The Key Ingredients to a Leader's Success

If you aren't focused here as a leader, you're focused on the wrong things

There are three key ingredients to the long-term success of any leader. They are simple concepts to grasp, but not always easy to live out.

Here they are for you, in what I believe to be their order of relative importance for every leader:

Character

What does good character look like? And why do you as a leader need to focus on the quality of your character more than anything else?

Character matters most in leadership, because without it you can’t be trusted. And trust is the currency that fuels relationships. At the end of the day, a leader who isn’t trusted by their team members will never build the kinds of relationships that allow them to help the people and the organization thrive.

Here are some of the key character traits of great leaders:

• Integrity - The best leaders are those with high integrity, meaning that their words and their actions are always aligned. There are no gaps between what they say and what they do.

• Humility - Humble leaders are driven to give away credit. To shine the light of success on their people and their team instead of back on themselves.

• Authenticity - Authentic leaders are comfortable in their own skin. They have confidence in who they are, and don’t attempt to portray themselves as something other than that.

• Empathy - The most effective leaders can see and feel things from the perspective of those around them instead of making every situation about them and their own feelings.

• Adaptability - Great leaders are highly flexible and attuned to the need to navigate complex situations with finesse and grace.

Culture

What does a healthy culture look like? Why is it important? And what’s the leader’s role in cultivating it?

Those three questions are essential in understanding culture.

Here’s what culture is NOT. It’s not…

• Pizza parties

• Friday morning donuts and coffee

• Shutting the office down an hour early on the day before a 3-day weekend

All of those things are great. Who doesn’t like pizza or donuts (except maybe some of our gluten-free friends out there)? And who doesn’t like getting out of work an hour early every now and then, right?

But these kinds of occasional perks and niceties can’t replace true culture. If these are the hallmarks of your corporate culture, you are operating in a sad caricature of what culture really is.

Here’s what a real healthy culture looks like in an organization:

• Trusting your people to do their work to the best of their abilities, even when they do it differently than you’d do it

• An environment free from toxic behaviors, harassment, gossip, retribution for speaking out, etc.

• Employees have high levels of autonomy and freedom to make the best decisions they can — and where they are coached and guided when mistakes happen, not punished and demeaned

• The entire team is rallied around a shared vision and purpose to accomplish something greater than simply “making money”, and where everyone can do the best work of their career

• Employees are free to be curious, to ask questions, to wonder “why do we do things this way” without being stifled for “bucking the system”

• Where leaders put the wellbeing and success of their team members before their own success, and where “people over profit” actually means something

• A community where everyone on the team has clarity of purpose, role, and impact

Competence

What does a competent leader look like? How does competence impact a leader’s ability to lead and grow a team or organization?

Here are some of the key traits of a highly competent leader:

• The best leaders are adept at casting vision and inspiring action around that vision.

• The most effective leaders are phenomenal communicators. They can deliver strategic, empathetic, insightful information in 1-on-1 meetings, small groups, and even in a broader setting or context. They use story and emotion to convey the most important information that people need to align and activate around an objective.

• Great leaders are competent executors. They are strategic in their thinking but have a bias towards getting things done and helping their teams get things done as well.

• They are great coaches, not dictators. Rather than telling people exactly what, when, how, and where to do something, they know just the right questions to ask so that the team can learn, grow, and discover how to be successful on their own.

• Great leaders are focused on developing talent and building other leaders.