Action-Oriented Judgment: Great leaders and smart and make choices that move the group forward.


2. Eagerness to Accept Responsibility: Strong leaders take on responsibility and don't pass the blame on to others.


3. Task Competence: A great leader is skilled and capable.


4. Understanding Followers and Their Needs: Effective leaders pay attention to group members and genuinely care about helping them succeed.


5. People Skills: Excellent interpersonal skills are essential for leading effectively.


6. Need for Achievement: Strong leaders have a need to succeed and help the group achieve their goals.


7. Capacity to Motivate People: A great leader knows how to inspire others and motivate them to do their best.


8. Courage and Resolution: The best leaders are brave and committed to the goals of the group.


9. Perseverance: Strong leaders stick with it, even when things get difficult or the group faces significant obstacles.


10. Trustworthiness: Group members need to be able to depend upon and trust the person leading them.


11. Decisiveness: A great leader is capable of making a decision and is confident in his or her choices.


12. Self-Confidence: Many of the best leaders are extremely self-assured. Because they are confident in themselves, followers often begin to share this self-belief.


13. Assertiveness: A great leader is able to be direct and assertive without coming off as overly pushy or aggressive.


14. Adaptability and Flexibility: Effective leaders don't get stuck in a rut. They are able to think outside of the box and adapt quickly to changing situations.
15. Emotional Stability: In addition to being dependable overall, strong leaders are able to control their emotions and avoid overreactions.
16. Creativity: Perhaps most importantly, great leaders not only possess their own creativity they are also able to foster creativity among members of the group.

Traits of a Good Leader

Compiled by the Santa Clara University and the Tom Peters Group:

• Honest — Display sincerity, integrity, and candor in all your actions. Deceptive behavior will not inspire trust.
  
• Competent — Base your actions on reason and moral principles. Do not make decisions based on childlike emotional desires or feelings.
  
• Forward-looking — Set goals and have a vision of the future. The vision must be owned throughout the organization. Effective leaders envision what they want and how to get it. They habitually pick priorities stemming from their basic values.
  
• Inspiring — Display confidence in all that you do. By showing endurance in mental, physical, and spiritual stamina, you will inspire others to reach for new heights. Take charge when necessary.
  
• Intelligent — Read, study, and seek challenging assignments.
  
• Fair-minded — Show fair treatment to all people. Prejudice is the enemy of justice. Display empathy by being sensitive to the feelings, values, interests, and well-being of others.
  
• Broad-minded — Seek out diversity.
  
• Courageous — Have the perseverance to accomplish a goal, regardless of the seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Display a confident calmness when under stress.
  
• Straightforward — Use sound judgment to make a good decisions at the right time.
  
• Imaginative — Make timely and appropriate changes in your thinking, plans, and methods. Show creativity by thinking of new and better goals, ideas, and solutions to problems. Be innovative!
  

Defining Character

Defining Character

There is no consensus on a definition of character.  In fact there seems to be as many definitions as there are scholars whose research and writing focus on character.[4]  In our discussion of character, we focus on personality traits, values and virtues.

Traits

Traits are defined as habitual patterns of thought, behavior and emotion that are considered to be relatively stable in individuals across situations and over time.  Traits are not fixed.  For example, introverts may be able to learn how to behave in a less introverted way, while extroverts may learn how to control and moderate their extroverted behaviors when situations require it.
There are, literally, hundreds of personality traits from A (ambition) to Z (zealousness) that have been described in the psychology literature.  However, through statistical techniques such as factor analysis, five broad domains, or dimensions, of personality have emerged, and are now widely used in various forms in employee selection and assessment.[5]  The “Big-Five” traits are:

• Conscientiousness
• Openness to experience
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness, and
• Neuroticism

These five traits feature prominently in tests or inventories and they have come to be known as the FFM, or the five-factor model, a robust model of personality.  Although the Big Five dominate the personality literature, there are various other traits that warrant consideration and measurement, such as self-confidence, ambition, perfectionism, dominance, rigidity, persistence and impulsivity.
Some personality traits can be inherited.  For example, studies have shown that identical twins that have the same genes show more traits that are similar than non-identical twins.  Traits, of course, also evolve through life experiences and deliberate developmental exercises such as coaching.

