In recent weeks, I’ve had the privilege of attending meetings and gatherings with leaders of two sorts:
1) Effective Leaders and 2) Ineffective Leaders.
Here are a few qualities and characteristics I ‘ve observed of both classes of leaders…
- Effective leaders listen and speak when necessary – Ineffective leaders talk non stop
- Effective leaders are specific about their objectives – Ineffective leaders speak in circles and often tangent into side bars which spiral out of context
- Effective leaders delegate while still maintaining authority/control of the overall end product – Ineffective leaders give away authority arbitrarily
- Effective leaders respect the expertise and experience of those around them – Ineffective leaders think they know it all and micro-manage
- Effective leaders energize their team to become excited about the work ahead – Ineffective leaders kill the energy by exhausting and overwhelming the team with superfluous information/duties/tasks.
- Effective leaders maximize time – Ineffective leaders waste time
Certainly, it is much more difficult to put the time and the energy into being an effective leader.
All of us need to be leaders in different aspects of our lives. Choosing best practices are critical to the productivity of your team and the sanity of your fellow team mates!
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