What Makes an Exceptional Leader?

What Makes an Exceptional Leader?

Let me begin by saying that there have been literally thousands of books and articles written about Leadership, Becoming a Great Leader, and transitioning from Managers to Leaders. For that matter I can admit to you that parts of this blog are paraphrased if not directly copied from a blog we’ve written in the past. That said, when I ran across a listing of the inspiring traits of exceptional leaders, it was a dynamic summary. But let’s step back a minute and say YOU have been just promoted, or better yet, you have aspired to a position of leadership. Here’s a brief missive for your reading pleasure!

So here you are, advancing your career from a management role to one with more prominent leadership responsibilities. This is easily identified by having your current job responsibilities transition from more “task-driven” work to more “people-management-driven” work. Now don’t get me wrong, there will always be a certain number of task-oriented responsibilities whatever your job description is but the leadership of people through innovation, change and turnaround come with much more demand for skills in people motivation and inspiration.

Inspire and influence will now replace sell and demand.  You will need to focus on how to increase sales while they work on building a better operation.  You will be deal making, rather than turning the wrench. You will work in broad strokes, instead of dealing with details.  So, as you can imagine, it becomes critical to build a strong, capable team with which to surround yourself.  A “what’s next boss?” type of direct report employee is no longer going to cut it for you.

So, the first step is to build a good team that can work more autonomously, and the next step is to change your mindset and work on those things that will provide long term, sustainable growth and benefit to the company or organization. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?  But it is critical.  Think about it this way; the Pareto Principal states that, “for many outcomes, roughly 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts”.  Need I elaborate? The principle doesn’t stipulate that all situations will demonstrate that precise ratio – it refers to a typical distribution. By focusing on the 20% of work that is most important, we can improve the efficiency of a project. Your job as a leader becomes focusing on the 20% of the work (people and their abilities), your 80% of results will occur.

This is a good illustration of what you are probably doing right now.  In effect, you are spending 80% of your time managing (or perhaps even as a technician), and 20% being a Leader, working on the long-term benefit of your business.  Imagine that next week you worked on the good stuff 30% of the time, and next month you worked 40% on these critical tasks and eventually you have reversed the equation to 80% of the time you are working on the deal making, sales increasing, infrastructure expansion that your business desperately needs.

Okay, now that we truly recognize the principals of using your leadership role for effectiveness, let’s look at some other essential qualities that will make for an exceptional leader:

• Trust that those you’ve hired will do what they’ve been hired to do.
• Seek advice and input from those in your charge.
• Always find opportunities to make others shine.
• Recognize the contributions of others.
• When things get tough, have their back.
• Become a masterful storyteller; people respond to stories and situations that are relatable.
• Challenge others to do bigger and better things.
• Express appreciation.
• Responsive to realistic concerns.
• Know when to apologize.
• Give credit where credit is due.
• Treat others with dignity and respect.

I credit Glenn Leibowitz, a prominent editor, writer and multi-media content creator who has penned this list from his many experiences and interviews with prominent leaders in his career. If you, like me, have had the great experience (and sometimes awful one) dealing with a leader who has his finger on the pulse of those in his charge, you can relate to what an exceptional leader does (or doesn’t) do.

As you reflect on the number of supervisors you’ve had in your career or career(s), I am suspect you can see quite distinctly the characteristics that your former “Mr. Boss-man” had, and mostly, did not have. I will argue that the days of Draconian management and leadership will not get the results that they used to. I have had the distinct displeasure of working for a guy who was really the antithesis of the characteristics listed above. Frankly, he was a miserable human and I know it distinctly changed the course of my career. My thinking at the time was, “if this is the kind of leadership I have to put up with – I’m out!”. And sure enough, I was.

This may sound trite or perhaps a bit too simplistic, but to behave as a leader you would be inspired to work for is pretty sound advice, that is if you are truly honest with yourself. Circling back, let’s not forget that hiring like-minded people as part of your team that are qualified, capable AND motivated to do what is expected of them is a critical beginning. Leadership, with all the fundamental qualities is rewarding for all involved. From small things, great things come to pass. I ask you, isn’t that the essence of leadership to begin with?