Values

Values are beliefs that people have about what is important or worthwhile to them.  Values influence behavior because people seek more of what they value.  If they can get more net value by behaving in certain ways, they will.  Values therefore can be seen as the guideposts for behavior.  Some people value their autonomy very highly, some value social interaction, some value the opportunity to be creative, some value work-life balance, and so on.  Values may change with life stages and according to the extent to which a particular value has already been realized.  For example, a new graduate strapped by student loans may value a high starting salary.  That same person 30 years later may well pass up a high-paying job for one that paid less, but allowed him to live close to his grandchildren or somewhere with greater access to recreational activities.
An individual’s values are in large part derived from the social environment in which he or she lives.[6]  In Western democracies, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are some of the things we value.  Other societies value order, harmony, non-violence and equality.  If we are brought up with strong religious traditions, some of us develop values based on the teachings of those religions.  Similarly, our value frameworks may be influenced by our home life, fraternal societies we join, experiences obtaining an education, the companies we work for, our friends, and many other social influences.
An important sub-set of values consists of those with ethical or social dimensions, such as honesty, integrity, compassion, fairness, charity and social responsibility.  Such moral values may be strongly or weakly held and influence behavior accordingly.
Values may be espoused though they may not necessarily be manifested.  For example, it’s not unusual for people to experience value conflicts in certain situations.  When loyalty conflicts with honesty, when fairness conflicts with pragmatism, or when social responsibility conflicts with obligation to shareholders, people become conflicted.  And when their actions are inconsistent with their values, they either experience guilt, anger and embarrassment.  People try to minimize such cognitive dissonance by rationalizing or even denying their behavior, discounting the consequences of it or simply blaming others.

Virtues

From the time of the ancient Greeks, philosophers have defined certain clusters of traits, values and behaviors as “good,” and referred to them as virtues.  Virtues are like behavioral habits – something that is exhibited fairly consistently.  For example, Aristotle wrote that: “We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Aristotle identified and defined twelve virtues: Courage, Temperance, Generosity, Magnificence, Magnanimity, Right ambition, Good temper, Friendliness, Truthfulness, Wit, and Justice.  The twelfth virtue is Practical Wisdom, which is necessary to live the “good life” and thus achieve happiness or well being.
Consider the virtue of Courage.  Traits such as openness to experience, self-confidence and persistence contribute to individuals acting in distinctive ways – for example, putting themselves on the line and acting in a courageous fashion.  Having values such as integrity, treating individuals with respect and achievement predisposes individuals to demonstrate courageous behavior.  Furthermore, a person with integrity tends to act in a different way than a person who lacks integrity, even if both individuals find themselves in the same situation.  Then there is a set of actual behaviors that individuals engage in – on a fairly consistent basis (meaning across situations and over time) – and that friends, colleagues and observers characterize or describe as courageous.  These behaviors may have become societal expectations.

Why Character Matters in Leadership

Why Character Matters

In any bookstore you will find dozens of books on leadership style, far fewer on leadership competencies, and fewer still that address leadership character.[2]  For some reason we have lost sight of character.  Perhaps this is because our educational system and organizations are so competency focused; perhaps because we just don’t know what to think about character; perhaps because character seems such an old-fashioned word; perhaps because we are reluctant to discuss examples of poor character with our colleagues in the workplace, or because we believe we cannot assess character objectively.
Yet character is such a central, important element of leadership — particularly for the kind of cross-enterprise leadership that is essential in complex, global business organizations — which it should not and cannot be ignored.  Character fundamentally shapes how we engage the world around us, what we notice, what we reinforce, who we engage in conversation, what we value, what we choose to act on, how we decide…and the list goes on.
Our own research on the failures of leadership points to issues around character as a central theme[3].  Nowhere was this more obvious than in the financial crisis of 2008 – 2009, in which boldness or instant gratification triumphed over temperance.  People who knew that bad risks were being taken did not have the courage and/or confidence to speak up, and people without integrity sold mortgages to those who could not pay them.  They then bundled these mortgages into securities that were fraudulent and sold to others.  People with large egos, lacking in humility, oblivious to the harm they may have been be doing to others or the societies in which they operated, became very rich at the expense of millions who were the victims of the financial crisis and subsequent recession.  Yet, to this day, these same people seem unable or unwilling to accept any degree of responsibility for their actions.  Leaders of large, global companies knew about these types of practices yet did nothing to stop them.  Still others were unable to create the honest, transparent corporate culture that would enable them to be in touch with what was happening deep down in the organization.  All these behaviors and activities were, essentially, failings of character.