Nelson Mandela, Elon Musk, Ratan Tata, and Bill Gates are some of the most celebrated leaders. But what makes them different from others? Indeed, they have certain worthy leadership qualities that make them stand out. Their vision to discern the world from an outrightly divergent angle with a clear perception to set a new business dimension makes them remarkable. Great leaders have the power to influence the world with their great persona and dynamic approaches.

Leadership is the art of inspiring a horde of individuals to act toward accomplishing a shared objective. This can mean coordinating with experts and associates to effectively and efficiently address the organization's issues in a business environment.

Today, every business requires dynamic leaders who can bring a remarkable change to the business environment and amplify its bottom line. From the unshakable determination of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, to the supreme intelligence of Elon Musk to influence the world, all highlight the importance of leadership attributes to bring pivotal change to all the dimensions of the organization.

Many people tend to have naturally imbibed leadership qualities, while some people tend to develop them over time with practice and exercise. History has a testimony of many pro-active leaders who have shown unflustered exterior and sheer ascertainment to bring the wave of innovation and have stepped to the fore in crises. There are many qualities that a person must possess to fit in the role of a leader and build a stone foundation of trust among people. So, the question arises - what are the qualities that make a great leader? Before that, let us understand the meaning and importance of leadership in today's time.

What is Leadership?

Leadership is termed as both practical and research skills of exploring the potential of an individual or group or organization to lead and manage the other organization's other teammates with zest and zeal. It also includes understanding, comprehending, and appending the team's potential and motivating them to accomplish a given task in the estimated time. Whereas U.S. academic environments define leadership as "a cycle of social impact where an individual can enroll the guide and backing of others in the achievement of a typical assignment."

Others also claim to challenge the rudimentary view of leadership that believes that leadership traits get inherited automatically by an individual due to their role or authority in the organization. Leadership advocates the complex nature of individuals at all levels of the organization, followed by formal roles. Various leadership theories are based on traits, situational interaction, function, behavior, power, vision and values, charisma, and intelligence. Each encompasses a different definition of leadership.

Leaders play a cardinal role in helping themselves and others of their team. They always strive to create an aura of refinement that constructs and assembles new ideas and innovations in the business. True leaders know how to win the hearts of a zillion with their dynamic, energizing, and motivating associations.

Top 25 Leadership Qualities

To become a perfect leader, there are some leadership qualities that one must possess. Good leadership attributes always act as core leadership competencies for recruiting or holding executive positions in the organization. Top-notch companies always look for individuals with exemplary leadership skills. Having a required set of skills paves the way to a better future. Here is the rundown of the best leadership qualities that one must have to become an immaculate leader:

1. Integrity 

Integrity acts as a virtue that makes a leader sensible, valuable, and respectable in others' eyes. 

One of the essential qualities that leaders should have is a sense of honesty. It refers to when leaders treat and act with integrity. Leaders being honest, trustworthy, and reliable. Leaders who follow their words and commitment and follow what they preach to their teammates. Integrity acts as a virtue that makes a leader sensible, valuable, and respectable in others' eyes. They adhere to all the norms laid by the company and respect the worth of others. They never let the superiority complex come into the picture and treat everyone with equity. Recall that a pioneer's conduct considers their own standing, yet in addition to the community's standing. 

2. Active Listening 

Active listening helps the employees, customers, and stakeholders to exhibit that their grievances are getting understood, affirmed, and addressed well by management.

In this digitalization age, the internet, smartphones, and computer tend to influence most of our daily activities. Hold on for the moment to ponder that we all get more engaged with digital gadgets when it comes to talking. However, the leader has to be not only an active talker but also an active listener. When it comes to effective communication and stimulating leadership, active listening plays a dominant role. Active listening helps the employees, customers, and stakeholders to exhibit that their grievances are getting understood, affirmed, and addressed well by management. Active listening indicates the skills and discipline that involve a high degree of self-control and describes the supreme quality of leadership.

3. Visionary

A visionary has the power to bring innovative ideas and conceptions to the table.

I am sure you have heard about Steve Jobs, best known for his revolutionary vision furnished with innovation and creativity. 

