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Leadership Attributes Personal Qualities that Constitute Effective Leadership |
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by Vadim Kotelnikov, Founder, 1000ventures.com
"People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision" - John C. Maxwell
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Leaders Attributes Defined Leadership attributes are the inner or personal qualities that constitute effective leadership. These attributes include a large array of characteristics such as values, character, motives, habits, traits, competencies, motives, style, behaviors, and skills. Key Elements of Leadership Attributes Most of the leadership attributes cluster into four overarching categories of what you need to be, know, and do:
Emotional Intelligence "Emotional Intelligence" refers to your capacity to recognize your own feelings and those of others, for motivating yourself, and for managing emotions well in yourself and in your relationships. "It describes abilities distinct from, but complementary to, academic intelligence, the purely cognitive capabilities measured by IQ. Many people who are book smart lack emotional intelligence but lack emotional intelligence end up working for people who have lower IQs than they but who excel in emotional intelligence skills."4...More Integrity While leadership is always important to corporate performance, there is a growing realization that effective leaders with integrity are absolutely crucial to successfully navigating the New Economy of the 21st Century. In addition there is also a growing realization that the characteristics of the Leader of the 21st century are dramatically different than the leader of the past, even the recent past...More Building Organizational Capability You must build not only individual commitment but also organizational capability. Organizational capability refers to the processes, practices, and activities that create value for the organization.3 You need the ability to translate organizational direction into roadmaps, vision into action, and purpose into process. To do so, you must demonstrate at least five abilities: to build your organizational infrastructure; to leverage diversity; to deploy teams; to design human resource systems; and to make change happen. Pitfalls of the Leadership Attributes Model Though leadership attributes models, in particular the ARE-DO-KNOW approach, received enormous attention in the past, they have a number of pitfalls. In particular, they reduce leadership improvement to development of leader's attributes only. Results are not emphasized. "Leaders exhibiting attributes without results have ideas without substance. They teach what they have not learned. They can talk a good scenario and even act on sound general principles, but they fail to deliver. This means - attributes - have become their end. Often popular because of their charm or charisma, they are not long remembered because their leadership depended more on who they are and how they behave than on what they accomplish."1 Results-based Model Results-based leadership has relentless emphasis on results. It's simple equation: Effective leadership = attributes x results. "This equation suggests that leaders must strive for excellence in both terms: that is, they must both demonstrate attributes and achieve results. Each term of the equation multiplies each other; they are not cumulative."1...More Case in Point: GE Leadership Effectiveness Survey General Electric (GE) provides a good example of a company that makes the most of the leadership attribute model for building a deploying better leaders. The company uses the concept of competences, bundles of leadership behaviors, to improve leaders and has become renowned among the best as developing industry leaders. GE uses the leadership competencies stipulated in the Leadership Effectiveness Survey (LES) to integrate a number of management practices with the purpose of building quality of leadership...More
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Bibliography:
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"Results-Based Leadership", Dave Ulrich, Jack Zenger, and Norm Smallwood, 1999
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"Leadership and The One Minute Manager", Kenneth Blanchard, 2002
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"Organizational Capability: Competing from the Inside/Out", Dave Ulrich and Dale Lake, 1990
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"Emotional Intelligence", Daniel Goleman, 1995
