Qualities of a Good Leader

Prive, T. (2013). Top 10 Qualities That Make a Great Leader. Forbes Magazine 

The article’s intended audience is young entrepreneurs who may likely be facing leadership challenges in growing businesses to achieve high levels of productivity or financial success. This article cannot come at a better time than now with so many failing businesses due to poor leadership.

The aim of the writer is to highlight the ten most important attributes any upcoming leader of a business organization needs to succeed or become great. Drawing from her experience in helping people to build early-stage businesses and entrepreneur communities at OneVest; she starts by noting that every leader needs to maintain calmness, manage emotions and believe in his/her superior organizational, communication and managerial skills to pull through challenges in leading an organization.

As rare as it is to find a new and unique idea, it is even more difficult to successfully execute this idea into reality which is what separates the dreamers from the entrepreneurs. The right leadership plays a key role in building any successful enterprise. In summary, a leader must assume great responsibility and provide consistent and inspired leadership for other members of the organization. To become a great or successful entrepreneur, an organizational leader, in this context, or anyone who is leading a group of people, should possess and emphasize most of these qualities:

• Be Honest – Enables the leader to hold others accountable.
• Delegates – proves to the team that the leader trusts and believes in the team members and also frees up the leader to focus on higher lever tasks.
• Communicates – Clear communication aligns all team members to same goal.
• Creative – Ability to think out of the box is one great trait that a leader needs especially during crises.
• Confident – Maintaining high level of calmness and confidence even in crises, builds team confidence as others look up to the leader.
• Be Committed – To increase team commitment, a leader must lead by example.  No better way to motivate a team than working down in the trenches with other team members.
• Display Positive Attitude – Maintaining a positive attitude all the time, especially in the work environment increases team energy, spirit and commitment.
• Others include; intuition, inspiration and approach.

A critical look at the article reveals that it is narrowed towards entrepreneurship. Though leadership is quite broader than just leading a business outfit or enterprise as it starts from the home, to school, church, business, club, and interest groups, almost everywhere; the writer was only listing the top ten qualities, and I totally agree with these qualities. However, my top ten list for broader definition of leadership would definitely include, leading by example, fairness, being proactive, courage, flexibility, adaptable to change, respect, enthusiasm, rewarding and resourceful; but in the context of entrepreneurship, I quite agree with the writer.