7 Key traits of a great leader

Leadership is not defined by your level of intelligence or by your ability dominate others, it is defined by your ability influence and inspire those around you. Here are 7 leadership traits:

1. Integrity - without this everything else is worthless. It’s about your people knowing that you will do what you say you will do. Your team will expect you to be strong and have total self belief even though they will understand that you cannot be right all of the time.

2. Keep calm and carry on - never get emotionally negative with people, keeping you cool when inside you feel frustrated. If you want you people to feel that they can communicate with you openly and take on responsibility they must have faith in your ability to stay calm and level headed at all times even if they have made a mistake.

3. Leading by example - be seen to be determined to achieve your goals. If you want to breed a culture of results and success then make sure that you are focussed completely on those goals. The people around you will want to live up to your standards so make them high when it comes to achievement.

4. Fairness - treating everyone equally, it doesn’t matter what task an individual performs they deserve your respect. This respect comes from treating everybody as individuals and as equals. They are all human beings and deserve to be treated as such. Great leaders are always described by those around them as humble, this is probably because they treat everyone around them as equals.

5. Empathy to and really understanding people, and show them that you understand. Empathy allows you to have a strong opinion but at the same time understand the position of the person you are in debate with. This empathy will allow healthy debate and a sharing of great ideas rather than a team of people who feel there ideas won’t be heard.

6. Always taking responsibility for the results of your business. Blaming yourself and your team for poor results is divisive and achieves nothing Taking responsibility is about looking at yours and your businesses results and asking yourself how can I do better.

7. Be decisive - be seen to be making fair and balanced decisions. Procrastination is the enemy of decision and create a culture of fear to make decisions in case you get it wrong.