I find it very interesting when I am asked what Leaders’ Traits look like. How can you identify good leadership from mediocre ones?
Unconsciously the answers that come out of my mind directly are buzz words that are thrown around haphazardly and are always heard like visionary, empathetic, tech-savvy, strategist, risk taker, etc.
As I sit with myself and debate what a leader should look like and how an organization can thrive under certain types of leadership and drown under others, I have come to the conclusion that there are generic leadership attributes that every leader should possess, but there are others that will differ based on the type of organization and surrounding environment the leader operates in.
Generic leadership traits include resilience, perseverance, negotiation and communication and being a people person. But when we look at other traits, the need for them varies based on the stage the organization is in. For an entrepreneurial organization, the leader should be a visionary/ dreamer with great ambition to be able to attract others and persuade them to buy into their dreams, but when we consider a leader of a large organization (where the strategy and the practice are set at different governance levels) then we more think that a leader needs to be credible to get the buy in from the different stakeholders and needs to be more of a strategist to align with different stakeholders’ objectives.
Being a great leader in a certain entity doesn’t necessarily make you the same in a different one, unless you are able to adapt and properly read the effecting environment around you and understand the power dynamics.
