How to Become a Good Leader: Qualities of a Leadership
Having a strong leadership has become indispensable to any business or company, especially in today's increasingly uncertain global economic environment. With more challenges to come, having a good executive talent has become a particularly important condition for companies to ride out tough times. However, how to become a good leader? According to the Goleman’s point of view, the most essential factor of leadership is to direct their own attention. “Leaders must learn to focus on themselves, on others, and on the wider world. In how to become a good leader essay the question will be answered.
To focus on themselves, leaders should begin to understand themselves both physically and mentally. It is called self-awareness which helps leaders to better understand their strengths and weaknesses, and then make them to carry forward their advantages, overcome their weaknesses, and achieve a positive effect of self-education.
Leaders should not only pay attention on their physical and mental conditions, but also should focus on their relationships with the others. Knowing others’ opinions about oneself is an indirect way of self-awareness. It is also called open awareness which makes leaders’ vision wider when they are perceiving and receiving things around them. According to Goleman’s example of True North groups, it appeals the important connection between the relationship and the self-awareness. As an example, when employees work with other colleagues in a team, their perception of personality traits will be apparent. They are able to realize their strength and inadequate by contrast with other colleagues. Through working with others, employees can improve their shortcomings while learning from the strengths of others.
In addition, Goleman pointed out that self-control is also a way to help people focus on themselves. With strong self-control, leaders enable to stick to their goals, would not be tempted by external things and would not affected by other things to their own judgments and decisions. For example, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba group, is one of the most famous entrepreneurs in China. His success is inseparable from his perseverance and strong self-control.
A good leader also should pay attention on others. Goleman pointed out that the empathy triad plays an crucial role for a successful executive. The empathy triad includes cognitive empathy, emotional empathy and empathic concern. Cognitive empathy is able to put people in their others’ shoes and understand and appreciate their opinions. Emotional empathy makes people understand and feel others’ feelings. Empathic concern is not only make people feel what others are feeling, but also makes them feel what others need them to do s cognitive empathy. Leaders who possess those three empathies enable to infer what employees are thinking, feeling and needs. Only when leaders are reasonable and understands his employees, employees can then follow their instructions and follow their lead.
On the other hand, building relationship with others is another way to pay attention on others. It is not ease for leaders to build relationship with their subordinates. The main reason is the superior subordinate relationship between them. Normally, people with high social status do not pay much attention on the lower status. However, a successful executive should warn and notice it since the enterprise communication and information exchange among staff and staffs’ feedbacks are essential for a successful company. This higher-level executives’ tendency can make them neglect excellent ideas of the lower-level employees. Relationship is part of the enterprise management since it helps executives organize workers effectively. As an example, when Haier entered Japan in 2002, it encountered great dilemma in the Japanese market due to culture difference. Jingguo Du was the president of Haier Japan. One of his strategy to integrate Haier’s culture and Japanese culture was building relationships with local workers. He gained the trust of local workers in the Japanese style. For instance, he divided employees into teams and went out drinking with a team every few nights. After two years of drinking, the Japanese workers finally felt comfortable talking and drinking with Du in a more open way. Haier Japan’s success is inseparable from Mr. Du’s contributions.
In addition, focusing on the wider world plays an essential role for a good executive. A successful executive is always visionary and possess a broad perspective and vision for the future. For example, while everyone else was fighting a price war, he had quietly made other strategic plans. When others began to follow, he quietly withdrew. Visionary leaders are good at expressing, and they are able to translate words into actionable actions and create clear, achievable goals that enable them to anticipate the future. Therefore, the pattern of a successful enterprise CEO often determines the development direction and prospect of the enterprise. To be more specially, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, created a world-renowned e-commerce empire since he was very optimistic about the development prospects of the Internet. Zhengfei Ren, the founder of Huawei, has made Huawei the most innovative communication technology company in China and even the world, because he pays special attention to the research and development of communication technology.
Furthermore, focusing on strategy is of the essence on the way to succeed. One of the most valuable spirits of a strategic leader is the courage to deny oneself, the past, the status quo and innovation. For companies, the most important thing is a sense of crisis. If entrepreneurs have a sense of comfort and satisfaction, it will breed inertia, content with the status quo, no longer change, so that the enterprise will lose the momentum to move forward. Besides, innovation is the driving force and eternal theme of enterprise development. Enterprise innovation is also an important part of enterprise management. It is the key factor that decides company development direction, development scale, development speed.
In conclusion, successful executives enable to pay attention on themselves, on the others, and on the wider world. In order to focus on themselves, leaders should know themselves thoroughly by interacting with others and enhance self-control. Through the empathy triad, executives would better understand and build relationship with others. Successful executives also should be visionary, strategic and innovative.
