Ready To Lead?

What do you look for in your

ideal leader?

Defining common traits and characteristics of leaders is a challenge as each

successful leader in the workplace is different. As such, there is no one set

of qualities which can be held out as being the ideal model. There are of

course common traits seen in all leaders, but it is dangerous to portray any

single list as being the perfect set. For our purposes, we will concentrate

on building a leadership profile that focuses on the qualities most appli-

cable to you as a potential first-time leader. We will also concentrate on the

more tangible personal qualities which you can more realistically develop

over time.

What do you look for in a leader? As we build the leadership profile, a useful

initial exercise is to determine the personal characteristics that you look for

in a leader. Think of that great leader you identified in the earlier exercise and

try to describe the qualities they possessed that gained your respect. This

time, focus less on what they did and more on what type of person they were.

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Action

Consider that great leader at work again and try to define their personal

qualities that impressed you and helped them to gain your respect.

Keep a note of your thoughts for later use.

Now that you have defined some of the leadership qualities you personally

admire, you would find that if you compared your list to someone else’s,

many of the qualities identified would be the same, for what we look for in

leaders are common human requirements. Keep those personal qualities

you have just identified in mind as you read on.

The leader’s challenge

In order for us to explore what a leader is, it is helpful to probe more

deeply into what a leader does, for they are obviously connected. A leader’s

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main challenge is getting the right balance between the outcomes required

by the organisation and the needs of the people or team. When we talk

about outcomes, what exactly are we referring to? In any organisation out-

comes can be described as:

READY TO LEAD?

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Productivity Quality Efficiency

Profitability/

Financial Stability

++=

For any commercial business, maximising profit is naturally a key objec-

tive. In non-profits, the emphasis may be on achieving financial stability.

Either requirement is achieved by:

Outcomes



Ensuring employee productivity is high



Through delivering quality products and services to customers



By operating the business processes efficiently

Your focus as a leader in relation to outcomes will therefore be to make

sure that your team members are productive, complete their work to a high

standard, and carry out that work as efficiently as possible.

On the other hand, when we look at the people or team side of things,

what are we referring to?

Competence Commitment Motivation

Productivity, Quality

and Efficiency

++=

Therefore, in any organisation:

People



Employees must be competent at what they do



They must also be committed to the goals of the organisation



They must be motivated to do the work to the right standard, as it

is through this motivation that real quality and efficiency are achieved

This relates back to what we mentioned earlier about the difference

between job done and job done well. Employees who are competent, com-

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