7 Traits of Highly Effective Leaders

Leadership isn't just about charisma or giving bossy orders to your team. It's about a set of skills that anyone can learn.

Today in this episode, we're going to dive into the seven habits that are going to unleash your inner leader, no matter what type of personality you have.

But before we get too far, I just want to quickly introduce myself for those of you who aren't familiar with me. My name is Doug Howard, and I'm a leadership coach and consultant for engineering companies. I use this YouTube channel to provide the best tips, tools, and strategies on how you can level up your leadership skills.

A lot of the episodes, I don't focus specifically on engineering either. So no matter what industry you're in, if you're a manager or a leader who wants to level up your leadership skills, make sure you hit that subscribe button.

“What is a Leader” Exercise

Now, let's start by just having a little quick brain exercise here. When I say the word leader, what image do you picture in your mind?

There's a good chance you're probably picturing someone who's very vocal. Someone who's very outgoing, perhaps extroverted. They're probably a smooth presenter who's great at giving those speeches that rally the team and motivate people to take action right there in that moment, right? You're probably picturing, some movie characters or maybe a coach who is giving that rallying speech to the team that motivates them to go out there and win the championship, right?

That's what a lot of us envision when we think of leaders. And yes, those are a few examples of what a leader could be but the truth is leaders come in all shapes and sizes.

Some leaders are extroverted while other leaders are introverted. Some leaders motivate their people through their words, while other leaders inspire people through their actions. Some leaders lead from positions of authority, while other leaders influence people from the ground level without having any authority at all.

Now, the point I'm making here is there's no single way to be a great leader. You could be a great leader no matter what your experience level is, or what your tenure is with the company, or what role or position you're in with the company as well. The main thing I want to point out here is that all leaders have seven key traits in common and I'm going to walk through what each of those traits are in this episode But as I do it, I want you to consider how would you rate yourself in each of these areas?

Trait 1 - Proactive Problem Solvers

Trait number one is proactive problem solving.

This one is super important. Effective leaders don't wait for problems to happen. They're proactive. They're anticipating challenges. They're anticipating what could come on the horizon and how could that impact their team and what implications could that have.

So instead of waiting and standing by, they take initiative and they focus on the things that they can control. This is really important too. A lot of us waste time thinking about all these things that we can't really control and we worry about all these what ifs and there's a key distinguisher between the two. Great leaders are anticipating future challenges, but they're only focusing on what they can control or they're focusing on the things that they can have an influence over. Now as a leader this means setting clear goals planning ahead, future forecasting, making well informed decisions.

A tip that I want to give you on this is something that a lot of leaders don't do right. We have this tendency to think that's not my responsibility. I can't do that. That's not my job. That's that team's job. That's their responsibility. We have a kind of a hands off mentality, and this is just how we are, right? But I want to challenge you to reframe that because you want to have a problem solving mindset.

So instead of looking at it as black and white, as that's not my job or that's not my jurisdiction, you should ask yourself, what can I do about this situation? How can I influence this situation? How could I get ahead of this problem?

Just by asking yourself these questions, it makes all the difference because your brain is a natural problem solving machine, right? It's a high powered computer. So by asking yourself that question, you're going to start thinking about it. Even if it's not conscious, you're going to start thinking about it subconsciously. This is where you get those aha moments where you start thinking of the solution to a problem you thought about two days ago.

Instead of having this, case closed, I can't do that. That's not my job. I want you to challenge yourself to think, what can I do about this situation? How can I impact it? How can I help? What can I control?

Trait 2 - Visionary Mindset

Trait number two is visionary mindset.

Great leaders have a clear vision for the future. This is what separates them from managers. I actually talk about this in my episode called What Separates a Manager Versus a Leader. If you're curious and checking that episode out, I'll include a link to that episode in the description here.

What I mean by this, leaders can paint a clear vision of what success looks like for the future, and they inspire others to work towards it.

When I was a manager, I would look at it this way. I would show my team what they couldn't see for themselves. I was able to connect the top level vision or mission from the company, and explain that in a way that made sense for my team. Now, I didn't want to overwhelm them with, all the things that didn't matter to them, but I showed them how their role on the project impacted the bigger picture.

That's what separates a great leader from a manager is really thinking with that forward focus. What does this look like? What is the big goal here? How does this impact other things?

Again, tying into that first thing too, with that problem solving mindset, you're also anticipating with that future vision. How can I get ahead of problems that I'm anticipating or how are other people going to be impacted by this?

When you're having that visionary mindset, your vision should be ambitious, but they should also be achievable. The vision should be a guide for decision making that motivates you and your team to continue moving forward, especially when things get stuck and things things are moving slower than molasses.

A tip for you in this area is if you're struggling with that future casting, if you're struggling with the visionary part of being a leader, I want you to imagine your ideal future. Take a specific problem you're facing or a specific project you're working on at the beginning stages of it and I want you to think about what does success look like for you and your team? What's the ideal scenario?