It is a true sign of a visionary leader who embraces the transition with the utmost care. Visionary leaders believe in change and transformation. Right changes tend to bring positive transformation in the organization, continually looking forward and evolving. It strives for others to work towards the common goal and find purpose in their work. A visionary has the power to bring innovative ideas and conceptions to the table.

4. Delegation

Delegation helps the leader to get a birds-eye view of important and less important tasks.

It is one of the most needed skills that help manage people and serve as a link between contriving the task and leading the team in one direction. As per a Harvard Business Review article, the leaders who know the art of delegation become more productive in their passageway. Delegation begins when leaders decide which task should get delegated and avoided. Exact delegation helps teammates to visualize what and how tasks should get executed to yield positive outcomes. Many leaders follow the policy of Urgent vs. Important Matrix as a crucial part of the delegation process. It helps the leader to get a birds-eye view of important and less important tasks.

5. Problem-Solving

It helps to identify the root cause of the crisis and ways to mitigate the loss that it may cause to the organization.

Organizations rely on leaders who can solve problems and have the ability to come up with concrete solutions. One of the celebrated leadership strengths is problem-solving. Problem-solving skills are attributes that empower you to do the impossible. Likewise, it is exceptionally helpful in everyday issues like relationship building and team dynamics. Problem-solving skills are worthy in every career at every level. Every leader should possess problem-solving skills as an organization faces problems on an everyday basis and, solving them effectively decides the future course of action. It helps to identify the root cause of the crisis and ways to mitigate the loss that it may cause to the organization.

6. Effective Communication

Effective communication skills allow you to express and understand others.

As a leader, it is crucial to express yourself in the best possible manner so that teammates can understand and follow it. Communication skills help leaders in delivering and collecting various types of information. Some examples include communicating new ideas, giving a presentation, taking follow-ups, and various nuances that test your communication skills.

7. Respectful

Respect is not a gift, but one needs to earn it.

Respect is the cornerstone of Effective Leadership. As aptly said that respect is not a gift, but one needs to earn it. Great leaders are always respectful to everyone. Moreover, it is an essential predicament of how people work and follow a certain code of conduct marked by respect. The Harvard Business Review examined more than 19000 workers and found that most employees desire renovation, value, respect, and purpose. Hence, the leader must ensure everyone gets due respect and recognition. Most focused-workers are the one who feel respected in the organization. A sense of respect promotes the drive of motivation among workers and makes them valued in the company.

8. Inquisitiveness

It is also known as intellectual curiosity. It is the inclination to know things, regardless of whether they are helpful or not. Here, leaders tend to get interested and anxious to gain new information and get familiar with the clarifications for things in any event when the uses of that new learning are not quickly evident. Something contrary to curiosity is detachment. Leaders have inquisitiveness towards exploring new things, new ideas, and new terminologies of doing work. The importance of curiosity becomes eminent from the fact that in this dynamic world, things are changing every minute, and new trends are getting followed.

9. Humility

One of the precious qualities of a leader is a feeling of humility. In simple terms, humility means to be humble. But from a broader perspective, it means feeling proud of who you are, in your accolades, and your value without any sense of pride and arrogance. Leaders never blow their own trumpet. Humble leaders know when to say what and are conscious of their behavior. Lack of arrogance does not mean a lack of goals and vigor to do work. It means focusing on team growth rather than on the personal spotlight. It is an essence that beckons confidence, reverence, and rarity.

10. Self-Motivation

Self-motivated leaders bring a sense of passion or excitement amongst the team members. 

Leaders who are self-motivated towards their goals achieve them first. It allows leaders to motivate their teams and work towards achieving the goals together. It gives a vision of the strategic direction and effective administration. They are better able to realize organizational objects and continuously stimulate the teams to work towards those. Lacking this skill causes poor productivity, indigent team dynamics, and hampering the team's overall growth. Self-motivated leaders bring a sense of passion or excitement amongst the team members. It allows them to monitor progress and work on proactive remedies or solutions. Self-motivation energizes the whole team to think and act in one injunction.

