A sociology professor from one of the country's major universities spent his life studying leadership by tracing the careers of 5,000 former students. Asked how you spot a leader, he said, "I have come to the conclusion that the only way one can determine a leader is to look at the person and see if anybody is following."
Leadership is a difficult skill to measure, but it is certainly easy to determine when leadership is not present in an organization. Click here to find out more!
In four years of executive seminars conducted by Santa Clara University and the Tom Peters Group/Learning Systems, more than 5,200 senior managers were asked to describe the characteristics they most admire in a leader. Here are the top 10 characteristics, as reported in Management Review magazine: honest, competent, forward-looking, inspiring, intelligent, fair-minded, broad-minded, courageous, straightforward and imaginative.
Three of these characteristics are particularly significant in my opinion: forward-looking, inspiring and courageous. The others are also necessary ingredients for an effective leader and for every employee.
Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, "Fail to honor people, they fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will all say, 'We did this ourselves.' " He made that observation more than 2,000 years ago. Some things never change.
Good leaders listen to the people who work for them. They pay attention to what people are telling them and take it very seriously.
Good leaders use their power to implement ideas that workers bring forth; they are quick to give credit to the person who had the idea. Then comes the action that really sets good leaders apart: They are willing to accept the blame and criticism when mistakes are made. They don't abandon their employees.
Warren Bennis spent much of his life researching leadership and has written several books on the subject of what makes leaders.
Bennis is a distinguished professor of business administration and the founding chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California. In 2007, Businessweek called him one of the 10 business-school professors who have had the greatest influence on business thinking.
Bennis traveled around the country spending time with 90 of the most effective and successful leaders in the nation -- 60 from corporations and 30 from the public sector. His goal was to find these leaders' common traits. At first, he had trouble pinpointing any common traits, as the leaders were more diverse than he had expected.
But he later wrote: "I was finally able to come to conclusions, of which perhaps the most important is the distinction between leaders and managers. Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right.
"Both roles are crucial, but they differ profoundly. I often observe people in top positions doing the wrong thing well," he wrote in his book "Why Leaders Can't Lead."
I tend to think of the difference between leaders and managers as the difference between those who master the context within which they operate and those who surrender to it.
There are other differences, as well, and they are enormous and crucial. Bennis details them in his book "On Becoming A Leader," and they include:
The manager administers; the leader innovates.
The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.
The manager maintains; the leader develops.
The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.
Mackay's Moral: Good leaders develop more than good employees; they develop more good leaders.
Read more: Leaders different from managers
