Personal qualities of a leader. Qualities of a good leader: everything that makes a boss irreplaceable

The success of an enterprise depends to a large extent on who is at the head of it. A qualified manager will help promote the business through the proper organization of the work of his subordinates.

Being a good leader is not easy. A person holding a leadership position must combine various professional and personal qualities.

Leadership qualities that lead to success

The main qualities of a leader are divided into three groups:

1. Professional qualities. This group includes qualities that characterize a person as a competent specialist. These qualities are the basis that allows a person to perform leadership activities. This group includes:

• education, work experience, competence, knowledge of one’s own and related fields of activity;
• related skills: knowledge of foreign languages, ability, computer skills.

In general, this group includes skills and abilities that are usually listed on a resume.

2. Personal qualities of a leader. This group includes the qualities that every employee must have:

• honesty;
• responsibility;
• psychological health;
• balance, ability to control oneself;
• responsiveness, benevolent attitude towards others.
• In addition, this also includes such personal qualities that not everyone has, but which a leader must possess:
• optimistic outlook on life;
• self confidence;
• sociability and desire to communicate;
• stress resistance;
• charisma;
• interest in people;
• organization;
• purposefulness and ambition;
• justice.

3. Business qualities of a leader. These include skills in organizing the labor process, self-organization and managerial qualities of a leader:

• ability to plan your activities, knowledge of time management;
• desire for self-improvement;
• critical perception and ability to rethink situations and the surrounding reality;
• erudition;
• ability to train others;
• openness to everything new, the ability to look for new forms and methods of work;
• skill to work in team;
• the ability to support and ignite people with a new idea;
• the ability to create a work team with a favorable psychological atmosphere for work;
• the ability to manage people, the desire to lead people, to jointly achieve goals;
• the ability to distribute attention and keep tasks of different directions in mind;
• logical and critical thinking;
• initiative;
• efficiency in resolving emerging issues;
• the ability to identify primary goals and objectives;
• desire to succeed at any cost.

5 qualities of an ideal leader

The qualities of an ideal leader will differ depending on which leadership level we are talking about. For example, a lower-level manager must be a good organizer, and a senior manager must be a strategist. In general, we can highlight the following basic qualities of an excellent leader.

Experience of a Microsoft evangelist in Russia

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Alexander Lozhechkin, who is responsible for technical “evangelism” in Central and Eastern Europe at Microsoft, compiled a list of mistakes that newly appointed managers make in his Medium blog and supplemented them with examples from his own practice.

Always honestly admit your mistakes: this will dull the vigilance of your superiors and allow you to make new ones.

Mark Twain

I’ll follow Mark Twain’s advice and tell you about the typical mistakes of novice (and not only novice) leaders. This note is especially easy and unpleasant for me to write: “I’m going to talk about the mistakes that I have made myself - and some that I continue to make. Therefore, this will be a very personal and very frank note.

Someone may recognize themselves in it, in which case the note may offend someone. But I wrote about myself, and not about someone else. Therefore, I hope that I will not offend anyone. At least I don't really want it.

First, I’ll tell you about two typical situations in which novice managers emerge. This implies growth within the company, as most often happens: hiring from outside a person without management experience directly to a leadership position is too risky. The situation can be divided into four quadrants along two axes:

• Whether the manager is a subject matter expert or not.
• Is one of the team members promoted to leadership or is an external leader appointed?

Both of these slices offer many interesting opportunities for success and failure. I'll look at them in a little more detail before moving on to specific errors.

Appointment of the best specialist as manager

The most typical situation is when someone from the team is appointed as a leader. As a rule, the best specialist in the group is appointed. The best programmer becomes a team lead, the best salesperson becomes the head of the sales department, the best marketer becomes the head of marketing.

And again, the right balance is needed. Extremes do not work one way or the other. Finding the right balance, individual for each employee, is an art. This is precisely the skill of a leader.

An incident from life: once we were preparing a large conference with a plenary report by a big boss. I completely entrusted the preparation to a responsible, but not very experienced employee in this matter. And he got busy with other things and didn’t even pay attention to the problems that the employee was trying to tell me about. As a result, the day before the conference it turned out that the report was no good, and on the last night everything had to be completely redone.

5. I want to improve team morale.

We want to please others. The best way to be liked is to praise. Very often, novice managers, afraid of being rejected, try to please everyone and praise everyone. They focus on the positive and keep silent about the shortcomings, believing that talking about problems can worsen the morale of the team. This is a very dangerous mistake, as it prevents people from developing. Good news from such a manager loses trust: all he does is praise anyway?