11. Empathic

It is the power to understand others' feelings by getting in someone else's shoes. It means to understand and perceive the feeling from the apex of view of others. This is the perception and sensibilities that go far away from one's feelings, but it's about respecting others' feelings and emotions. To become a leader, one must possess empathy to amplify your employees' understanding, perceptions, and concerns. It boosts the communication skills clustered with empathy and a sense of understanding. When employees learn empathy from their leaders, they become effective managers and supervisors themselves.

12. Self-Discipline

Self-disciplined leaders are proactive, street smart, and well-organized.

One of the best qualities of an effective leader is self-discipline. Self-disciplined leaders are proactive, street smart, and well-organized. Leaders use self-discipline to grind their willpower and decision-making abilities. Self-discipline enhances the ability to come up with a prompt decision. It surges to do the work in the best profitable manner rather than just for the sake of it. The best way to attain self-discipline is through persistence. The more you persist, the greater the self-confidence and self-discipline one can develop. Before becoming a successful leader, you need to imbibe self-discipline in you successfully.

You may also read: 8 Most Familiar Leadership Styles

13. Passionate

What does it mean by being passionate? Is it about authority? Well, no. When leaders get passionate about their teammates, they think from heart and soul. When passion is brought to the table, your team rises above expectation and does phenomenal work. They start believing the inclusion of thoughts, feelings, and views. They become open-minded, celebrate differences and appreciate conflicting opinions. Passionate leadership leads to retention, fecundity, performance, and better project management.

14. Resilience

Winning and losing is a part of life. This is what resilient leaders think about setbacks. They are resilient against any activity and always have faith in themselves. Such an ability is a byproduct of resilience. Resilient leaders will face intense challenges and attempt groundbreaking thoughts. It is simple for most people to be trapped in a hopeless cycle in which they keep on leading work similarly from one year to another. That approach functions admirably until the world changes, expecting associations to change or kick the bucket. They are more concerned with the growth and improvement of others. Resilience makes you productive and prolific.

15. Accountability

Playing blame games ruins the performance of the entire team. Accountability adds more value and is authentic. Exonerated intentions imply fathomable and meaningful, and they portray a precise discernment for your team. Accountability establishes a challenging vision and makes the probability of handling complex situations with affluence. Accountable leaders break down the bigger steps into small fragments to make them look manageable. At that point, they orchestrate these more modest strides into a sequential request. They allocate designated spots with clear expectations and consider themselves and the group responsible for them. They follow the policy of constructive feedback.

16. Supportive

Leaders support their co-workers and teammates in every action. When leaders encourage the actions, they build a relationship with teammates. Relationship building is an imperative doctrine of supportive leadership. Building up and developing positive associations with your representatives illustrates that you care about them both as authorities and individuals. A trust-focused alliance will make it simpler for you to offer them input and uphold and for them to acknowledge it.

17. Agility

Leadership agility refers to the process of making brisk and productive decisions. Agility helps to look forward and to inspire the team in such a rapidly changing world. It assists in analyzing results for successes and failures. It means being able to anticipate change in the future. Agility employs a proactive approach to business decisions and assures a deep understanding of your market. Change is mandatory for the business to remain afresh with the evolving market. Agile leaders firmly accept the change and help in identifying areas that need change. With competitors and technological advances, forced reforms superimpose us daily. Conceding that and sanctioning the consequence of staying ahead of it provides more flexibility.

18. Empowerment

Empowerment makes the team feel rejuvenated and energizes them to perform well.

Empowerment means strengthening something. It is one of the unique leadership attributes that every leader must possess. True empowerment comes when a leader can figure out what all is required to incubate meaningful goals. It involves identifying what you want from your teams and ways of empowering them to achieve those goals. Empowerment makes the team feel rejuvenated and energizes them to perform well. Lack of Empowerment leads to a lack of confidence and makes the team dull and weak. Hence, a leader must empower the team and warrant the team's desirable behavior.

