Home » Resources » Leadership Skills » Leadership Skills – what makes a great leader?

Leadership Skills

There are many articles about how to be a good leader, however there a few suggestions – characteristics and skills that are common in most Leaders with reputation for being exceptional.

This is a concise list of attributes which leaders and managers will find useful to remind themselves of what they are doing right as well as what they could be more aware of. Leadership is not just about taking control, but gaining genuine respect from peers and employees, Leadership is about being able to motivate, plan, challenge, visualise and adapt.

Good Leaders have:

* Vision
* Knowledge
* Skills
* Good ideas

Good Leaders focus on:

* goals
* growing the business
* improving the product
* pleasing the customer
* looking forward
* using their strongest talents
* meeting deadlines
* setting goals
* creating inspiring visions
* inspiring great work

Good Leaders do:

* make hard decisions
* set high standards
* get things done
* nurture talent

Good Leaders are:

* people-friendly
* loyal
* eager to improve things
* able to see things from other perspectives
* good listeners
* innovative
* considerate
* accountable
* focused
* interested in the ideas of others
* open
* tough
* compassionate

Good leaders know:

* when NOT to be competitive
* how to cooperate
* that arrogance and rudeness are counterproductive
* how to delegate
* how to communicate ideas effectively
* how to develop a sense of accountability among staff
* how to trust people to do what they are supposed to do
* how to manage and motivate a team
* how to encourage ideas and creativity
* how to offer constructive feedback
* how to make goals seem exciting

Good Leaders do NOT:

* try to control everything
* throw their weight around
* shout (often)
* waste time
* manipulate

We provide a full range of leadership training – management training courses include ISEB Systems Development training, ISEB Business Analyis training, Six Sigma Green Belt and Black Belt training , Lean training, accredited PRINCE2 Practitioner training and PRINCE2 Foundation training courses

Similar resources you may like

1. What is leadership?
2. What does it take to become a Leader?
3. Leadership styles
4. Modern leadership
5. Can Leadership Skills be taught?

Tags

good leaders, great leaders, leadership, leadership skills, leadership skills training, leadership training, leadership traits

Share This Resource

This entry was posted by Colin Welch on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Leadership Skills. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.