A Good Leader

As an organization grows, there is clearly a need to hire and develop leaders. Many organizations don’t do a good job at either hiring good leaders or identifying the people who will make good leaders. Part of the reason is that they have not stopped to think what makes a good leader. Often they will take their best individual contributor and put them in a leadership position. This can lead to a double whammy of losing a great individual contributor and losing the opportunity to hire or develop a great leader. While functional competence is very important, it is not nearly sufficient to guarantee success as a leader. I have been lucky to work with some excellent leaders during my career and following are some of the key characteristics that I observed in them.

1. Integrity and authenticity: Integrity is a table stake quality in a leader. What often gets ignored is authenticity. Authentic leaders create honest relationships with their followers and value their inputs. Because of these qualities, they are able to create diverse teams and inclusive culture.
2. Self-awareness and self regulation: Self aware leaders are introspective. They are aware of their strengths, weaknesses, their behavior and response under various conditions. However, being self aware is not sufficient if it does not translate into change. Self regulating leaders are able to change their behavior based on introspection and feedback from others. Self-regulation is a meta skill that empowers all other superpowers.
3. Outcome over ego: Great leaders make great decisions. They are able to do it because for them getting the right outcome is more important than being right. They are constantly looking for contradictory evidence to their assumptions and deeply held beliefs. They seek diverse perspectives and build psychological safety.
4. Organization > team > Self: Great leaders know that the only way to capture value from the universe is to first create value for others. When making decisions, they evaluate them in the broader context. Each decision has to be good for the organization first and the team second. This rule should not be violated even once because then you are going on a very slippery slope. It’s easier to do some thing 100% of the times than 99%.
5. Higher order problem-solving skills: Great leaders build mental models to apply them in different domains. They can break complex issues down to reduce overall system complexity. They are able to solve problems from the first principle. Great leaders also play positive sum game. They are able to resolve conflicts at higher order in a win-win situation.