Leadership qualities essential for business development 

In its simplest form, leadership can be defined as the ability to identify problems and figure out the best way to solve them by motivating a group of people in a community. This group of people may not necessarily be a team. Leadership is influencing others to achieve a goal or set of goals without coercion. Great leaders are developed, not just born; or do not emerge accidentally. This means that leadership skills can be learnt. Influential leaders are either developed from internal talents in an organisation or attracted among external top candidates. The most crucial issue in leadership studies is in understanding the skills that enable leaders to thrive in any situation. While some leaders have Midas touch and can convert every opportunity into goals, there are figure-head leaders who cannot influence their followers. From experience, human resources managers have been able to identify the strategies and tips to find, attract and develop these essential qualities of effective leaders within a team to unlock their organisation’s full potential.

Though it is an added advantage for leaders to have ‘job-knowhow’, it is not essential for effective leadership. Leaders with skills like empathy, simple and clear communication, problem-solving, conflict resolution, relationship-building, and humility are able to impact others and their presence leads to higher employee retention rates at their organisations. These leaders create trust and ‘feel-good-factor’ in their team members because of their confidence, compassion, clear-directives, integrity and modesty. The characters of successful business leaders like Andrew Carnegie (1835 – 1919), Henry Gantt (1861 – 1919), Henry Carr (1863 – 1945), Bill Gates, Alan Sugar, Richard Branson, Bernard Jean Etienne Arnault, Jeff Bezos, Ellon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have been studied and their common features which impacted their successful sojourn in the field of business identified. These features, which are soft skills of stellar leaders generally, are listed below.

Empathy:– Empathy is generally described as the ability to view from another’s perspective, to understand, feel, and possibly share and respond to their experience. There are clear and sometimes conflicting definitions of empathy that include but are not limited to social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others. Often times, empathy is considered to be a broad term, and broken down into more specific concepts and categories that include cognitive empathy, emotional (or affective) empathy, somatic empathy, and spiritual empathy. Empathy is still a topic of organisation research. The major areas of research include the development of empathy, the genetics and psychology of empathy, cross-species empathy, and the challenges of empathy. Some researchers have made efforts to quantify empathy through different methods, such as from questionnaires, direct interview and case study. Some other researchers discuss the effects of empathy, benefits and issues caused by a lack of or an abundance of empathy. Empathetic leaders are highly attuned to the thoughts and feelings of their employees, and look beyond seeing and listen beyond hearing. They are those who listen more than they talk, and praise others rather than assign blame.

Effective communication:- Effective communication is the process of exchanging ideas, thoughts, opinions, knowledge, and data so that the message is received and understood with clarity of purpose. When we communicate effectively, both the sender and receiver feel satisfied. Strong communication skills are essential for delegating tasks, setting goals, and appraising employees (giving constructive feedback).

Problem-solving:- Problem solving is the act of defining a problem; determining the cause of the problem; identifying, prioritising, and selecting alternatives for a solution; and implementing the best solution. Problem solving is the process of achieving a goal by overcoming obstacles. It is a frequent part of most group activities. Problems in need of solutions range from simple personal tasks to complex issues in business like meeting demands for goods and services and technical fields like repairing machineries. Successful leaders are skilful in problem-solving.

Conflict resolution:- Disagreements are bound to occur in any space where there are more than one person. The number of disagreements that may occur in a group is directly related to the number of people in the group. These disagreements often lead to conflicts. The role of conflict resolution is to end a dispute and reach an agreement that satisfies all parties involved. Since conflict is an essential part of human beings, effective conflict resolution is not designed to avoid disagreements but to solve conflicts resulting from disagreements. Effective leaders are good at conflict resolution and they do this on a daily basis mainly to avoid friction between their employees and hiccup within the organisation operation.

Humility:– Humility is the quality of being humble. Dictionary definitions accentuate humility as low self-regard and sense of unworthiness. In a religious context, humility can mean humbling of self in relation to a deity (i.e. God), and subsequent submission to that deity as a member of a religion. Outside of a religious context, humility is defined as being “selfless” – liberated from consciousness of self-first form of disposition, that is, neither having pride (or haughtiness) nor indulging in self-depreciation. Humility is an appropriate inner, or self regard, and is contrasted with humiliation, which is an imposition, often external, of shame upon a person. Humility may be misappropriated as the ability to suffer humiliation through self-denigration. This misconception arises from the confusion of humility with traits like submissiveness and meekness. Such misinterpretations prioritise self-preservation and self-aggrandisement over true humility, which emphasises a diminished emphasis on the self even in authority. Successful leaders are “servant-leaders” and not oppressors, and value their team members more and place them above themselves in the process of achieving team goals.

While it is important for leaders to be confident and authoritative, this confidence should not be mistaken for knowing it all. The best leaders have a healthy dose of humility to admit what they do not know and bring in those who do, including from the rank and file of the employees, for the purpose of achieving organisational objectives. In humility, successful leaders still take cognisance of their power to fire uncooperative employee and their frontal roles. Good leaders are focused on identifying challenges and finding solutions. They delegate effectively to subordinates and do not feel or act timid. They talk to their team members to motivate them and raise their morale. Good leaders see team success as collective achievement and team failure as their personal shortcoming, and take responsibility for it.

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