Leadership Traits: Level 1 Business Hierarchy of Needs

Leadership Traits

You will find many books on leadership through a simple Google search. Few of us, myself included will be heralded as great leaders, but many of us are effective leaders. So, the real question is, what type of Leadership Traits are you looking for in your company? Remember that the Business Hierarchy of Needs? is a building block approach to creating strategy and realizing results, so the type of leaders you have in your organization is important to achieving results.

I often hear that employees tend to leave their boss rather than their company, which is why it is so important to have leaders who understand how to utilize the company’s Business Hierarchy of Needs? to engage their teams and their direct reports. Of course, a poor leader is going to be a poor leader and other remedies may be necessary to address that. I will talk more about leadership in the section of this book that outlines Level 2 of the Business Hierarchy of Needs?, but for now, suffice to say that to hire the right leaders and optimize teams we need to provide better, more complete guidance to leaders in the company.

We can use the previous discussion on core values to help guide us in developing leadership traits. I am following the same principles here in that it is important not to use single words to describe the desired leadership traits. If you have not already figured it out, leaders need to be willing to be accountable to the company’s strategies and to the objectives assigned to them. Leadership traits are seldom used to evaluate performance, but they can be if they are measurable. The company’s strategies provide insight into required leadership traits. A growth mindset is useless in a company that is in its Harvest life cycle, whereas a cost-takeout mindset might not well serve a company that is a start-up.

The important note here is that leadership traits need to be defined by values and the requirements of the company’s business strategies. There are, of course, some leadership traits that all companies need, irrespective of their life cycle and business strategies. Some examples of that include, but are not limited to:

1. A willingness to be accountable to measurable objectives.

2. A passion for achieving the company’s strategic objectives.

3. The ability to be a catalyst for teams of people to exceed expectations.

4. The courage to challenge the status quo and be a change agent.

5. Demonstration of and dedication to the company’s core values.

6. Proficiency in the application of technology to business processes.

7. Skill at managing up, down, sideways, horizontally, and diagonally.

8. Ability to use metric-based performance reviews to engage and accelerate stakeholder performance.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but it sums up the primary capabilities that each leader must exhibit. Once again, I can identify numerous examples of quantitative measures that can be applied to each of these. I should also note that these core skills are required of all leaders from the board room to the stockroom. The difference between middle-level and C-suite leaders lies in the sophistication of the leadership tools and capabilities required to exhibit the traits outlined.

Additional required leadership traits include the ability to lead cross-functional teams, and knowledge of the application of technology to business processes. Everything we do is driven by technology, so a leader who is not savvy about the use of technology and how to lead across functions is going to fail.

Trait seven in the above-mentioned list might be a bit puzzling for some readers. If you think about it, though, leaders must manage up, down, horizontally, and diagonally. As stated, business is a horizontal process, not a vertical one, which is why we often hear complaints about vertical silos being an impediment to progress. But what is managing diagonally? In my view, leaders need to be adept at working with their peers’ bosses as well. Each of us as a leader needs to get things done and rely on others. We are all remarkably busy and have many more priorities than we can accomplish. The effective leader can create the case for influencing the priorities of our peers and that is where managing diagonally comes into play. If, as a leader, we can make a case for why “so and so” needs to change their priorities, then that leader will be more effective.

After reading this section, you should be asking yourself the following questions:

1. Have we established Leadership Traits for our people who manage/lead people?

2. Do they reflect the type of behaviors we want our leadership to exhibit via demonstrable phrases?

3. Do they reflect what we want our leadership to do in our future state?

Don't want to wait for the next newsletter? Get it all from the book "Strategy Realized - The Business Hierarchy of Needs" here.

Learn more about Jim Gitney, the author here.

Call me to discuss getting started on developing your company's unique Business Hierarchy of Needs: (909) 949-9083, or drop me a line at [email protected]