What does it take to be a good leader?

During my not so extensive but really eclectic career, I’ve overcome a lot of obstacles and learnt through the hard yards how to engage and manage multiple stakeholders at a time.

It’s not an easy task to keep every stakeholder happy but  it’s a matter of attitude and determination (others say natural skills) to become a good leader.

In this post I would like to summarise my learnings in 6 key skills every leader should develop at some stage of their careers:

1. Listening. Good leaders are thoughtful of their opinions. They listen and understand the situation before providing input. Listening is also related to intuition, a good listener applies their knowledge to predict or be intuitive about repeatable scenarios and always try to maintain a neutral position based on what they’ve perceived or understood.
2. Focusing on others rather than yourself. This skill is closely linked with listening. Natural leaders focus their lives in helping others, focusing on the other’s problem and the ultimate goal to achieve rather than personal opinions prevailing over the real issue. Normally focusing on the other will bring more value to any scenario, and listening will play an important role in understanding different stakeholders points of view that will ultimately help to make better decisions.
3. Thinking out of the box. Questioning is one of the most powerful tools any leader could leverage when used properly. Natural leaders will instinctively question ‘why‘ and ‘what for‘ of everything – Is there any better way to achieve the goal?, even when others don’t see a problem to be solved. By constantly questioning, it comes the innovation and thinking out of the box as a way to overcome challenges in new and more efficient ways.
4. Delegation. Leading is not just problem-solving and helping. One of the critical skills to success is learn how to ask for help in areas where they are not expert. Along with asking for help, it comes delegation. Great leaders know how to delegate and give ownership of specific areas or tasks to their team members. It’s extremely important to empower and inspire before giving full ownership, and trust (based on clear communications) is the foundation of any highly performing team. Leaders naturally inspire and provide confidence to success, empowering their team member to work as a close group to achieve the common goal.
5. Being yourself. Natural Leaders are not afraid to be themselves, to question things and the current ways to operate. Being yourself doesn’t mean constantly having a different opinion to others but being truly thoughtful of what they believe is better for the ultimate goal (considering the situation and the environment). Some people call it ‘gut feeling’.
6. Hard work. There is no success without hard work. No one is born with developed skills, therefore natural skills need to be worked out and developed through out the years. Learning from your mistakes, being persistent and open to change is what makes leaders evolve like organic matter does.

Image from Apollo 13 movie.