A real-life incident: it was very difficult for me to convey criticism to my employees for the first time. I suffered for a long time. I thought they would hate me later (as they did, just a joke), and only praised me, which brought the situation to a very critical point. With some - to the point of incorrigibility.

6. I believe that the team should always be on their toes

And then managers begin to scold. No matter what happens, they are always unhappy. Did you do the project well? But they could have done even better. Have you reached your goal? So this goal was lowered. How to find the right balance between this mistake and the previous one? I once heard this definition: “Criticism is good until it starts to demotivate.” That is, there can and should be a lot of criticism. But just enough to get better.

Real life case: I decided to help the team by telling them what could be done better. At the same time, I forgot to praise for what was done well. As a result, the team was demotivated and spent the entire time trying to explain to me (and themselves) that they were great, thinking that I was simply constantly dissatisfied with them. Instead of discussing and fixing problems.

7. I'm my guy

Often, novice managers, especially in a situation where an employee from the same team has become a manager, try to maintain informal relationships with subordinates. In my opinion, this is very correct. A person is first of all a person, and then a boss. It is important not to cross the line and maintain a respectful attitude towards each other. Therefore, you should not play “your guy”, otherwise it will be difficult for you to ask your employees for results.

An incident from life: no, I didn’t make such a mistake! Haha.

8. Now I'm the boss

The opposite situation also happens, when a novice leader tries to build his authority on the conscious construction of distance: “I am now the boss.” There is nothing to comment on here, it's just funny. Although I suspect that in some areas, for example in the army, you can’t do without it. But the most important thing, of course, is to be yourself, and not someone else, be it “your boyfriend” or the “big boss”.

An incident from life: I never made such a mistake either! I spied on others.

9. Focus on results rather than developing people

Any project and any task is, first of all, an opportunity to learn something new, and not just achieve a result. A good manager, when planning a project and during debriefing, always looks at what new knowledge and skills the team can gain or has acquired. And then even the most failed project becomes useful.

They tell a story about some top manager at Henry Ford who failed a big project and wasted a lot of the company's money. When he brought Ford his letter of resignation, he exclaimed: “I just invested millions of dollars in your education, and now you want me to let you go to your competitors?”

A real-life incident: while managing programmers on a constantly late project (nowadays it would be called a startup creating an MVP), I completely forgot that programmers need to learn new technologies, go to conferences and communicate on forums to do a good job. As a result, I lost several very valuable employees.

10. Trying to retain employees

This point is related to the previous one. Often managers try to keep their good employees from leaving. This is a big mistake that I have made several times myself. You need to do exactly the opposite - in every possible way help people realize themselves outside of your team.

Then no one will want to leave you. And even if he leaves, there will be a line of candidates to replace him: the best personnel will want to join a manager who helps his employees build a career. You can’t say it better than Remarque: “Whoever wants to hold on loses. Those who are ready to let go with a smile, “they try to hold on to.”

A real-life incident: I tried to dissuade one very good employee from leaving our team several times. I still regret that he left, and I consider his leaving a mistake for both of us. But since then I have understood well: if someone is going to leave, they will definitely leave.

11. Confusing loyalty and devotion

Dangerous mistake. Let's remember Shakespeare and King Lear. Not always those who agree with you will be there in difficult times. And those who argue with you, give not always pleasant feedback and protect you from mistakes, often turn out to be your most loyal comrades. Disloyalty does not always mean a lack of devotion.

The consequence of this mistake is to recruit manageable employees into your team who will be loyal to you, and avoid obstinate ones who have their own opinions. A special case of this approach is not to hire people stronger than yourself, so as not to get caught. This is a big mistake. The caliber of a leader is determined by the caliber of the people who work for him.

An incident from life: there were situations when I did not like “dissenters”, took offense at them and sometimes even went into conflict. Fortunately, he managed to catch himself in time. Hope.

12. Make compromises when hiring

“It’s better to make a mistake and not take a good thing than to make a mistake and take a bad one” - this rule is so simple to formulate and so difficult to implement. I myself have sometimes been tempted to hire the best available. After all, at least someone is better than no one? No, that's not true.

The difference between a bad employee and a good one is not that he brings less value. Its benefits are negative, it causes harm. This is why you shouldn’t be afraid to fire bad employees. By pitying them, you punish the good ones. This, of course, does not mean that dismissal should be painless and without doubt.

