Character Strengths of the Leader — Are you developing yours?

Today we have a guest blog from Marty Vondrell:

Do you know somebody in a leadership role that you don’t enjoy working with because of how they are being at times? Do they speak to you in a way that makes you want to move away from them or even do something worse?

And for the people that must work for the leader - Do you think they want to follow this leader?  Do they give them full effort?  Or do they give them the least amount of discretionary effort they can without losing their job?  Or worse yet, do they actively work against the leader?

Could this be the reason that the leader is less successful than their potential? Are they derailing their business success because of how they are showing up as a leader? Do you know this person intimately?  Could this person be you?

We all need to develop our character strengths.  Nobody’s perfect.  The research results are clear that character traits or emotional intelligence are the key to leadership and success in business. 

Fortunately, character traits are developable.  Unlike other factors of your success, you can develop them with a little work.  The key is awareness.

Leadership character traits are made up of polarities.  Developing strength in each end of the polarity is crucial to become a conscious leader.  The first step is to become aware of the contradiction and balance it within yourself. 

For example, one dimension of a strong character trait is the ability to take bold action in the face of scrutiny and disagreement.  At times, a leader must be able to do this.

At the same time, a leader must be considerate of other views and let followers be heard.  If a leader never listens or considers others views, the leader will have no real followers.  The employees will be coerced into action.  This will not get the discretionary effort any good leader is looking for.

Do you see the power in the possibility of improving your leadership in this way? — If you are willing to put some conscious effort into developing your character traits, you will see amazing positive changes in how people relate to you and fight for you.

Where do you start? —

•      Become conscious and observant of your own presence. 

•      Utilize a leadership model to become aware. 

•      Play the witness role in some of your interpersonal interactions. 

•      Without judgment — observe yourself.  Be honest with yourself about how people are reacting to you and the results the interactions produce. 

Where could you improve? How are you “being” with people?  What do you like and what could get better?

The next step is to pick one thing.  Pick one trait that you want to improve.  Don’t work on more than one but only work on the one thing you choose to improve.  And work on it ferociously.  Stretch yourself. 

Push yourself to the extremes of that character trait, both over and under doing it at times, to see how people react.  This is the work that will make you conscious about your character traits.  And it will bring out the extraordinary leader in you.