7 SIGNS YOU’RE A LEADER PEOPLE WANT TO FOLLOW

It’s not always easy to gauge how you’re doing as a boss.

Your reports aren’t always likely to tell you how you’re undermining their performance — or even what you’re doing well that they’d like to see more of.

The best solution to this problem is probably to ask for direct feedback. But where to start?

Based on research and professional opinion, we’ve compiled seven indicators that show you’re inspiring and motivating your team effectively. Determine how much each quality or behaviour best describes you. You could also want to do the same with your staff.

YOU’RE GENERALLY POSITIVE

Research from 2015 suggests that happy people make more effective leaders.

This is largely due to the fact that they are more likely to exhibit transformational leadership, which means they are particularly adept at energising and inspiring their team as well as keeping people intellectually engaged.

Interestingly, the study found that optimism, a personality attribute we generally associate with successful bosses, was an even stronger predictor of leadership effectiveness than extroversion.

Not that you should push yourself to grin and smile during every team meeting, though. It might be more beneficial for people who are in charge of choosing future leaders to take the candidates’ entire impact into consideration.

YOU’RE NOT AFRAID OF CHANGE

According to a research by leadership development consultant Zenger/Folkman of more than 65,000 leaders, younger managers are viewed as being more effective than their older colleagues.

One key reason why? They welcome novelty.

Zenger/Folkman says it’s possible that younger managers’ relative lack of experience means they’re more optimistic about the changes they propose and more willing to be the “champions of change.”

YOU’RE PRETTY BORING

The technical term is “emotional maturity,” which means being emotionally stable, agreeable, and conscientious.

The Harvard Business Review’s Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a business psychologist, believes that “[t]he best managers in the world tend to be stable rather than excitable, consistent rather than erratic, as well as polite and considerate.”

That might be part of the reason why Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, is so successful. Rather than being emotionally volatile, like Steve Jobs for example, Pichai is reported to be predictable and to stay out of the spotlight.

In other words, Jobs is more the exception than the rule — better to emulate Pichai if you’re hoping to lead your team to greatness.

YOU DEMONSTRATE INTEGRITY

Additionally, Chamorro-Premuzic contends that integrity is a crucial element of effective leadership. The final result of acting unethically or counterproductively is the demise of both you and your company.

In fact, one analysis found that CEOs rated as high-integrity by their employees had a multi-year return of 9.4%, while CEOs rated as low-integrity saw a return of only 1.9%.

Psychologist Travis Bradberry highlights several traps that leaders fall into, which can undermine their integrity.

Making everything about them is one such pitfall; instead, you should actively seek out doubt and criticism. Another is micromanagement; keep in mind that employee and leader productivity differs. Allow people to succeed in their jobs on their own.

YOU WORK HARD

Conscientiousness, or your propensity for organisation and diligence, is the only significant personality attribute that reliably predicts success, according to years of research.

The highest predictor of leadership emergence, after extroversion, was conscientiousness, according to a review of studies published in 2002. This implies that diligent people are much more likely than others to become managers, and perhaps even more likely to be successful in their positions once they do.

YOU DISPLAY VISION

Another Zenger/Folkman study found that the most important quality of innovative leaders was that they “could vividly describe their vision of the future.”

But developing and executing on a vision is easier said than done.

According to executive coach and author Suzanne Bates, when leaders seek her advice, they frequently lack vision, or the capacity to paint a picture of what might be, spot patterns, and unify the team.

The “Big Idea” is one method Bates employs to assist leaders in effectively communicating their vision. You condense difficult ideas into a single, impactful sentence with no more than 25 words that expresses your vision. There should be three components to the statement: a proposal, an outcome, and a benefit.

YOU RESPECT YOUR COWORKERS

The most crucial leadership behaviour for employee engagement, according to a study of over 20,000 employees worldwide, is respect.

Employees who feel valued by their leaders are 55% more engaged and 1.1 times more likely to stay with their organisations than those who don’t, according to research co-author Christine Porath’s article in The Harvard Business Review.

However, Porath points out that a staggering 54% of workers claim they don’t always feel valued by their superiors. She advises leaders to foster a climate of respect by specifically vetting applicants for a history of rudeness throughout the hiring process and assessing it head-on during performance evaluations.