19. Innovation

True ardent leaders are always innovative in whatever they do and plan. When coming across any tough challenge, innovative leaders can drive leadership and facilitate internal innovation among the teammates to come up with innovative explication. It involves using cognitive skills, functional skills, and research techniques. Canadian leader Lynn Sharratt defines innovation leadership as the cycle of orchestrating authority styles to impact workers to deliver innovative thoughts and answers for their issues. They come up with countless unique ideas and ways to deal with any complex situation. Steve Jobs, is often referred to as the prototypical innovation leader because of his fervent belief in innovation and creativity as a driving force behind any venture's success. According to biographer Walter Isaacson, today, all Jobs require candidates to have a jolt of innovation to become effective leaders in the future.

20. Intercultural Competence

Today, a wave of globalization has led to a drastic change in the business dimension of building a global network and intercultural communication. Here the role of leadership in the multicultural environment of global business comes into play. Intercultural Competence refers to understanding and comprehending with the people of different cultures and traditional values. It is one of the most underrated leadership qualities that hardly gets due attention. A culturally competent pioneer has what it takes, information, and demeanor to make bona fide associations with those from various cultures. A great leader has the necessary skills, attitude, and abilities to formulate a healthy relationship with people from a different culture and exhibits cultural competency when he or she recruits diverse people from around the world.

21. Critical Observation

People with good critical observation skills tend to observe and listen more than speaking.

It refers to notice definite details that enable one to manage the situations more tactfully. Critical observation is a necessary thinking process that involves analyzing facts and figures to draw some useful conclusions. It studies information, process, and person to get new insights and ideas. A leader with good critical observation skills tends to notice that others might miss out. Many believe that this skill develops automatically, but new studies have found that it can get learned through practice. It can further get classified into two types - observation of people and observation of processes. People with good critical observation skills tend to observe and listen more than speaking.

22. Acuity

It means keenness of perception. With the surge of technology and advancements, the need to perceive what is going on around is cardinal to adjust to change. With the help of acuity, a leader can understand and comprehend the present scenario with a sense of collaboration. In this data-driven world, chances of missing out on any prominent information have become common. Such ignorance may lead to controversies and confusion among teammates. Leaders notice things around them, identify the most important things, and discard less important items. It imparts transparency, quality, and authenticity.

23. Divergent Thinking

It is the method of coming up with a diverse set of solutions to one problem. It refers to out-of-the-box thinking to come up with various inventive explications to solve any crisis. It is a spontaneous and non-linear process of thinking of ideas over a short period. This process helps develop an unexpected connection between two things that ought to be the solution to any major problem. This term was first coined by psychologist J.P. Guilford where he defined it as a skill to produce recurring solutions to enigmas. People who transcend divergent thinking tend to be non-conformists, curious, risk-takers, and have tenacity.

24. Streamlining Skills

As a leader in any organization, you are acquainted with the possibility of a limited financial plan and not a great deal of squirm room. Regardless, smoothing out the authoritative construction can help your organization save money on assets without forfeiting efficiencies or administration - the first step towards streamlining includes assessing the current structure. Streamlining helps to remove red-tape, excessive bureaucracy, and unnecessary business processes. Organizational structure needs to get streamlined well, so it remains updated with the latest trends.

25. Mind Mapping

It is one of the powerful note-taking methods used by leaders to manage logical thinking processes with simplicity's power. It refers to mapping the team's vision so that the efforts and objectives of teams remain intact. It involves the methodology to associate and compute novelty with each new map freely. Mind mapping opens innovativeness, offers its brilliant nature, and is an ideal instrument for conceptualizing and brainstorming. Always remember that mind mapping comes with practice and redundancy. There is no shortcut to outline a perfect mind map, but it outrightly depends on your patience and steadiness. 

These are the top leadership qualities that a leader must have to become successful and positively impact the organization.

How does Leadership help?

In business, a leader presents a fascinating portrayal of where the business needs to be in the near future. A leader gives guidance, sets needs, and gives a marker, so you can tell that you've accomplished what you needed to accomplish. Leaders act as a lubricant that helps to run the wheel of business smoothly. Check out these characteristics of a leader to know how leaderships helps in business growth:

● Build a Vision for the Future

Leaders produce a vision that the organization should follow to achieve. The clear vision shows clarity and the future of business at large. People tend to see, feel, understand, and embrace what the leaders opine. Along these lines, leadership is proactive – critical thinking, looking forward, and best performance defines it. Here, leadership joins the logical side of vision creation with the energy of shared qualities, making something truly important to individuals being result-driven.