An incident from life: there were several of these - when I agreed to compromise with myself and take a person whose values ​​did not seem 100% correct to me. In all cases where I compromised when hiring, I later regretted it.

13. Give in to flattery and believe in your importance

When you become a leader, you have to deal with flattery - this is a medical fact. Flattery is often difficult to recognize. Therefore, it is important for managers to create an atmosphere of trust in the team, when employees will not be afraid to convey feedback that is not always pleasant. And, of course, it is very important to learn to look at yourself from the outside.

It’s also dangerous to succumb to the feeling of self-confidence that inevitably arises in the first months and years of working as a leader. However, in subsequent years it occurs even more often, especially if the career has been successful.

A real-life incident: many times I was so confident in myself and my team that I didn’t make the final push at the very end of the project, I didn’t push it, hoping that everything had already been done. But in vain.

14. Imitate instead of lead

Even if a person is under the leadership of two or three people, he is a leader who must organize their work. What if the life of an entire team depends on you and your actions? What should a leader be like? What qualities should I have? Is it easy to lead, or not everyone can become a leader? We will talk about this in our article.

Do you know what the word "leader" means? Leading by hand. And the essence of a leader’s activity is to monitor the whole. Do not deal with specific specialized tasks, but monitor the entire process so that it is effective.

A leader is a leader whom people follow

Is it possible to learn efficiency?

How do you understand the word “efficiency”? The answer is quite simple - it is the correct implementation of the assigned tasks. So is an effective leader. He may be endowed with excellent mental abilities, have the best knowledge, but in practice show ineffective work.
Therefore, the ability to manage people and be a leader is not given to everyone. The ideal leader in specialized literature is described as a person with the following abilities:

• ability to analyze;
• making decisions and taking responsibility for them;
• ability to work with people;
• creative thinking;
• good knowledge of mathematics;
• understanding the management structure and features of your enterprise.

There are catastrophically few people possessing all these qualities. But this does not mean that you cannot develop them in yourself. Yes, this is a lot of work, but it is possible. A leader who can be said to be in the right place knows how to achieve results in everything. To be effective, a person in a leadership position needs five qualities that can be developed:

1. Skill manage time. Spend it correctly.
2. Concentration needed for the final result.
3. Developing Strengths not only for yourself, but also for all members of the team. Start solving those tasks that are doable. It is better to postpone tasks that cannot be solved at the moment.
4. Skill determine priorities.
5. Skill make the right decisions. We must understand that the right decision is not one action. These are the right steps in the right sequence.

How to manage your time

Time is priceless. Take care of him

Everything on earth can be replaced by something, but not time. Therefore, you must definitely learn how to manage it. Determine what you spend it on. And if there is little productivity, reduce the time for this process as much as possible.

Time management can be divided into three stages:

Registration

It takes a certain amount of time to complete any job. And you need to learn to analyze it. By recording time spent, you can identify ineffective actions that need to be eliminated.

Control

Useful and necessary things need to be done according to plan. Poor management of the entire production process takes up a lot of time. And a good leader shouldn’t have this.

Read also: How to fire for absenteeism if an employee does not show up for work

Consolidation

Don't divide things into small blocks. Thus, you will waste too much time to no avail. Time blocks can be enlarged by planning all your activities in advance. Save your time. Conversations with clients, holding meetings, issuing necessary documents takes a lot of time. Your assistants can do this work so that your time can be spent on more productive activities.

We talked about how to manage your time so that there is enough for creativity and implementation of plans. Let's consider what qualities a leader should have.

Personal qualities

Productive work at an enterprise is possible when an appropriate psychological climate is created in the team. And here the role of the leader is great. If he is confident in himself, he commands respect from his subordinates and a desire to carry out all his orders.

By respecting your subordinates, you will receive respect from them

Resistance to stress is also important. Problematic issues may also arise during the production process. And if in such circumstances the leader loses self-control, authority is lost.
Leadership skills are undoubtedly important to lead people. It is important to be strict but fair. People look not only at the professional qualities of a leader. They also see little things: what example their boss sets. And if he is demanding of himself personally and is not afraid of responsibility for his actions, his employees will try to live up to him.

Humane qualities are very important. Nobody canceled the human factor. Respect for subordinates, understanding of their personal problems, faith in their strengths will cause a return feeling of respect and a desire to do their job better.

