the art of leading

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Let’s see how we can flourish into our roles as leaders. The definition of leadership as you established it will lay the blueprint for your journey into becoming a leader. The first task is to extract out of that definition the specific qualities that we will have to develop. I will use the definition I used in the last post as a foundation:

“Leadership is the ability to influence others in order to achieve a specific goal. A leader is a person who influences the thoughts and actions of others, through the use of persuasion, motivation, creativity, and interactive team-building, in order to achieve a specific goal.”

Some key terms jump up: ability, influence, goal, thoughts, actions, persuasion, motivation, creativity, and team-building. For now, they are nothing but empty ideas. They have to be filled with significance before we can build on them. What does persuasion mean? What does creativity mean? How does someone build a team? Our principal goal should be to develop answers to these kinds of questions that arise from such a broad statement. That way we can learn how to fulfill those qualities that will make us great leaders. We must then develop ourselves to be able to match up favorably to these qualities. In future articles I will discuss suggestions on how to develop these specific skills, abilities, and characteristics. But I’d like to make a list of some traits and skills that most rational human beings agree on when describing a great leader:

• Self-confidence
• Trust in others
• Self-motivation
• Ability to motivate others
• Strong purpose
• Servitude
• Focus
• Discipline
• Positive attitude
• Enthusiasm
• Belief
• Faith
• Ability to identify other’s needs
• Preparation
• Imagination
• Decisive
• Ability to overcome fears
• Ability to listen
• Fine reputation
• Proactive
• Flexible
• Selling skills
• Creativity

This is definitely not an exhaustive list, so feel free to add to it in the ‘Comment’ section. But I do believe that all of those traits must be attained, or at least worked on, in order to become a leader. By doing that, the vague statement that we used to describe leadership receives substance. We no longer strive for some mythic goal. By doing specific things to grow as people and to develop the above-mentioned traits, we are also making small but significance strides while reaching higher levels of leadership with each step we take.

Categories : General Leadership //