Two Essential Leader Qualities

Self-awareness and Openness to Change, are leader qualities that are essentially what makes a "good" leader. Your leadership ability depends on how well you develop them.

Everyone is a leader, by choice or by default. You have leader qualities at your core ~ because leading is the way you move yourself and others into action. How well will you lead? You get to choose!

Self-awareness

Self-awareness is the quality of a leader that is the essential first step toward becoming the best leader you can be. You must have self-awareness, a sense of who you are at your core, in order to have that second quality of being open to change. When you have a strong sense of who you are and a vision of the person you want to become, you can create a plan for a plan for professional or personal development.

Self-awareness means knowing your values, emotions, energy levels, personality qualities, needs, habits, strengths, weaknesses. It means being aware of and making conscious choices about what you are thinking and feeling, and how you behave moment to moment. When you are self-aware, you can choose your leadership levels in your personal and professional life.

Being self-aware allows you to ...

• Clarify your  leadership and life priorities
• Discover your leadership strengths and identify gaps to work toward growth
• Hone your leadership skills ~ not the same as "strengths!"
• Understand the key stressors in your life
• Figure out what really motivates and inspires you
• Set goals that are motivating, challenging and measurable and attainable
• Discover actionable steps to move yourself and others forward
• Identify your energy leadership levels

Openness to Change

Openness to Change is the 2nd essential leader quality. Change is an undeniable part of life. The reality is that ife stops when change stops. A key part of leadership is recognizing and adapting to change, and making choices about how change happens when you need to.

Change is feared by most people, so it is understandable that they resist it. Too often, it's just more comfortable to ignore the inevitability of change and to try to keep things the way they've always been.

Your ability to choose the direction of change, and to recognize the opportunities that present them selves when uninvited change occurs is enhanced by your self-awareness. It results in an openness to change that is the second key to what makes a good leader.

Unless a your goal as a leader in your life or your organization is to stagnate, go bankrupt, and become really depressed, that approach cannot work. If you want to grow and develop your leader qualities, you need to anticipate, even relish change. You need to look for the opportunity that presents itself with every change that comes your way.

When you become open to change you get to choose the kind of change that happens and how it will work for you and your organization.

You can grow and develop these two essential leader qualities. Doing so will help you make concious choices about change and influence how you and others respond to and act on change and that will go a long way to making you a "good leader."
 
Move from Leader Qualities to Home
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