I’ve been thinking about effective leadership this week and came up with the following list of traits common to successful leaders:

1. Be available: Great leaders are effective communicators in every form.  Your employees need to feel like they can come to you for direction and guidance, and you need to be willing to provide all the information they need in order to do their jobs to the best of their abilities.
   
   
2. Understand your employees’ jobs: Great leaders understand the roles of every person on their team and why each job is critical to the team’s overall success.  Great leaders value every member of the team, and their employees know they are valued and important.
   
   
3. Don’t fingerpoint: Effective leaders take ultimate ownership and accountability.  Rather than placing blame, they strive to uncover the gap and mend it so success is achieved in the future.
   
   
4. Set an example: The best leaders are role models for their employees.  Everything they do is a reflection of how employees are expected to work and behave.  From your dress, speech, work ethics, and so on – act how you want your employees to act.
   
   
5. Never stop learning: The day a person feels like he knows it all is a bad day.  The best leaders understand they can never know everything, and there is always something new to learn.  A great leader looks to her employees, colleagues, and superiors both within and outside of the office for inspiration and knowledge and shares that thirst for learning with her team.

A great rule of thumb for leaders to follow is to never ask your employees to do something you wouldn’t do yourself. 

What other traits do you think make a successful leader?  Leave a comment and share your opinion, so we can all be better leaders.

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