So, you are thinking about achieving financial freedom or starting on online business. Sometimes, you feel stuck. Or sometimes, you feel that you need a proper direction.

It’s overwhelming whenever you are thinking to achieve so many things in a short period of time.

But if you become a leader in your life, it becomes easier for you to achieve your dream effortlessly.

Whenever you think of a leader, who do you think about?

-Steve jobs? Jeff Bezos? Richard Branson?

It is no doubt that they are great leaders. The question is what makes them great?

Do they have any secret qualities?

Can you apply those qualities in your life?

The truth is – great Leaders possess similar kind of qualities that make them the greatest of all time.

It would take you ages to find out these qualities on your own. To help you, I have summarised 13 leadership qualities after spending hours reading books and doing some research. I hope it will help you understand the leadership traits.

Here you go-

Vision

“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”

-Theodore M. Hesburgh

Vision is the number one quality that makes a leader different from the rest. Vision guides you what to accomplish. And motivates you to keep going.

You can visualize and verbalize the big picture of an idea and start with this the inception of it.

Let’s see an example to make it clearer.

John is a shopify business owner, leading 7 members team to make money online. His vision is to be top seller in his product niche.

This vision will guide him about what type of products he needs to sell. He will be motivated to do a market research about his competition, sales, product sourcing etc.

Through his vision, it will be easier for him to introduce products that will be beneficial to the customers.

He would develop a plan keeping vision of 5 years and make the big picture in his mind about it.

So, a great leader creates a vision then articulates it. They also own the vision within themselves and work relentlessly to implement the vision.

They also infuse the vision to the team members to understand the big idea. Their vision motivates their team mates.

Steve jobs had a simple vision of ‘computer for rest of us’. This simple vision made apple computers not only an iconic brand but also created a revolution in the Personal computer industry.

So, be a person of a strong vision and communicate with your team mates.

Passion and charisma

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”

-John F. Kennedy

Whenever you will see a great leader the first thing you are going to notice is that he/she has passion in their eyes and charismatic vibe in their personality.

Passion and charisma are reflected in their outer look and make them look like a leader. He/she is always eager to learn more, know more and more passionate about everything they do.

I can tell you a simple example from my life experience. I have worked in banking sales team. Each morning, we had a warm up session with the sales manager. I noticed whenever she was passionate for the day, we used to follow her energy as well.

If she was not full of energy and was not charismatic in her talks, we would feel dull that day for sure.

If you have a vision but doesn’t have any energy in your talks, you can’t motivate your team. It will be hard to achieve more sales.

A great leader is well-spoken and friendly. They show sincere care for others.

So, the quality that completes the vision of a great leader is his passion and charisma that makes him appear as a great leader. Make yourself a passionate and charismatic person.

Inspiring

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

-John Quincy Adams

We are lucky to have so many great inspiring leaders. Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, Oprah Winfrey are the great examples.

What makes them inspiring leader?

They lead by example. They follow what they believed. They were persistent following their dreams. They worked hard to materialise their dreams.

If you are a great inspiring leader, your team member will follow you. If you empower your team mate, they will follow you. Just practice what you preach.

If you make your team mates valued, feel praiseworthy, they will like to work for you.

Inspiration is what pushes us to fight through the bad times and to work on achieving our goals even when times are unfavourable and situations become hopeless.

If there is no inspiration in a team then the team will end up being depressed and lethargic. Rebuild and modify your identity so that you will inspire those on your team and make their strengths flourish.

Integrity

The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.

-unknown

The importance of integrity in a leader is quite obvious. It’s a must for an individual and for everyone in a team but specially the leader should possess this quality.

Integrity involves doing the right thing. As the leader is a top-level decision maker, he is responsible for all the work done within the team, integrity should always be cherished.

If I am a dishonest and lie to my team mates, I will lose my credibility straight away.

When you are an online business owner, maintaining your integrity is the key to success. If your customers find you that you manipulate data, they will abandon you straightway.

Leading with integrity doesn’t mean leader aren’t going to make any mistakes, but to accept them and solve them.

This practice will make you a good human being. So, we all should cherish the integrity for building ourselves as a good human being and a great leader.

Positivity

“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.”

-John Maxwell

A person who is pessimistic can never be a good leader. Optimistic but realistic is the characteristics of a leader.

A leader can convince people though logical and cooperative appeals and make them stay positive in any difficult situation.

Leader can bring the positive emotions and energy in the team mates and make the environment better to work.

To illustrate, during this global pandemic many businesses sold their business. The owners thought they won’t be able to sustain in the future. They thought the entire world is going to be destroyed.

In reality, we noticed that businesses survived this pandemic after applying innovative solutions. Many businesses applied online delivery, create shopify store.

There was a boom in the E-commerce industry.

In contrary, if you are pessimistic, then, your brain will be blocked. Your subconscious mind will not provide any solution to you.

So we need to be optimistic to become a good leader and always think positively in every situation and take the team work accordingly.

Communication

Effective leadership and effective communication are deeply connected. You need to know your team’s communication system and your communication styles and then combine them together to get an effective and efficient communication.

Great leaders don’t just communicate with their team but they also know how to communicate their goals and vision to make the team mates interested in it.

We must not underestimate the power of words and the effectiveness of communication. The great leaders know that words transform our emotions into actions and lead us towards our future endeavours.

“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.”

Another good practice is you can listen more and say less. Deep listening and answering thoughtful questions shows that you care about your employees’ contributions.

Steve job was a great communicator. He always told stories and lots of examples to communicate with his team members. He understood human mind can’t comprehend everything at a time. He was very selective in choosing his message.

So no man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it. One of the secrets to wild success is verbalizing your leadership vision and communicating it to others.

