Essential values for leadership

Vision

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”
     – Jack Welch

Great leaders have a clear, exciting idea of where they are going and what they are trying to accomplish. Vision allows leaders tap into emotion of their work mates.

This quality separates them from managers. While a manager gets the job done, great leaders tap into the emotions of their employees.

Courage

“Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend.”
     – Winston Churchill

Courage means that you are willing to take risks in the achievement of your goals with no assurance of success. Because there is no certainty in life or business, every commitment you make and every action you take entails a risk of some kind.

Integrity

“With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt.”
     – Zig Ziglar

Integrity is to agree on the importance of complete honesty in everything we do, both internally and externally.

The core of integrity is truthfulness. Truthfulness is the foundation quality of the trust that is necessary for the success of any business.

Humility

“The more you can contain your ego, the more realistic you are about your problems. You learn how to listen, and admit that you don’t know all the answers. You exhibit the attitude that you can learn from anyone at any time. Your pride doesn’t get in the way of gathering the information you need to achieve the best results. It doesn’t keep you from sharing the credit that needs to be shared. Humility allows you to acknowledge your mistakes.”
     – Larry Bossidy

Great leaders are those who are strong and decisive but also humble.

Humility is having the self-confidence and self-awareness to recognize the value of others without feeling threatened. It means that you are willing to admit you could be wrong, that you recognize you may not have all the answers. And it means that you give credit where credit is due – which many people struggle to do.

Strategic Planning

Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: it’s the starting point.”
     – Henry Mintzberg

Strategic Planning is an ability to look ahead, to anticipate with some accuracy where the industry and the markets are going.

Leaders have the ability to anticipate trends, well in advance of their competitors. They continually ask, “Based on what is happening today, where is the market going? Where is it likely to be in three months, six months, one year, and two years?”.

Because of increasing competitiveness, only the leaders and organizations that can accurately anticipate future markets can possibly survive.

Focus

“Successful people maintain a positive focus in life no matter what is going on around them. They stay focused on their past successes rather than their past failures, and on the next action steps they need to take to get them closer to the fulfillment of their goals rather than all the other distractions that life presents to them.
     – Jack Canfield

The ability to make sure that everyone is focused and concentrated on the most valuable use of their time is essential to excellent performance. Great Leaders focus on results, on what must be achieved by themselves, by others, and by the company.

Encourage

“If your imagination leads you to understand how quickly people grant your requests when those requests appeal to their self-interest, you can have practically anything you go after.”
     – Napoleon Hill

Leadership is the ability to get people to work WITH you because they want to. It’s bringing the values into cooperation and building synergy. It to make the cooperation thrive! Because there is no certainty in life or business, every commitment you make and every action you take entails a risk of some kind.

Summary: Inspire

Great leaders inspire other people, their friends, customer, associates and even their children because they are inspired themselves. They get up every morning and they see every effort they make as part of a great plan to accomplish something wonderful with their lives and push forward with a positive attitude. They see opportunities and possibilities in everything that happens, positive or negative.

People want to be part of something bigger than themselves. People believe they are fulfilled, valued and self- actualized when they feel encouraged to be part of a worthwhile journey. To be an encouraging leader, we must learn the ways in which people feel accepted. People can only get a feeling of acceptance by belonging to something they value through their daily contributions.