True Leadership

What makes a good leader? Is it intelligence? Is it authority? Is it power?

If you look at many of the successful people in the world today they became successful because they served others or find better service models that allowed them to beat their competition.

True leaders do not have egos. They are humbled by their ability to bring their teams together and successful. They are thankful for their loyal, hard working employees.

You should partner with your staff to achieve their goals and the goals of the department. Don’t just bark orders and expect them to accomplish it without your help. True leaders rate them selves on how they help their subordinates achieve success, not how well your employee will

In today’s corporate world you are dealing with independent employees, a lot of who may be telecommuting from home. Today’s employee is looking for more personal satisfaction and professional and personal growth.
The brow beating, authoritarian manager is no longer acceptable in today’s environment. As their manager you need to partner with them and coach them to help them be successful. If they are successful you are successful. It is not just the best approach for building moral and having happy employees. It’s smart business. The more successful they are the more revenue they bring the company. The more satisfied they are the less chance they will leave the company, which reduces the very costly turn over. Its been said over and over that its always better to keep clients instead of always having to get new clients to replace clients your company lost. The same should be said about employees.


True leaders take ownership of their job. This does not mean going on a power trip and wanting to establish them as big wigs in the company. It means constantly caring about the employees and the customers and the company as a whole. True leaders constantly think about how a certain policy, procedure or company decision will affect the company, its employees and the customers. They don not think about their individual job in a small compartmentalized way. They think about how their job and their

True Leaders lead by example.

True Leaders develop and maintain the culture at all times. About not letting anything change the culture of the company

Contrary to popular belief good managers are not the ones with the better technical, financial or operational skills. Have you ever noticed that most MBA programs talk a lot about financial, operational and technical skills that Executives need to have but they barely touch on Leadership behavior? They usually do offer some classes connected to human resource management, but those courses do not accentuate what skills true leaders need and how executives should coach their subordinates. Many executives have poor communication skills.

True leaders hire people smarter than you are. True leaders are not worried about how their employees will make them look bad to their superiors and/or
Subordinates, if an employee is smarter than them. Subordinates will still respect you because you are giving them support, praise and job satisfaction.

Jack Welch, the former CEO for General Electric was one of the most successful CEOs in history. When asked for some of his reasons for being so successful, he stated, “good leaders should hire people smarter than themselves.”

Being a good leader is about bringing out the best in your team. Seeing an employee’s true potential and knowing how to help the employee to reach that potential. It is not about intimidation. Leading by intimidation only shows a leader’s insecurity in their own abilities and creates a resentful and disloyal team.

True leaders are classy, calm and professional leaders and they treat their employees with dignity and respect. This approach in turn allows them to sustain success much longer. Some managers take the approach that they can run their employees into the ground and get everything the company can get out of them. They may have quicker success but this approach gets old real quick and the company will start to regress because ruling by intimidation is a not a sustainable model for success. Employee burn out happens much faster so the turn over costs are much steeper.

Treating employees calmly and with a respectful demeanor also benefits the company even further because it benefits the clients. You teach people how to treat people. If you treat your employees with respect and dignity and show a sincere desire to help them, then they will show the same respect to their teammates and the clients.