A leader can not be a jerk or what habits build a leader.

There are a lot of conversations around differences between leader vs manager or leader vs boss, sometimes visualized as useless motivational posters. Why useless?

I came out with one simple rule - a real leader will always be a very good person. From another hand, a very high-performing manager can be a jerk. You probably saw this super popular video, but just in case, I will share it here too, because this is the best explanation of the nature of leadership from Simon Sinek.

No way a great leader will be a bad person. At the same time, history knows a lot of top-managers, founders or CEOs who actually are toxic persons, misogynists, sexists, racists, sycophants or even corporate psychopaths. The good news is, that even the worst companies will almost always have an informal leader (influencer without authority), who will build an island of trust and integrity even in the middle of total chaos. I mentioned integrity because believe this is a key ingredient in the formation of trust, trust in someone as a leader and trust in someone as a person. When employees trust their leaders, they are much more likely to put more effort into their work.

Paul Hollands said “You know, strategy, and decision making, and problem-solving, and all that stuff. But quite frankly, you know, if you don't get the people part right, if you don't have followers who are prepared to step off and follow you into an uncertain future, all the planning skills in the world and all the money and technology is going to come to nothing.”?

Do YOU know what motivates people to follow you? (FYI ‘Because I’m cool’ is not the right answer here). I really like how 5P leadership model describes who a leader should be for their followers:

1. Psychotherapist (cares about mental health)
2. Prophet (give security into the future, inspire, create wow-effect)
3. Party-host (means people should not feel outside)
4. Pedagogue (mentor)
5. Pastor (set the right values, morality, or ethics)

The irony is that the same 5Ps are needed if you grow a baby =) Anyway, I made many notes during the investigation of habits that great leaders have and I want to share this "list of recommendations" with you. The critical factor in this list is if you want to change others' behaviour, first of all, learn how to change your personal behaviour.

• Credibility is one of the most important factors in being an effective leader. You must always do what you say you will do.
• It is crucial for a leader to recognize and understand their values, what they stand for, and what they believe is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Please, don't expect employees to embrace the list of phrases you wrote on the wall as their personal values.
• Effective leaders must ensure consistency between their values, words and actions.? They not only understand what they believe in and can clearly articulate this, but perhaps more importantly they can inspire others with values related to reaching for something better, and having a vision of the future that builds on the past and the present.?
• Act as change agents, formulate a strategy and be ready to navigate the many obstacles that change can place in the way.
• Try to consider adversity overcoming like being immunized against the disease.??
• The black swan theory is real. That is why hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Always, literally always. At the end of the article you will understand why.?
• Mastering your skills of setting the right goals. Compare 'Loss 10kg in 6 months' and 'To be healthy and in a better shape'. In the first case you can ignore your goal for 5 months and in 1 month of a strict diet lose 10 kg and ruin your health. Or spend too much time in a gym, and vice versa have more kilograms as musculus.
• Know the difference between a technical problem and an adaptive challenge because the work that must be done to meet an adaptive challenge might include the difficult work of deciding how to interpret and balance overlapping values, which losses to accept, which ways of doing things to change, which new capacities to build, and how to do so.?
• If others do something, it doesn’t mean that this is the right thing to do for you. For example, stop looking for A-players. The book “I'm Sorry I Broke Your Company…” is highly recommended to understand why usual management tools mostly work only on paper.
• Constantly train self-confidence. Confidence is related to the awareness that you’re competent and this can only be affirmed by others.?
• The relationships with your followers are rather a partnership than a solo activity, this is a two-way support. Educate them on how to provide constructive feedback and clearly communicate expectations. You will be effectively blind without active engagement and feedback from followers about your progress towards the goals.
• Practice A&A. Appreciation and Affirmation. People deserve respect and acceptance of their views, values and experiences, especially when they differ from your own. Even with people who we don't like it is still possible to affirm that people are competent, capable, worthy and recognized as an integral part of the team or group.
• Train your social intelligence to truly get to know and understand your followers and what they are feeling, experiencing and what drives them. This knowledge enables the leader to navigate individual as well as group interactions more successfully.
• Work hard on emotional intelligence, so then you will be able to motivate people and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one’s moods and keep distressed from wamping the ability to think; to empathise and to hope. Emotional intelligence is the main ingredient to balance between the 'control_VS_alignment' and the 'inspiration_VS_direction'. Daniel Goleman’s books are a great start in this direction.
• Mentoring and being mentored are key elements of effective leadership. This also includes knowledge about how to show others what is required, rather than simply telling them, EG orginize workshop during which you will slightly push a team to the right answer.
• Figure out what motivates people around you to do their best work. Mostly salary is not the biggest motivator. Use that individualized information to motivate and encourage each person on your team.
• Be committed to addressing the five dysfunctions of the teams. For example, for me that was a big surprise that too big cohesion in a team is also bad.
• Cultivate new leaders. As a leader, help to grow the next generation of emerging talent. This also makes your job more meaningful. Do not be afraid of competition.
• Focus on creating a cultural climate that allows followers to lead themselves, as self-managing work teams, based upon already established cultural principles. They should feel safe to share different points of view or offer competing perspective. The key role of the leader then becomes the recognition of the need for change and to act.? Tools like Culture Map can help.
• Care about your team members as people, not just as employees (Note! Сaring, doesn't mean babysitting). Knowledge about what is happening in employees' personal life can help you a lot during resource allocation for example. It is equally important to take the time to build relationships with other stakeholders and anyone who can make a direct impact on your personal or your team's ongoing tasks. Just dedicate time to check in with people.
• Be honest. However,? "I'm just being honest" is a poor excuse for being rude. Candor is being forthcoming in what you say. Respect is being considerate in how you say it.? Being direct with the content of your feedback doesn't prevent you from being thoughtful about the best way to deliver it. [Adam Grant]

