7 Traits of Influential Leaders: Part 1

Leadership is a skill that everyone should develop and cultivate. Being a leader does not necessarily have to mean being a manager or a politician – it could also mean being a thought leader, or even just being a great parent. The ability to inspire, direct, and guide others is something that is incredibly valuable. Something that can help you to accomplish more and even raises your confidence and self-worth.

In this series of 7 posts, we’re going to examine what it takes to be a leader by looking at some of the most important traits that history’s greatest exhibit. Every leader is different and part of your journey to becoming one is going to be discovering your own ‘leadership style’. With that said though, there are still definitely some common traits that you can develop and some lessons we can learn from influential figures from history. And what you’ll find is that in some ways, the most important aspects of being a great leader are not what you would expect.

I hope this series will change the way you approach leadership and help you to drastically improve your own results.

Part 1. A Great Leader Does Not Need to be Liked

Should a great leader be feared or liked?

The answer is that it doesn’t really matter. While a positive relationship is paramount to effective leadership it is important to remember that you won’t always be liked and you certainly won’t be able to be everyone’s best friend.

Ultimately, a leader is someone who is trying to accomplish a goal by rallying the power of their team. If your goal is to increase turnover, then you are a good leader if you increase turnover. Being popular or always in the good books is not always going to be on the cards.

Sometimes you will have to make hard decisions or break bad news. You need to be willing to do that and not be too concerned with how it makes you ‘look’. For example, if your superiors tell you that you and your team are going to need to work late, then you need to pass on that information and not make excuses.

The temptation here is to complain along with your staff, to whine about how unfair it is and to make rude comments about the capabilities of your higher-ups.

All this does is to make you look unprofessional, damages the enthusiasm of your team, and make everyone question the rules they’re being asked to follow. Don’t try to soften the blow by disparaging your superiors. It’s not always fun being the bearer of bad news, but it is essential that you own your position and take ownership of your directives and conversations regardless of who it has been passed down from.

This is one of the biggest problems with politics. In order to get re-elected, a leader needs to make positive changes in a short space of time so that the electorate can see the results.

The problem is that some projects only yield results over a long period of time and might even hurt the economy in the short term. Making those decisions would be political suicide so political leaders often focus their efforts on putting out fires to ensure they get re-elected, rather than focusing on the hard work of bringing about change. This is something that a few famous leaders have managed to break away from.

Arnold Schwarzenegger most recently discussed this and the value of being willing to make hard decisions. “You don’t have to be unpleasant, but be willing to let your reputation take the hit when it needs to!”

Stong relationships with your team will always be essential, but popularity is not. Don’t avoid hard decisions and conversations for the sake of maintaining your image or your ego.

Leading is messy and won’t always leave you feeling great about yourself. But providing you conduct yourself with integrity, focus on achieving the outcomes that are best for everyone (in as much as that’s possible), then letting your reputation take a hit now and then is not the end of the world.

Go on, make that hard decision, inaction won’t make it go away. Bite the bullet, you’ll still be standing tomorrow.

Want to read ahead? Down load the eBook with all 7 traits here:

If you would like to learn more about effectively growing in your leadership, why not check out our FREE Goal setting guide. See below for details. https://leadcommunicategrow.com/free-goal-setting-guide/

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