Seven secrets of great leaders

“I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.”

Alexander The Great

The century old question, “Leaders are born or made” still has an attraction to be discussed within the circles of intelligentsia of modern society. My stance is some are born, some are made. But great leaders are those who luckily have both factors together. This article discloses the seven secrets of great leaders regardless whether they are predominantly born first and made latter or vice versa.

Seven secrets of great leaders

Great leaders have many secrets in their personality. It depends upon their type of leadership, their portfolio and level at which they are leading. However, in my viewpoint, top seven secrets are as under:

1. They have a clear vision

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”

Warren Bennis

Great leaders have great power of imagination. They can see the unfolding events of future in a bigger perspective. So they have a clear and achievable vision of what they are fighting for. They begin their plan keeping the end in mind.

Great leaders have many alternative missions to complete a single vision. So they keep on changing their strategy as per situation but always remain focused on their life-long vision as they have unwavering faith in themselves and people around them.

2. They own a strong character

Great leaders own a strong character. They believe in morality keeping in mind the cultural, religious and ethnic differences. This enables them how to mobilize the society. In the time of test, they defend their ideas, rules and principles for which they are living. Honesty, hope, sincerity and authenticity are the corner stones of their charismatic personality. They believe in optimism and rationalism.

3. They are great communicators

“The art of communication is the language of leadership.”

James Humes

Great leaders are great communicators too. They have inspirational speaking power which compels their audience to listen to them. They are well equipped with the weapons of emotional intelligence and social motivation. It makes them great psychologists. They have good audience knowledge. So they speak at right time, at right place and to right audience as they know how to hammer the iron when it is hot.

4. They are good in management skills

Great leaders are good in management skills ranging from time-management to office management and personal management to personnel management. They are proactive and take right decision at right time. They put first things first. They have good sense of human resource management. It makes them captain of their teams.

5. They are open-minded

Being open-minded is one of the core secrets of all the great leaders. They believe in continuous improvement. So they always welcome positive criticism and opinions to innovate their systems and organizations. They seek different viewpoints to make their organizations and systems robust and deep-rooted.

6. They are strong-minded

Great leaders are strong-minded. They show grace under pressure. They remain steadfast at the time of down fall. Great leaders know how to convert negative energy into positive, pessimism into optimism, impossibilities into possibilities and limitations into solutions. This is the reason why people follow them.

7. They believe in synergy

Last but not least, one of the core secrets of great leaders is they believe in synergy. They apply the policies based on mutual cooperation and collaboration. They seek different viewpoints and think of a win-win situation. They encourage the potential of every individual of their organizations. They believe in 1+1 = 11 and 2+2 = 22 and this gives them net results many folds greater than the sum of their efforts.

Conclusion:

If you already have all these factors in your personality congratulations Ị you have a great leader inside you. You just need to realize it and groom it. If you are missing some or any one of these factors, don’t worry Good news for you is that all these secrets can be learnt through perseverance and dedication. Remember the acronym VCCMOSS. It will help you keep in mind all the secrets in a following sequence VCCMOSS:

V = Vision

C = Character

C = Communication

M = Management

O = Open-mindedness

S = Strong-mindedness

S = Synergy

Identify the missing factors in your personality and plan to work hard so that you may fill the gaps. It will gradually transform your personality in such a way that your actions inspire others. Now you have the capacity to translate your vision and dream into reality. This is what leaders do as John Adams said,

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”