I would do this all the time. Back when I was a director of engineering, I was working on multi year projects that, had a long far out span where it was really hard for us to see the light at the end of the tunnel and it was hard to keep the team motivated on the day to day. So what I would always do at first is I would just by myself, brainstorm, what does success look like on this project? What does it look like when we've implemented this new software change? Or what does it look like when we've developed that new product and incorporated it into our design tools? I would really make sure I had a clear understanding of what that looked like and what it meant. Were things moving faster? What did that empower my team to do? What did that empower me to do? What did that empower the company to do? I would think about what did life look like in the future and I would make sure to show that to my team so that they would stay motivated to work towards that end goal versus them just being, CAD monkeys where they're not really understanding how they're contributing to the bigger picture.

Going back to this exercise here, this tip for you. You want to imagine that ideal future and you want to think really clearly think about what does success look like for you and your team. Then what you want to do is you want to write down your goals based on that vision. So what does success look like? You itemize what these things are, then you figure out what are the goals you need to meet to get to that point and break those into actionable steps so that you make sure your plan is getting you towards accomplishing that vision and reaching it.

Now, before I continue on to the next trait, I want to know what you think about all this. What leadership qualities do you admire the most? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Trait 3 - Prioritization

Trait number three is prioritization.

As leaders, no matter what industry you're in, your day is going to be filled with a million tasks, right? You're going to be stretched a million ways. You're going to be pulled in a million different directions. You're going to be in countless meetings, a lot of them, which you don't need to be at, but at the same time, you're going to be distracted. There's going to be constant things competing for your attention. That's just related to work. It doesn't even include your personal life and personal distractives.

Effective leaders, they know how to prioritize. They can differentiate between what's urgent and what's important and those are two completely different things. Understanding the relationship between urgency and importance is what helps leaders focus on high impact activities that actually move the needle towards achieving their goals, the goals of the team, the goals of the organization.

Now, remember, it's not about doing everything. It's not about being in a million places at once. That's not what leadership is. Leadership is about prioritizing what matters the most and understanding what the right things are that you should be working on. Sometimes emotions get in the way of that. Sometimes emotions will impair our judgment. And sometimes, our surroundings will impair our judgment.

You have that customer that's screaming louder than the other customers. That'll pull your attention away from the thing that you need to be focusing on.

A tip for this, if you struggle with prioritization, is using the Eisenhower time matrix. What that is, is you categorize all your tasks or all the things that are competing for your attention or all the things that need to get done, you categorize them into one of four quadrants. The first one is urgent and important. The next one is not urgent and important. Then the next one is urgent, not important. Then the fourth one is not urgent, not important.

As a leader, you want to focus the majority of your time in that quadrant where the tasks are important, but not urgent. That's the highest ROI where you're spending your time. It doesn't mean you ignore all the other things. It just means that's where you should be focusing the most of your time because that's what's going to have the most impact, right? You should always be working on the things that are important, and as a manager, your goal should be to delegate the things that are not important.

I explain this decision tree matrix in more detail in my episode on time management.

Trait 4 - Collaboration

Trait number four is being a champion of collaboration.

As leaders, it's easy for us to feel like we're on an island. They say heavy lies of the crown, right? When you're at the top, you have no one to ask for help. It feels lonely, but true leaders understand that they are not on an island, right? They're not on an island. Effective leaders understand the power of collaboration. So instead of feeling like they have to solve every problem on their own, or they have to have all the answers to everything and that they can't be vulnerable. Instead, strong leaders know how to build strong teams and they know how to delegate tasks effectively. They know how to ask for help. They know how to be vulnerable with their team and show their weaknesses and explain when they don't know something to someone on their team.

More importantly, what they know how to do is they know how to use collaboration to leverage the strengths of each individual on their team. When they do this, they foster a win mentality on their team where everyone feels valued. Everyone feels like they're working to their strengths and everyone feels like they're contributing to shared successes, not only for the team, for the organization.

This is a big disconnect because then a lot of times when we work in bigger companies or bigger teams, we feel like a number, especially in today's hybrid remote environment where people aren't actually in the office all the time, like we used to be. It really exacerbates that and amplifies that effect of feeling isolated from the team and feeling like you're working in a silo. When that happens, you don't really feel what your purpose is. You feel like you're just punching numbers. You're just, moving widgets, in an assembly line. You don't really see what your contribution is to the bigger impact of your team and the company. This is where most leaders fail is they don't pull their team into feel that.

A lot of leaders, what they do incorrectly is they just do top down leadership. So they'll just say, do it because I said so. Get it done because I told you to. This is the don't ask questions, just do it.

Here's a quick tip on this. During negotiations or during situations where you need to influence someone on your team or motivate them. Before you tell them what to do, focus on understanding the other person's perspective and the other person's needs. Then you want to look for creative solutions that benefit all the people involved.

