Having worked both in the business world as a senior manager, and in Education, l have had over twenty five years to observe leaders and leadership skills in many different settings. One thing I've learned over these years is that the two don't necessarily go together. In business, I've seen many with leadership skills denied the chance to exercise these skills by lack of promotion prospects or micro-management, and Education tends to be dominated by leaders with a dearth of actual leadership skills.

But if you look closely at some of the great leaders, both from history and more contemporary times, you tend to notice a few common characteristics displayed by these folks. Four of them, in fact.

Firstly, they all appear to have the ability to recognise potential. They can skills-spot in people who probably won't recognise this potential in themselves. This is an invaluable attribute for mentoring people, as if they actually come to believe they can do things, then they tend not to waste time worrying about their abilities and just get on and focus on their own personal development. In fact, they develop the courage to try without fear of failure. They learn and develop, often by trial and error, but learning all the while, day by day. This attribute of good leaders is vital in the development of good teams. And good leaders develop more leaders rather than just gathering followers.

Secondly, skilled leaders define success for their teams. They have very clear expectations of what is required to achieve success and ensure that they communicate this to their people effectively, so that everyone knows just what they are expected to deliver, and when. This is a very time consuming and challenging thing to do, and most leaders do very little of this, preferring to micro-manage instead. This leads to disempowerment and demoralisation in the workforce because it denies one of our most basic human needs, self expression (at least according to the psychologist Maslow). Lets face facts, the job of a leader is not to do his teams work, it is to provide the support, guidance, and resources, and this then leads to empowerment which in turn leads to folk figuring things out for themselves. Good leaders trust their people to get on with the job, having set the parameters and given clear guidelines and appropriate training and support.

Thirdly, Good leaders develop an understanding of how their people operate on an emotional level, but also on physical, mental and spiritual ones. Leaders will get the most out of each person in their teams if they understand just what each needs to operate at full capacity. This allows the team as a whole to perform at peak levels of productivity for longer. It leads to sustainability. So value your people, feed their spirituality by engaging them in your leadership mission, ensure they are well and supported and you will achieve so much more as a unit, rather than just a collection of individuals.

Finally, and probably the least visible characteristic in most leaders, is the ability to recognise their own fallibility. They don't feel the need to be right all the time because they have developed the self confidence and emotional well-being to be able to recognise their own shortcomings and not let these devalue themselves as individuals and leaders. If this translates into treatment of everyone in the team, all will feel valued, despite their own weaknesses and shortcomings. They won't waste valuable time and energy worrying, defending, even asserting their value to the organisation and in turn will spend more time actually adding value to it instead.

Are these qualities visible in the leaders you work with ? what is the take-home message ? well, it's this...
If you value your employees or your team, or your staff, then they will add value to your business. Its all about the nurture you see, but with a business slant. Because to get best value from your people, you have to be valuable to them.