If the Wall Street Journal is to be believed, nearly half of people who switch their jobs do so due to their incompatibility with their boss. Truly said, a manager can either make or break a winning team. He/she can either take your organization to the zenith or strangle the employees to such an extent that they dread showing up. If you don’t want to lose out on your best staff, keep an eye open for these traits while hiring top-level executives.
Honesty
What will make employees trust a leader who is not even honest with them? Openness and transparency run a business. It is helpful to remember that the people down the ladder tend to follow the examples set.
Moreover, the best quality of a leader is the ability to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Believe it or not, it can be quite tough for some to accept that they are lagging in a particular department and need to shift gears. Being yourself is the key. Everything else just falls in place.
Communication Skills
A leader has to not just communicate but also make people understand their component in the completion of a process. Merging together diverse views on the objectives and getting everyone on the same page is what ensures successful completion of a task. Be it in oral or written format, the best leaders are experts in putting their views across.
Decisiveness
Apart from regular mundane decisions, the job of a leader keeps throwing hurdles at him. A leader must be swift to respond and be spontaneous enough to come up with the best possible solutions in no time.
An average person makes around 35,000 decisions daily; now, can you imagine how many decisions a manager has to make? If you want to see the business gallop on the charts of growth, choose someone who can be swift in making decisions.
Confidence
A leader transmits optimism to his employees. A confident leader has the capacity to boost the morale of the employees. A business is set to suffer setbacks, be it a court order or the entry of a new fierce competitor in the market.
If the business plummets ten times, a good leader makes sure that it’s brought back up with the same degree of enthusiasm every single time. A confident leader inspires the employees.
Responsibility
According to the 2015 Employee Engagement Report, only 25% of workers feel as though there are ample opportunities for professional development at their organizations. A great leader should have the understanding that the ship sinks or sails as per his/her actions. He/she should be active in keeping a tab on all the employees and making sure that they develop professionally. Ensuring this will make the employees engage with the business on a deeper level.
Empathy
The stat that was mentioned in the very first line is closely related to this point. If about 70% of people feel that they are filled to the brim with their work, aren’t the leaders supposed to empathize with them and lend a helping hand?
The entire business can collapse like a stack of dominos if managers lack a basic understanding of where the employees come from and what it’s like to be them.
No one is perfect and it will be quite a tough task to find someone who has all the qualities of a leader. Your safest bet would be someone who possesses most of these traits. But remember, there are no good or bad leaders; there are only leaders who are and those who possess the will to be.