An interesting survey was conducted of a large number of ordinary employees of various companies who were asked what kind of leader they would like to see. The answers were mostly the same. Everyone would prefer a boss who is able to come up with new ways and new ways of organizing the production process. So that his decisions are consistent with the opinions of his team, he provides freedom and is supportive of the initiatives of his employees. So that he sees them not only as workers, but also as people, being interested in their needs, helping to solve their problems.

To summarize: the personal qualities of a leader are:

• high moral requirements both for yourself and for the people around you;
• good health;
• the presence of an internal rich culture;
• kind, caring and responsive attitude towards employees;
• Confidence in your strength.

Professional quality

These qualities should characterize the manager as a specialist, experienced and competent:

• availability of appropriate education and, of course, experience;
• competence;
• erudition, self-improvement;
• the ability to critically perceive reality and rethink it;
• search and use of new technologies in work;
• training your staff;
• work planning.

But having these qualities may not make you an ideal leader. Because in addition to the above qualities, business qualities are of great importance for a good leader. It is thanks to them that he leads people to success. These qualities can be combined into three blocks.

Ability to solve assigned problems

Practical Intelligence

Logical thinking. Using your knowledge, skills, and experience in solving production problems. Necessary qualities, but the effectiveness of management does not always depend on correct thinking and working with information. This happens in conjunction with the ability to establish the right relationships with people. And here the second block is no less important.

An ideal leader does not exist in nature. One good person, an experienced professional who is very good at what he does, may not even have an idea of ​​how to structure his work so that efficiency is maximized. Another manager, excellent in most respects, is not able to listen to criticism from employees, and therefore is simply not able to look at the problem from different angles. And such examples can be given infinitely. However, this does not mean that one should not strive for the ideal. Let's consider the most sought-after features and qualities of an ideal leader.

Adequacy

This is the first and most important point. The boss, first of all, must adequately look at the world around him, his subordinates and the specifics of the task facing him. A person may not understand the issue, may not be able to manage people, but if he is adequate, all the necessary skills will come very quickly. Although this is not an ideal leader, he will eventually learn and approach this proud title much closer than a completely inadequate boss.

There are many examples of complete inconsistency with one’s position in modern society. Usually these are children of influential parents who have never worked a day and other similar individuals who are accustomed to getting everything at once simply because they were fortunately born. These can destroy any project in the shortest possible time.

Professionalism and experience

The second important indicator of what his ideal experience, professionalism and acquired skills should be. A boss who previously worked in the same field in which his enterprise now exists is able to make the only right decisions and accurately represent the volume and direction of the required work. All this allows you to very quickly achieve excellent results and obtain high organizational performance indicators.

Insight

An ideal leader must be able to look at the very essence of things, processes, people and problems. Many people with insight make the right decisions instinctively, without realizing why they did so. Unfortunately, this skill is usually innate, but it can be developed; it is enough to be able to compare different elements into a single chain and make long-term forecasts based on not the most obvious data. An astute boss will be able to select the best employees, even if their resume doesn't show it. He will be able to foresee possible problems and solve them in advance, and will see the best option for further development even in a situation when everyone else seems to be saying the opposite.

Criticism

In the book “The Ideal Leader” by Isaac Adizes it is said that when two people agree on everything, it means that one of them is not needed. This is an absolutely correct remark. A normal boss must not only accept criticism of his own decisions without aggression, but also be able to hear all opponents. as Socrates said, and most importantly, argument helps to hear another point of view, which is invaluable for making the right decision.

Discipline and responsibility

An ideal leader must be responsible and disciplined, if only to set an example for his own subordinates. It is difficult to get employees to follow the corporate style if the boss himself regularly violates it. It is almost impossible to force people to come to work on time or leave strictly after the end of the working day if the most important person in the enterprise regularly allows himself to be several hours late or leaves immediately after lunch. Of course, there are always good reasons such as an important meeting, negotiations with prospective clients and the like, but it is rare that this all happens every day.

Complex decisions

An ideal leader simply must be able to make difficult decisions. Moreover, even in situations where there is no clearly correct answer and at least something needs to be done. As stated in the book by the same Adizes, in the overwhelming majority of cases, inaction leads to much more dire consequences than an incorrect action. There are exceptions to any rule, and we can say that there are situations when it is better to wait, but waiting in this case can also be regarded as an action. And a real boss must always be ready not only to make such decisions, but also to bear responsibility for them, without shifting it onto the heads of subordinates who are simply following orders.