• The way you handle difficult conversations and mediate conflicts shows your maturity as a leader, books like Talking to Crazy.., Ask Manager or The Language of Leadership might be a good starting point.
• Be a low-context communicator and limit the usage of corporate jargon.
• Measure the level of happiness. EG ask people in every one-on-one meeting to assess their level of happiness from 1 to 10. In a such way, you also can monitor team dynamics. In this context, I recommend looking at FSNP phases.
• It is essential to polish your decision-making skills. This is a very broad topic, but keep in mind that except dozens of usual techniques, this encompasses a skill to eliminate cognitive biases and knowledge about when you can trust your gut feeling.
• Do shift from time management to energy management. As an example of such, let’s imagine you have a scheduled 1:1 meeting, but you already feel exhausted. You will not be able to be emotionally engaged in conversation and listen carefully. What will you select: strict to plan or to be adaptive to change and suggest rescheduling a meeting?
• One another thing that can help you to manage your energy is practising atomic habits.?
• The golden rule is good, but the silver rule is better. Treat others the way that they would want to be treated.?
• Use cognitive psychology to work on? automatic negative thoughts. This will help you a lot to handle difficult situations and have a more positive attitude.
• Take care of yourself. On an aeroplane, the flight attendant instructs you to “put your oxygen mask on first,” before helping others. In leadership, the principle is absolutely the same. You will not be able to be a good leader if you are sick and exhausted.
• Don't be afraid to ask for help or advice! You are not a ChatGPT to know all answers.

Practising what is listed above is very energy-consuming and you might have days where you feel like all your effort is for nothing and you start to question if it's worth it to put so much into trying to provide a safe place for people. And here is an answer for you:

Leadership itself is a practice. You can't learn to drive a car by reading about it. Some things, like how to maintain optimism in the face of adversity, can only be learned through personal experience. With experience, you also will have personal strategies for surviving and thriving in a world of change. Otherwise, if you know the book where were described the best practices of leading, inspiring and motivating the team that works during epidemy, war, full blackout and in fear of a nuclear attack, please let me know… and Glory to Ukraine!