Empathy

‘Empathy not only allows great leaders to understand their employees and their customers better, but it also is known to enhance prosocial (aka helping) behaviours’.

-Jeff Kear, Founder of Planning Pod

Cultivating empathy is the precursor to almost every other “soft skill” required for leadership, from self-awareness to critical thinking.

A leader needs to have the ability to relate to the employees and be able to put themselves in the shoe of your people.

Without the empathetic trait, it’s very hard to rally your intentions around your vision.

Empathy allows us to feel other’s situation and feel their pain.

Let’s imagine a person in your team is in a terrible condition. One of his family members is sick and he needs to take that member to the hospital and take care of that family member. Despite knowing this if you don’t allow your employee to take leave, he might not be interested to help you further.

This is the characteristic of a great leader that they understand the limitations and situations of their team members and adjust with the unavoidable situation.

Problem-solving

“Leaders instil in their people a hope for success and a belief in themselves. Positive leaders empower people to accomplish their goals.”

-Unknown

The quality of a great leader is the ability to solve problems. Leaders face challenges all the time so they must be able to identify the challenge, find the best possible solutions and alternatives and select the best possible solution.

The main point is that if anyone becomes master at handling problems and overcoming problems, nothing can stop them from becoming successful.

Being an online business owner or a skilled professional, you would face plenty of problems every day. After solving those one by one will make you more experienced.

If you fear the problem or become frustrated, then your problems will haunt you more.

But if you become an expert in problem solving then no matter what happens you would solve it and move forward to complete the tasks and accordingly achieve the goal.

This will make you more diligent and prepared for any unfavourable situation.

So problem solving is the most basic thing that anyone should adapt in order to become a situation master and a good leader.

Decisiveness

“The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.”

-Napolian Hill, Author of Think and grow rich.

Every single person in a leadership role of any kind sometimes must make difficult decisions. How you handle these decisions is one of the most important leadership qualities. The ability to be decisive can mean the difference between getting through a tough time or crisis and folding under pressure.

A good leader doesn’t only take decisions as they are bound to take because of their role. They are also courageous enough to take on the decision that includes risks.

They make these decisions and take the risk. Even they do know that if things go wrong and isn’t working according to the plan, they will themselves be responsible for it.

An effective leader is one who makes the decision that is right, not the decision that is easy.

During this COVID 19, many leaders had to adopt many strategies before they knew if it would work or not. They had to act fast.

Emotional intelligence

“There’s two parts of leadership. You’ve got to be a good leader – you’ve got to be somebody that people want to emulate and care about the other people. But the other guys that you must accept their leadership. They must respond to it. That’s the chemistry that you never know how that is going to happen.”

-Football-Trainer at the University of Alabama

Emotional intelligence presents a wise person, and a tricky manageable leader. Good leaders use and imply their emotional intelligence to think about the conditions of the subordinates and to understand the reasons behind their behaviour. It can be trusting issues and any bad experiences or fear of any person.

Emotional intelligence is all about hearing the words that isn’t said but indicated. And a good leader will always understand his/ her subordinates’ situations and dig it deeper to solve it. And this quality can be taught and learnt.

Take an example of Elon Mask. He visits his factory just to find out how his factory workers are doing. Despite his 80-90 works a week, he thinks how he can improve his factory condition even better. He meets every injured worker and asks for their wellbeing. Due to his this characteristic, every one is happy to get him as a boss.

Empowerment

“A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.”

-Jim Rohn

A leader empowers their other subordinates by dividing the tasks accordingly, providing proper guidance and letting them know the limitations and hearing and giving value to the decisions of the subordinates.

When the leaders are empowered and support the subordinates to express their ideas, their intelligence and talents can be unleashed to help the organization expand and develop.

One of my uncles was a chef at a five-star hotel. I asked him once how he manages such a busy role. His responded in one word ‘delegation’. In other words, it means empowerment.

Every morning he allocates tasks to his teammates with enough authority. After some time, he checks about the progress. If needed, he provides feedback. Ultimately everything gets done without much hassle.

So empowerment is an important quality to adapt as a leader otherwise the subordinates will become clueless and end up doing nothing.

Managerial competence

“Believe in yourself and relief yourself of the undue anxiety of feelings of incompetency. Leave worry aside and live with the hope that your dominion is not determined by people’s negative opinions!”

Israelmore Ayivor, Dream big! see your Bigger picture

Many companies want to appoint the person, a leader, who is good at work. Because even the people who are good at their work need to possess the characteristics of a good leader. They have vision, integrity, acceptance, accountability.

So sometimes a good employee or manager can become a good leader, but not always. If they possess the other qualities of a leader then obviously managerial competence can be a good quality.

Like if we articulate our words with an example Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi are one of the best players of the century, but this doesn’t mean they are going to be a great leader and coach as well.

They can be, if they possess the other qualities of a leader except for the excellence in the field.

This means we need to even know about the goals, procedures and processes of the job and have the skills and knowledge to execute it properly.

Gratitude

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough.” – Anonymous.

Thanking someone who did a work will make you a better leader. Giving gratitude to someone can lead us to higher self-esteem, reduce our depression and anxiety. Only a few people say “thank you” at work.

Most people said that they’d be willing to work harder for an appreciative boss.

It is always better practice to appreciate others. You can simply send them a thank you letter. It can make their day.

So, we must show gratitude to others and say thank you to everyone and possess the quality of a great leader.

Conclusion:

To become a leader is a great thing. Not everyone is born as a leader. People learn to become a leader gradually.

Leadership traits can be learnt. Within your awareness and little effort, you can apply these leadership qualities in your daily life.

You can become a leader too.

Just believe, you can become a great leader.