Personnel decides everything

The boss must be able to select employees so that they can perform absolutely all functions and fully realize the company’s potential. If a manager starts doing something other than general management, signing documents, negotiating with major clients and making decisions that are fateful for the organization, then one or more employees have been selected incorrectly. In the most ideal situation, management is needed only in force majeure situations. And this is true both ways.

If people work and perform their tasks well, even if they do not do it exactly as the boss himself would do, you should not touch them. Ultimately, as experience is gained, the optimal solution and the most effective solution to the problem will be found independently. And when you try to force a subordinate to do something differently from the way he understands it, you can simply derail the entire more or less well-functioning mechanism of work, and instead of getting better results, get a completely opposite result.

Conclusion

To sum up, we can say that the ideal leader must meet too many criteria at the same time. If there are such people, their number is very small, and you can’t get enough of them for all the companies, organizations and enterprises. So, a conditionally good boss will be one who meets at least half of the indicators, including, first of all, adequacy; without this important criterion, even the most excellent manager is unlikely to be able to effectively develop the organization and achieve good results.

A successful enterprise, a rapidly developing structure, or a large-scale organization can be headed by a person who has all the valuable qualities that are very important for leadership work. The developed leadership, business and professional qualities of a good leader make him valuable and respected among his subordinates, as well as senior management. To become successful and irreplaceable, a person who holds a leadership position must continuously engage in self-development. All the qualities that are given to him by nature need to be polished, and he will also have to acquire some missing qualities and work hard on them.

A good leader is, first of all, a personality

If you ask any employee or worker what is so outstanding about his boss, the first quality will be that which concerns his personal characteristics. High-ranking persons who are not burdened with moral principles, unfortunately, are not uncommon, but there are also those who respect the code of honor. Such personal qualities are necessary for a person who is capable of managing, and not because such are the job requirements, it is simply impossible to become respected among subordinates without it.

Alienation of the team, an unfavorable atmosphere in the team, even confrontation can be caused by the lack of the necessary moral characteristics in the boss. Under the leadership of a dishonest boss, subordinates are able to unite into a team that will become an opposing party. Managing such a team is very difficult and does not give the results that they might expect. Whoever heads the leadership post, a man or a woman, if he has high moral principles, he will be honored in the team.

A manager often serves as an example for his employees, so excellent physical shape, a stable, balanced mental state, and adequate response in a variety of stressful situations can become an excellent example for subordinates. Optimism, good spirits, responsiveness and goodwill towards not only the team, but also everyone around them, will not only increase the boss’s rating in the eyes of employees, but will also help him in the successful development of his career.

Why do a good boss need business skills?

“A Swede, a reaper, and a player on the pipe”—approximately all possible functions must be performed by a good leader, but for this he must not only be a great professional and a man with a capital “P,” but also become businesslike, pragmatic, and capable of getting things done. What business qualities are there, and how do they contribute to the career of a successful leader?

A very valuable quality is ambition; a person who has it is capable of great things, he is ambitious and persistent in achieving his goal. Leadership is in the blood of such people; they are always ready to lead and manage. The ability to organize one’s activities and people to carry out work is also a very important quality of a business leader. A good boss should not be a perfectionist; on the contrary, he should be able to competently delegate authority.

The ability to quickly respond to any, even non-standard, issue greatly helps the modern boss. The initiative of a business person does not allow him to wonder why he has to do this; he basically places all responsibility in solving the problem on himself. Self-control and coordination of subordinates, as well as the ability to plan your working time and that of the entire team, are very effective in achieving high performance. A truly business leader will not be afraid of innovative ideas; on the contrary, he will calculate the risks and, if they are justified, will lead a promising enterprise and lead the masses.

Great professional in his field

Being a highly qualified specialist is the main requirement for a leader, since only a person who knows his business well has the right to lead it. Vocational skills include education. High qualifications of a managerial employee is one of the mandatory requirements in many organizations. Competence and experience in one's specialty are also considered mandatory conditions by employers.

Broad thinking, a large-scale vision of the situation, being an erudite, striving for self-development and career growth - these are the qualities that can make a leader successful, and the ability to use new, more advanced methods of work will help teams become successful professionals in their field.

A truly good leader must possess a whole set of valuable qualities and skillfully apply them in practice. And it’s no secret that there are no ideal people, just like leaders, but those qualities that are so necessary can be acquired and practiced to perfection.