Now, a key skill to do this effectively is understanding the science behind influencing people and understanding, how to really pull people in to be more engaged and how to get people to contribute and how to foster that collaboration. Influence is a big part of that. If you want to learn how to master this skill, you should check out my episode called How to Influence Upward, Downward, and Cross functionally at Work.

Trait 5 - Leading Through Empathy and Understanding Others

Trait number five is leading through empathy.

Great leaders are very empathetic. They know how to see things from other people's perspective. They know how to listen actively. They know how to make the other people around them feel like they understand them. They understand their needs and their motivations.

This is really important because all people are hardwired to feel the need to be appreciated and heard and understood. When we don't feel those feelings, we don't feel like people understand us or we don't feel like people are listening to us, it makes us feel like outsiders. It makes us feel disconnected from the leader. But all you need to do is just show that you understand them, show that you're listening to them, showing that you care about them, showing them that you appreciate them.

The best way to do this is by showing them that you can see things from their perspective and see things from their point of view. So instead of trying to convince them that your view is right, show them that you understand where they're coming from. Meet them where they're at. Doing this fosters trust. It fosters open communication. It fosters a more engaged team environment, personally, one on one, as well as with your collective team.

The simplest way to do this with people is by being a great listener and practicing active listening. What that means is paying attention to both verbal and non verbal cues from the other person. You want to do things like ask clarifying questions to ensure that you other understand the other person's point of view.

For example, if someone just came to you and said, I'm struggling with X, Y, and Z, instead of just brushing it off and moving on to the next point, pause and say, to show them that you understood it. Say, Oh, I hear you. If I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying that you're struggling with X, Y, Z. Is that correct?

Just showing that you heard them makes all the difference versus, just moving on to the next topic. You might think you acknowledged it in your head, but you want to show the other person that you heard what they said. It makes all the difference.

Now I actually talk a lot more about the psychology behind this and I give you some tangible frameworks for how to improve your listening in my episode called Improve Your Listening Skills By The End Of This Video. I'll drop a link to that episode in the description of this video.

Trait 6 - Synergy Seeker

Trait number six is Synergy Seeker.

What this means is great leaders are always seeking synergy from the people around them and the teams they work with and throughout their organization. Effective leaders know that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts individually. So they encourage collaboration, like I said before, but beyond collaboration, they're also encouraging innovation. They're always seeking out synergies where different strengths and ideas can complement each other and where different ideas can come together to create something even more powerful than the individual ideas.

They're going to be great at getting a cross functional teams to work together to solve problems that won't be solved by working in silos. They're going to be great at connecting the dots between ideas or problems on their team. They're going to be great at pulling those stakeholders together to figure out, how do we get to the bottom of this? How do we figure out the best idea? It's not just about doing it. It's about proactively seeking these opportunities. They're always looking for ideas from other people and always looking for ways to make things better.

A tip for you on this is to make sure you're celebrating the different unique strengths and perspectives within your team. You wanna make sure you're encouraging open communication and collaboration on your team as well, so that you're leveraging the collective genius and that wisdom of the crowd that's within your team. You wanna make sure you're fostering that communication, otherwise you're not gonna get that wisdom of the crowd and you're not gonna get the best ideas coming to fruition.

Trait 7 - Lifelong Learner

Trait number seven is lifelong learner.

The best leaders never stop learning. They're always learning and they're always on a never ending quest to improve themselves and improve their awareness and improve their perspective. They're always trying to learn more. There is no finish line when it comes to learning for leaders. Like I said, they're constantly seeking new knowledge. They're constantly developing their skills. They're constantly adapting to change and they understand that the world is constantly evolving. They're not going to be these people that think, okay, things should be the way they always were. Or, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Leaders don't think like that. Leaders understand that if you're not constantly evolving with the world, you're going to get left behind. That includes your leadership skills too. Your leadership skills need to be constantly evolving.

New generations that are entering the workforce. I talk about this in my episode called Bridging The Gap With Gen Z. If you want to check out that episode, I'll include a link to that in the episode description, but where I'm going with this is leaders are always striving to stay ahead of the curve.

A quick tip for you on this is you want to make sure you're carving out time for activities that nourish, not only your mind, but your body and your spirit too. This includes exercise, spending time in nature, meditation, pursuing hobbies. You want to make sure you're filling that cup. Otherwise you're going to get exhausted and burn out, but really it's all about lifelong learning.

Those are the seven key traits of highly effective leaders, but I want you to remember this leadership is a journey, not a destination. So by focusing on developing these traits, you can become a more impactful and inspiring leader for your team, and you can make a bigger impact throughout your organization.

The last tip we said was lifelong learner. If you want some tangible resources for helping you develop these traits that we talked about throughout this episode, you should check out my episode called 10 Books Every Leader Must Read.

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