What Makes a Leader

What Makes a Leader

Truly effective leaders can be distinguished by a high degree of emotional intelligence, which includes self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill. Identifying individuals with the “right stuff” to be leaders is more art than science. Many large companies today have employed trained psychologists to develop “competency models” to aid them in identifying, training, and promoting likely stars in the leadership firmament. Emotional intelligence not only distinguishes outstanding leaders but can also be linked to strong performance. People who have a high degree of self-awareness recognize how their feelings affect them, other people and their job performance. Self-regulation frees us from being prisoners of our feelings. Due to self-regulation, leaders control their feelings and impulses, to create an environment of trust and fairness. Motivation drives passion in leader to work for reasons that go beyond money or status, with strong desires to achieve goals. Empathy is particularly important today as a component of leadership for three reasons; increasing use of teams, globalization and retaining talent. Social skill is moving people in direction you desire. For the sake of performance, these are ingredients that leaders “need to have”.

Seven Transformations of Leadership

Seven Transformations of Leadership

Many developmental psychologists agree that what differentiates leaders is not their leadership, personality or management, it’s their internal “action logic's”. The leaders who make an effort to understand their own action logic can improve their ability to lead. For this, it is important to understand what kind of leader you are.

  The seven developmental action logic's are Opportunist, Diplomat, Expert, Individualist, Strategist or Alchemist. Leaders can improve through these categories as their ability grows. The encouraging think is that leaders can transform from one action logic to another, transforming themselves from experts to achievers, individualists to strategists, etc. leaders who are moving towards the strategist and alchemist action logic's are no longer primarily seeking personal skills that will make them more effective within existing organizational systems. The strategist culture produces effective teams, in which the group sees business challenges as opportunities for growth and learning on the part of both individuals and the organization. The leader’s voyage of development in not an easy one, some people change little in their lifetimes, some change substantially. Those who are willing to work at developing themselves and becoming more self-aware can almost certainly evolve over time into truly transformational leaders.