The qualities of skillful leadership
If you want to be a leader
who attracts quality people, the key is to become a person of quality yourself.
Leadership is the ability to attract someone to the gifts, skills and
opportunities you offer as an owner, as a manager, as a parent. Jim Rohn calls
leadership the great challenge of life. What’s important in leadership is
refining your skills. All great leaders keep working on themselves until they
become effective. Here’s how:
1. Learn to be strong but not rude. It is an
extra step you must take to become a powerful, capable leader with a wide range
of reach. Some people mistake rudeness for strength. It’s not even a good
substitute.
2. Learn to be kind but not weak. We must not mistake kindness for
weakness. Kindness isn’t weak. Kindness is a certain type of strength. We must
be kind enough to tell somebody the truth. We must be kind enough and
considerate enough to lay it on the line. We must be kind enough to tell it
like it is and not deal in delusion.
3. Learn to be bold but not a bully. It
takes boldness to win the day. To build your influence, you’ve got to walk in
front of your group. You’ve got to be willing to take the first arrow, tackle
the first problem, discover the first sign of trouble.
4. You’ve got to learn
to be humble but not timid. You can’t get to the high life by being timid. Some
people mistake timidity for humility. Humility is almost a God-like word. A
sense of awe. A sense of wonder. An awareness of the human soul and spirit. An
understanding that there is something unique about the human drama versus the
rest of life. Humility is a grasp of the distance between us and the stars, yet
having the feeling that we’re part of the stars. So humility is a virtue, but
timidity is a disease. Timidity is an affliction. It can be cured, but it is a
problem.
5. Be proud but not arrogant. It takes pride to win the day. It takes
pride to build your ambition. It takes pride in community. It takes pride in a
cause, in accomplishment. But the key to becoming a good leader is being proud
without being arrogant. In fact, I believe the worst kind of arrogance is
arrogance from ignorance. It’s when you don’t know that you don’t know. Now
that kind of arrogance is intolerable. If someone is smart and arrogant, we can
tolerate that. But if someone is ignorant and arrogant, that's just too much to
take.
6. Develop humor without folly. That’s important for a leader. In
leadership, we learn that it’s OK to be witty, but not silly. It’s OK to be
fun, but not foolish.
7. Lastly, deal in realities. Deal in truth. Save
yourself the agony. Just accept life like it is. Life is unique. Some people
call it tragic, but I’d like to think it’s unique. The whole drama of life is
unique. It’s fascinating. And I’ve found that the skills that work well for one
leader may not work at all for another. But the fundamental skills of leadership
can be adapted to work well for just about everyone: at work, in the community,
and at home.
See more at:
http://www.success.com/article/7-personality-traits-of-a-great-leader#sthash.0UqasKjY.dpuf
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