Top Leadership Qualities, Characteristics, and Skills that Make Great Leaders

Extensive skills and qualities support a person to be an efficient leader. Leadership is not a magic. It comes from the skills and qualities of a person’s characteristics. Behavioral theories suggest that leadership qualities can be achieved. So, by learning and practicing any ordinary person can achieve the leadership qualities and skills. In order to be a leader, one must acquire those skills and qualities. The skills and qualities needed to be a leader are listed here in this essay. We have explored and found the best leadership qualities and styles of great leaders that helped them to be successful in life. 

Study properly and start practicing to acquire those skills.

Top Leadership Qualities, Characteristics, and Skills that Make Great Leaders

Inspire and Motivate

Leaders make a vision and present it to the followers. This is like presenting a dream by an inspirational way. Who does not to get a job after their graduation? Most of the people do. But, a great leader leads a business organization. Leaders motivate the followers for being honest, attentive and inspired. Besides, leaders are self-motivated. Top business leaders such as Tim Cook, Larry Page, and Bill Gates have these types of motivating and inspiring skills.

Motivation is not everlasting. People lose motivation and inspiration in the work, but leaders do not. In the one side, they are self-motivated. On the other side, they know very well how to motivate other people. By that, they inspire their followers and restore motivation.

Leaders Build Long-Term Relationship

How do you differentiate a business leader and a manager? There are some key differences between a leader and a manager. It is discussed in my other post. The business leaders go through a long-term friendly relationship with the people they encounter. They do not think logically always but with their heart. They love their followers. They go for long term relations. So, achieving the skills of building a long-term relationship is one of the few key skills of a great business leader.

The cofounder of Google, Larry Page has the skills of building and keeping long term relationship with others. Also, the founder of Virgin Group, Richard Branson has strong ability to keep long-term relationship.

Very High Learning Capability

Fourth, learning is a skill. So, for the betterment of your business, you need to know how to learn anything very quickly. If you need to be updated with current information thoroughly, you need to learn very fast. Great business leaders are always learning and achieving new skills. They do not like to be outdated or old. So you need to grab the faster learning skills.

The most successful tech leader Bill Gates has this powerful ability to learn new things quickly and implement it immediately.

Make Better Plans

One of the top Leadership skills that make great leaders is the making of better business plan. 

When it is about the business planning, leaders can make better plans for their future course of action. By that, they determine what they will be doing in future to achieve his/her organizational goals.

Related Reading: Why Planning is The Most Important Function for an Organization)

Know How to Develop Others

In General, The leaders are the people who know what type of skills a person will need to perform a specific job. organization changes every day, and the work requirements change as well. Leaders find out those specific skills and train their people accordingly.

the Ability to Listen to Others

They do not interfere when other people speak. They listen to everyone very attentively to understand what their followers want to say and take steps accordingly.

Capability of Taking Risks

Leaders are risk takers. They can manage risk very well. They apply the risk management process to manage the systematic risk. But, they take the calculative risk. When they see that there will be equal benefits against certain risk, they will take the risk.

Skills of Creative Problem-Solving

Frequently taking decisions is an exceptional skill. Leaders possess this type of skills. In making a decision, a leader needs to think about the problem dynamically. They can think of a problem from different points to find out a solution. Leaders are trained to be problem solver because they will have to solve a problem instantly. They must utilize the opportunities immediately while recognized.

Skills of Setting Precise Goals and Objectives

A leader always fixes a targeted and precise goal. What if the followers do not know what to achieve? If it is a vague goal, the followers will be confused. They will not be able to finish the work within due time. So, a leader must make the goal precise and clear. So, you need to have the quality of making precise goals.

Strong Communication Skill

They have strong communication skills. Leaders have to communicate with their people frequently. Why is that? The reason is leaders need to give directions and decisions to the people of an organization. They need to be technologically sound by which they can communicate with anyone within moments. The tools leaders use in the business fields are video conferencing, common phone calls, blogging, social networking, emailing, short messaging, and what not?

Business leaders such as Michael Bloomberg and Larry Page have these strong skills of communicating with others.

Skills to Adapt Technological Changes

Leaders always do welcome the changes. They must adapt the changing circumstances. As a result, they need to be prepared for it. If they do not accept the change, they will remain technologically outdated. And if it happens, they will not be able to apply new technologies and utilize the business opportunities.

Modern technology is very much important to achieve organizational goals. It fastens the process of the organizational process. Leaders know how to apply those modern technologies in an organization.

Time Management Skill

Generally, a leader is multi-tasker. They perform different types of the jobs at a time. Besides, they are responsible for different types of process under-work in an organization. They can give their time equally to the different jobs they are responsible for.

In conclusion

We have described the top leadership styles, characteristics and skills of great business leaders. But you should be so serious when choosing and, practicing new skills. Because if these skills do not help you to be a greater business leader, then it will be a huge waste of time. So, when you finish those selective skills, you will soon understand that to be a leader is all about learning and practicing.