The notion of leadership has been examined from just about every perspective imaginable. Take a run through the business section of your favorite bookstore and you will find no shortage of leadership ideas.

On the other hand, if you read enough, you will find a number of consistent themes that good leaders share. Several of those key leadership traits were mentioned by Robert Iger, CEO of Disney, in a recent New York times interview (He Was Promotable After All, by Adam Bryant…read complete article here):

Q. What is the most important leadership lesson you have learned?

A. What I’ve really learned over time is that optimism is a very, very important part of leadership. However, you need a dose of realism with it. People don’t like to follow pessimists. I’d say that I’ve also learned, in general, to be more patient. I’ve learned to be more focused. I’ve learned to listen better and manage reaction time better. What I mean by that is not overreacting to things that are said to me, because sometimes it’s easy to do that.

Q. Tell me about your best and worst bosses.

A. I’ve worked for some great leaders. Roone Arledge was a consummate perfectionist. He drove everybody to levels of perfection or to come as close as possible to it. You exhausted every possibility there was to make something great or make something better.

Tom Murphy and Dan Burke taught me the importance of trust and managing people. You could learn from them but you also had the opportunity to go out and take those learnings and actually apply them on your own. There was a decentralized approach to the way they ran the company.

To lead a company or to lead a team, a good leader must first of all be competent. It is all but impossible to gain credibility with employees unless you have, or rapidly develop, a high level of understanding and competence. However, this is not typically where leaders fail to garner support. More likely it is one of the five things mentioned by Iger that create a disconnect with employees: a lack of patience, a lack of focus, the failure to listen, the failure to trust people, or the inability to create optimism in the organization.

How do you grade in each of these five areas?

My experience is that focus is usually not a problem, but both patience and listening can be a challenge. Leaders tend to be right more than they are wrong, so they develop a lot of confidence in their abilities and their answers. However, really effective leaders surround themselves with talent and learn to listen carefully to what those talented people have to say – especially when the opinions offered vary from their own.

In the same way, optimism is usually not a critical issue, but trusting people often creates a challenge. With success or failure riding on the outcome, weak leaders may resort to doing things themselves. This common mistake can have a dramatic impact on the organization’s performance.

Stop and evaluate yourself in these five key areas – there is the potential to make a huge step forward in your leadership ability.

Tagged as: Leadership, Listening, Optimism, trust