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7 Necessary Leadership and Management Traits


My original title began with “The” as in “The 7 Necessary…” However, there are many more than seven. There can also be as many different traits as there are successful leaders and managers. That is one reason that there are so many new successful businesses, products, ideas and innovations. From my experiences with a couple of thousand successful leaders I observed traits common to all of them, or mostly all of them, and these are what I am sharing here. Enjoy this and add your special traits to this listing.

# I: Self-Management

Leaders are emulated. They set the example for behavior, demeanor, courtesy, ethics and just plain good sense. Accordingly, everything a leader does is noticed, thought and talked about and perhaps in today’s era of social media and instant communications quickly transmitted without rethinking, redoing, correcting, or editing.

This also means that the leader is always on display, cannot have a bad day and needs to maintain an even-manner. It further means that the leader continuously, 24/7, needs to exert self-discipline. self-management, self-confidence, decisiveness, self-awareness and impeccable control and balance. Also needed is a desire for continuous learning and wanting to try new things and innovate, never being unprepared and always being focused. These are essential to be an effective leader and all these traits become evident by everyone they interact with.

These traits also are self-motivated and internally generated and do not rely on anyone else; success with this trait depends solely on self-management.

#2: Leadership

No one could be a leader without at least one person following them. Usually, in a business, it is many people and for mega large organizations, it can be hundreds of thousands of employees or team members.

Young people starting their careers who step up in small committees or volunteer at their local church or charity groups become leaders of some sort. Even a young babysitter needs to display leadership qualities to the children they are entrusted to watch while the parents go out for a movie or dinner by themselves. There is no sole franchise for a leader. It could be anyone in any position at any period in their lives.

Leadership is a skill that needs to invoke trust, competence, confidence, consistency, direction, open-mindedness, creativity and vision. Leadership is also the ability to evidence and articulate these skills in a way that elicits positive actions in others to help the team members and the organization grow and develop and for these actions to take hold and become a norm and a new standard.

Unfortunately, there is no way to bottle leadership qualities. Rather, since everyone is different and has different backgrounds, styles, senses of humor, knowledge and experience, insecurities, and risk tolerances, the leader needs to be adaptive to circumstances and the individuals they lead. Experience is a major way of learning but also interactions with other leaders and reading and attending programs written and presented by successful leaders will add to skill sets that will result in better attainment of the desired results.

#3: Delegating

A manager or leader that fails to delegate cannot be successful. They might do a great job on what they do not delegate, but they will never be effective as a leader or manager, and their overall productivity will be greatly hampered.

No one starts out knowing how to delegate and it is a skill that needs to be learned. There are many techniques, situations, types of people that will work for you and flexibility is important. While there are many management books, I know of very few that provide effective delegation techniques. On some basis, it is assumed that if you are a good manager, you can delegate well, and that is true, but still these techniques need to be acquired.

Delegation requires empowerment and the possible expectation that not all the work would be done as well as you would have and that some mistakes will be made. This is where focused training and clear instructions are mandatory. No one could do an effective job if they do not understand what they need to do, what the objective is, their role in the totality of the project and the deadline. I have seen too many people be trained incorrectly in that they are given a full lesson on the importance of the project but nothing in the way of how they should start and proceed and trigger points when they might need assistance and how to get it.

Delegating also should consider that a person that will be doing the work brings their separate knowledge, experience, level of accomplishment and any personal quirks or distinctions they have. This means that the delegation technique and style might need to be adjusted or altered based on who you are working with. Also, working with someone is always a collaboration and must be treated as such. This requires respect and complete clarity of mission.

Delegation is a method to have other people do your work or what you need them to do so your project would be completed as it was intended to be.

#4: Efficiency

Efficiency is a buzzword that means the work needs to be done without added steps, in the right order, in the right manner, properly coordinated with other parties to the project and must be completed on time. Implicit is that errors are kept to a minimum and bottlenecks are avoided.

Most of this can be handled with proper training, instructions and following up to track that the project is on target. I attribute most failures as the fault of management. However, continuous errors by a person being supervised is the fault of the supervisor except if there is a culture of pushing the work forward without regard to quality leaving the next person in the chain to fix it. That should never be acceptable and then I assign the blame on leadership.

You are in charge and that means you need to be in charge…of everything. Managers need to be process and procedure-oriented and when a digression appears to be repetitive and not isolated, a change in the processes needs to be considered. When such changes are not recognized, I place the entire fault on management. Leadership has to create a culture where shortcuts, substandard and error-laden work is just not acceptable, is not part of the company’s culture and must be dealt with as soon as it becomes evident that a problem is systemic and a change needs to be made.

#5: Business Development

Business development is a fancy term for selling. It also falls under the overall category of marketing. Today, everything is marketing, branding and image. Selling is the last leg of the process – getting the order. Comment: A strong case could be made for after-sale marketing with the customer so perhaps getting the order is not the last leg.

Leaders must bring in business. Now, Mr. Kellogg does not call on grocery stores to carry Rice Krispies, but there is an entire process that does that – and it is orchestrated from top to bottom.

Marketing and selling need you to be aware that everything counts. Every utterance, every action, every remark and every glance is part of marketing and sends signals, provides tip-offs and becomes part of the “sales” process.
Leaders need to be continuously aware of the overall business development process and be part of it and always looking for opportunities to expand the business in every opening that arises.

#6: Negotiating

Most interactions are in negotiations. And negotiating starts when you are in the baby cradle. When you want something, you need to figure out how to get it. Many times it is a tradeoff, where you give a little and the other side gives a little with both being satisfied with the result. I suggest that only stupid self-defeating stubborn people want it their way or no way. They win some of the time, but in the long road to success, this strategy usually does not sustain itself.

Negotiation is a skill and needs to be learned and many times it is through experiences that are not completely satisfying. If everything went well, then there would be no growth in these skills and at some point, there would be a situation that creates obstacles you won’t be able to overcome and the lack of experience could be the cause of the failure.

Some of my best techniques were learned from my biggest mistakes. But I learned and grew from them and tried not to repeat the mistakes.

#7: You

Often leaders take themself too seriously, get too wrapped up in the business, and do not take a step back to reflect on where they are, how they got there and how involved they are. Their individual identity is not separated from the business.

Each of us needs to figure out ways to reduce pressure, relieve stress and make ourselves a better person. Get a hobby, find a nonbusiness interest, get involved with your kids’ activities or a charity. Do something “away” from the office. Lighten up.

If you have any tax, business, financial, leadership or management issues you want to discuss please do not hesitate to contact me at [email protected].


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