Leaders at work make or break an experience. Great leaders can inspire people to do incredible things, while poor leaders can lead to people counting seconds until work is done or even causing people to give up and quit.
While we’ve all had a few leaders who sucked, here’s a quick list of 10 things I’ve seen that have differentiated good leaders from great leaders.
- People first – Great leaders get to know people first before jumping into work. They build up trust through sincerity and enable others to bring their whole selves to work.
- Inspirational – Great leaders lay out a difficult yet achievable vision for the future. They get the whole team behind it so everyone is paddling in the same direction.
- Expectations – Great leaders lay out what’s expected by when. Daily expectations are reasonable and they don’t send non-urgent emails at 12AM leading to frantic reactions
- Feedback – Great leaders give feedback often. They’re extra generous with positive feedback and don’t wait to tell others where they stand until end of the year reviews.
- Organized – Great leaders are respectful of others’ time. Meetings have agendas, emails are structured, and actions and requests have a clear and identifiable purpose
- Outcome driven – Great leaders inspire on defined goals. They empower others to bring up issues and love finding them; as finding issues sooner brings teams closer to goals.
- Selfless – Great leaders share the spotlight. Poor leaders often present other’s work
- Recognition – Great leaders celebrate others nonstop. They’re generous with appreciation, awards, and are constantly singing other’s praises in public.
- Support – Great leaders make sure people are in a position to succeed. When people don’t immediately have the skills or context, great leaders support them to build it up.
- Respectful – Great leaders treat everyone with respect especially if they’re lower on the totem pole. They are active listeners and never ignore ideas because of others’ titles.