Unlike supervisors and middle managers, what successful
executives share are not skills and knowledge but values and attitudes.
These are some of the key the values and attitudes that great leaders share:
Great
Leaders Thrive on Ambiguity. While most of us like black and white
decisions, successful leaders are comfortable with “shades of grey.” Great
leaders are able to hold apparent contradictions in tension. They use the
tension these paradoxes produce to come up with innovative ideas.
Great
Leaders Love Blank Sheets of Paper. Supervisors and middle managers use a
framework of policies and procedures to guide them to the proper decision. They
want a plan that reduces their job to filling in the blanks or “following the
bouncing ball.” By contrast, leaders create the blanks that managers fill in.
Like some business Einstein intent on reinventing the universe, every great
leader relishes the opportunity to “think things through” from scratch.
Great
Leaders are Secure People. Successful executives thrive on differences of
opinion. They surround themselves with the best people they can find: people
strong enough to hold a contrary opinion and argue vociferously for it. Great
leaders crave challenges, and this means hiring the most challenging people
they can find with no regard for whether today’s challenger might be tomorrow’s
rival.
Great
Leaders Want Options. Leaders constantly
demands diverse options from their team, and they use these options to produce
creative decisions.
Great
Leaders are Tough Enough to Face Facts. Successful executives face facts,
and this means being open to the truth even when it is not what we want to
hear. Great leaders have a nose for B.S and abhor it.
Great
Leaders Stick Their Necks Out. It is a natural human trait to fear being
evaluated. We crave wiggle room so we can deflect blame and get off the hook
when things go wrong. In business what is often passed off as a collaborative
effort is actually just an attempt to avoid individual accountability. Great
leaders want to be measured and evaluated. They continually look for ways to
measure things that may seem immeasurable, and they cheerfully accept the blame
when they are wrong or fail to deliver. The old adage that success has a 1000
fathers while failure is an orphan does not apply to great leadership.
Great
Leaders Believe in Themselves. While great leaders crave advice, options,
and strong colleagues, they all share a profound belief in themselves and their
judgment. Great leaders are people stubbornly following their star who don’t
know how to quit. Holding this stubbornness in tension with a willingness to be
wrong is perhaps the greatest trick that every great leader must perform.
Great
Leaders are Deep Thinkers. Managers get things done. Executives must decide
on the things worth doing in the first place. Though very difficult to
quantify, great leaders are deep thinkers. They constantly dive below surface
“facts” searching for new ways to knit those facts together. Great leaders are
generalists not specialists driven by an omnivorous curiosity. They know that
the answers they are seeking will probably emerge from outside business and from
disciplines that may seem utterly unrelated.
Great
Leaders are Ruthlessly Honest with Themselves. Self-knowledge is perhaps
the most critical trait that all great leaders share. Leaders question
assumptions and disrupt complacency by relentlessly asking the question: “What
is the business of the business?” This exercise develops and refines the
organisation’s mission and purpose, and it is little more than the age old
question, “Who am I?” applied collectively. If you are not clear about the
purpose of your own life how can you provide a sense of organisational purpose
for others?
Great
Leaders are Passionate. They may be loudly charismatic or quietly intense,
but all great leaders care deeply about what they are doing and why they are
doing it. Perhaps most importantly they care about people. Every business is a
people business, and passionately caring about people whether they are
employees, customers, vendors or stockholders is an essential leadership value.