● Motivate People Around Them

One of the most cardinal aspects of leadership is motivation. The leader tends to motivate the team to deliver better results every time. There is a direct relationship between effort and reward. Leaders can persuade and impact individuals through their normal mystique and request and different wellsprings of force. For example, the ability to pay rewards or appoint undertakings to individuals. Notwithstanding, strong leadership doesn't depend on these kinds of abilities to spur and rouse others.

● Coaching and Building Teams

Leaders tend to teach and educate the teams with the latest trends and keep them updated with changing business dynamics. One of the best qualities of a good leader is to ensure that each team member learns skills to do the job with ease. Coaching is the fundamental job of leaders towards building the best teams who can work and grow prolifically. When a team gets trained and becomes specialized, their work capacity gets enhanced.

● Boost Productivity

When the team feels motivated and trained to do the job without any hassle, their productivity increases multi-fold and yields a better outcome. It becomes possible under the aegis of transformational leaders who get determined to grow along with his/her team. Leaders anchor bearing and helping themselves and other people to make the best decision to push ahead. They make a solid vision and rouse and persuade others to arrive at that vision to execute it. That defines their true leadership skills.

Conclusion

These leadership qualities list highlights the essential abilities that every leader must hold to become an effective leader. In a nutshell, leadership skills include the abilities to lead, deliver quality work, exert initiative, encourage and empower their teammates to work together towards one common goal without any selfish motive. Leadership attributes act as a backbone for any organization to build a strong foundation toward achieving the business goals. The leader tends to inspire, drive change and invigorate others.

As per the Elucidat report, 77% of organizations are presently witnessing a leadership gap and actively looking for effective leaders. A leader can make a change and fabricate a vision for an organization to function effectively. With solid strategic thinking, leaders can accumulate required data that helps them understand the market dynamics and allocate the work to each team member. It leads to better transparency and supports your strategic decisions. Every leader has to ensure that all their decisions get based on facts and figures to yield positive results.

Without followers, no one can become a leader. Therefore, some leadership skills are needed to influence people to follow and obey you. These skills act as tools to manage a wide range of activities in various situations. With the help of these skills, leaders learn the art of fabricating and leading a team effectively. Through their high proficiency in team building, leaders can hire and bring people together and make them work as one. They make use of performance management to keep track of teammate attainment and discard poor work performance. All leadership skills are general interpersonal skills that only successful leaders can represent at any given period. As rightly said by Max DePree that "the first and foremost role of a leader is to define reality and the last thing to say is thank you." It outrightly defines a true leader.

In every organization, some people tend to do work for the sake of doing it. Still, some individuals naturally come forward and decide to take the front seat when taking responsibility. Such people genuinely reflect their real leadership potential. Remember that all dynamic leaders do not possess all leadership skills at the same time. Since leadership qualities strongly relate to people's personality traits, communication abilities, and organizational needs. In short, diverse people, diverse leadership skills!

You may also read: Best Jobs for Women

Author Bio:

Karunjit Kumar Dhir, Co-founder, SCIKEY

SCIKEY     LinkedIn

Karunjit is an entrepreneur, award-winning business leader, and Co-Founder of SCIKEY – a market network for jobs, work business solutions, supported by an integrated services ecosystem. He enjoys building great teams businesses ground-up and has scaled multiple million-dollar businesses from scratch, with customers across India, Asia, and the US.

He is a Post-Graduate in Planning Entrepreneurship Management and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Applications where he was an awarded merit scholar for all the academic sessions. He has been featured in 70 Rising Personalities on LinkedIn in Malaysia by Marketing in Asia(MIA) and has various other professional achievements spanning his career, including CEO’s Award, Allegiance Award, Outstanding Contribution, and many more accolades for his accomplishments.