One of the Most Underrated Qualities of a Great Leader!

Unlock Your Awareness for an Influential Leadership! Learn about a MUST-have quality in a Great Leader.

Leadership is such a powerful word! It is powerful not because of the influence it may have but because of the weight it carries—the weight of responsibility, duty, effects on real lives, and a promise to practice & deliver what a Leader preaches.

From time immemorial leadership has been in our DNA, as human communities have aspired to stay connected, grow, and pass on the civilizational legacy to the future generations. Like everything else, Leadership has also changed its definition, forms, and ways, adapting to changing times. By and large, Leadership is born through the concept of one person leading many, who are subjected to follow their leader to lead them to the path of glory! Glory can amount to people being led to be happy and meaningfully living their life course and positively contributing to society.

Cut to the world of Corporations, Leadership definitions have not been any different than this. Many times one may not find leadership in leaders because the majority of the professionals titled as Leaders are operating as efficient Managers rather than optimally effective Leaders. You'll find them at all levels i.e. Early, Mid, Senior, or Executive Career levels. Leadership is often misrepresented by the varied titles one holds; which means it is not an indication of a title but one's being! A harmonious collection of their actions, representations, practiced values, intentions, et. al. With changing ways of working in remote or hybrid modes and with the advent of new technological innovation i.e. Mobile-first to AI-first functioning, the Corporate workforce needs to define new models of Leadership. Check out this speech on Remodeling Leadership for Meaningful Success at Global Achiever's Summit 2024 at the University of Oxford, UK.

While defining leadership for changing times is a must and a stepping stone towards achieving our shared visions, unfortunately, most of us get stuck in defining and understanding effective leadership. But what matters is we seek answers to these questions and work towards practicing actionable leadership:

• Do the fundamentals of Leadership change over time?
• Do the new ways of doing things force Leadership to change?
• Does the Qualities of a Leader change over time?

How we choose to answer these questions is subjective as they are dependent on many factors like changing geographies & practiced cultural beliefs, organizational values & followed processes, visions, etc. What works for one may not work for another corporation. But fundamentally qualities of an effective, positive, and benevolent Leader reflect the following qualities:

1. Holding responsible authority.
2. High-stakes decision-making.
3. Upholding respectful credibility.
4. Practicing curiosity at depth & breadth level.
5. Inspiring (not Motivating) others by being a worthy role model.
6. Learning from the past to assert a promise of a better future!
7. Taking optimal risks.

Out of all the above qualities, intentional practice makes MANY a leader in their own right but there is one quality that makes or breaks the rider of being & continuing to be a great leader, which is Decision Making!

Decision Making is the essence of our growth and evolution. It is a function of having intelligence and wisdom to grow our gut muscle to crunch when a high-stakes decision needs to be made, accepting the responsibilities that come with it, and more so, living with the consequences of the decision made. We make a million choices in a day, starting from micro-decisions to seemingly important ones. Our choices do have power over us to make our lives better, propel us positively & progressively, and skyrocket our personal growth or otherwise.

Building this muscle of making high-quality decisions is a matter of thinking long-term, practicing a learning mindset, and challenging our deepest selves which helps us grow up, patiently! Every one of us makes decisions based on factors, starting from the most basic to the most advanced, such as (mentioned below in chronological order):

1. Choice made by obtaining Information.
2. Choice made by acquiring Skills.
3. Choice made by experiencing Knowledge.
4. Choice made by analyzing past Records & Data.
5. Choice made by practicing Intuition!

Out of all the ways of making choices, the decisions that are most critical and bearing high consequences on turning our visions in the direction we need them to be, are eventually taken with practicing Intuition! By the sound of that word, many may think, does that even work? Isn't Intuition a random thing to expect any reliability out of it? What if our Intuition misfires? Contrary to popular beliefs, our Intuition is the highest beacon of hope when we face seemingly tricky situations, high-stakes consequences, analysis beyond data & numbers, and choosing out of conflicting options present in front of us, et. al. Intuition is a culmination of all the above-mentioned factors skills, information, knowledge, and analysis but so much more than all of them collectively. In simplistic and layman's language, one may choose to define Intuition as our Gut Feeling!

But wait a minute, how can our feelings drive our most important Decisions?

Isn't it, that we have to think more rationally using our brain's executive functions and decide using our logical brain skills rather than rely on seemingly less effective emotional or feeling brain's soft skills?

As there is social stigma and shame attached to making decisions using one's Intuition; this is why, going after proclaiming to support decisions based on your Intuition will get you into a flurry of judgments and assumptions about your capability of being a Leader! Stereotypes about Intuition are alive because historically in moments of crisis, panic, and haste, most likely decisions were taken without having data available to make informed decisions. As the world grew technologically, data-driven decision-making has shown many progressive and positive results which has led it to be a de facto highest quality standard for making decisions. However, amid a uniquely challenging situation, such a standard often stops working with methods like brainstorming, analysis of data, etc. This is when subtle feelings-driven Intuition (indicates that your body remembers past experiences and stores them in the form of a million highly intelligent memory cells) can be accessed in times when you are deeply aware of & feel caught in the crisis. Intuition is your innate, subtle, and superior intelligence which is capable of accessing your rational & feeling abilities at the same time. That's the sweet spot for invoking Intuition.

I believe in Intuitions and Inspirations...I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am. ~ Albert Einstein, German-born American Physicist

Beyond learning through experiences as you age in life, you can develop Intuition through these THREE fundamentally essential approaches and become a great Leader over time!

1. Keeping Yourself Fit: Being fit at the Body, Mind, and Soul level. Nothing can ever replace the need for these three primal functions as human beings to keep ourselves in the realm of experiencing Total Health! That is the foundational framework on which Intuition thrives.
2. Cheer Adversities: A Leader without having gone through adversities (not failures or successes) and coming out as a good performer, is a leader clicking all the checkboxes on paper. Adversities that make anyone introspect, dive deeper within themselves, learn from their experiences, be present, keenly observe, intentionally change themselves at the most fundamental levels to adorn high-valued behaviors, and choose to put Deep Work to unlock their awareness & build positive principals is what makes an individual a great Leader! Embracing the adversities to build their resilience and character, keeping the focus inward, making them relatively humble at the same time truly progressive.
3. Experience, the right way!: Choose to toggle actions between that of a Doer and a Leader, leading from the front. There is no hard line written in the stone that the power of leadership & influence it creates diminishes if you choose to act in a Dual Role. For the most part, such a dual role practiced within healthy Work Cultures ends up creating positive credibility and deeper trust amongst teams. The more you expand the breadth & depth of your experience, it supplements the positive growth of your Intuition!
4. ..and lastly, wait a minute! Didn't I mention THREE approaches?!? This one's a bonus! The fourth one is Google It, or even better, AI It to make better decisions and develop Intuition! And it won't work; as Humans prefer Leaders with a tad a bit of Authenticity, Genuinity, and Humanity in them over an account for the past human experiences crawled and presented by machines! Think about it, because that's the uniqueness you are blessed with, from where Intuition births! Choose Artificial Intelligence & machines with discretion, only to enhance your Human Intelligence & Growth!

Build, Practice, and Follow your Intuition in times when nothing seems to answer rationally; grow beyond mechanically being data-driven!

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About Author:

Tejal Rathod - Tj (she/her)

Peter Drucker Management Excellence Award Winner by the University of Oxford, UK.

Founder & Success Coach | Author | Speaker

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