7 Qualities of an Effective Leader

If you want to be a leader who attracts quality people, the key is to become a person of quality yourself. Leadership is the ability to attract someone to the gifts, skills and opportunities you offer as an owner, as a manager, as a parent.

What’s important in leadership is refining your skills. All great leaders keep working on themselves until they become effective. Here’s how:

1. Be strong but not rude.

Learning to be strong but not impolite is an extra step you must take to become a powerful, capable leader with a wide range of reach. But it’s a thin line. Make sure you don’t cross it. Some people mistake rudeness for strength. It’s not even a good substitute. Rudeness, we don’t need. Strength, we do need.

2. Be kind but not weak.

We must not mistake weakness for kindness. Kindness isn’t weak. Kindness is a certain type of strength. We must be kind enough to tell someone the truth. We must be kind enough and considerate enough to lay it on the line. We must be kind enough to tell it like it is and not deal in delusion.

3. Be bold but not a bully.

It takes boldness to win the day. We need to boldly seize the moment, boldly seize the opportunity, boldly seize the chance. But we don’t need bullies. We don’t need anybody to push anybody around.

4. Be humble but not timid.

Some people mistake timidity for humility. But humility is a virtue, and timidity is a weakness. You must turn your timidity into strength. Keep working on it until finally it does not dominate your life anymore, and then expand your ability to understand the vastness of this life. Humility is a sense of awe, a sense of wonder, an awareness of the human soul and spirit. Humility is a grasp of the distance between us and the stars, yet having the feeling that we’re a part of the stars.

5. Be thoughtful but not lazy.

We need to give thought, but we also need to take action. You need to dream without just being a dreamer. Head in the clouds, yes, dreaming lofty dreams, but feet on the ground.

6. Be proud but not arrogant.

It takes pride to build your ambitions. It takes pride to build a community. There’s something to be said for pride, yes, but don’t cross the line to arrogance. Pride, we need. Arrogance, we don’t. Do you know the worst kind of arrogance? Arrogance from ignorance. If someone is smart and arrogant, we can tolerate that. But if someone is ignorant and arrogant, that’s hard to take.

7. Have humor without folly.

There’s a difference between being silly and having humor. In leadership, we learn that it’s OK to be witty but not silly; fun but not foolish.

SOURCE:success.com