What Makes A Great Leader

© Kathy Holdaway

Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning.
- Warren G. Bennis 

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born - that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born. Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.
- Warren G. Bennis 

Leadership is an art and a science. It is an art because it continually evolves, changes form, and requires creativity. It is a science because there are certain essential principles and techniques required. A good leader knows when it is time to change shape because they are highly attentive to those around them. Coming from a position of strength, a great leader takes risks by freeing up the creative genius in their followers to build their capability and multiply the talents of the organization. This leads to community and greatness. By powerfully communicating a vision that animates, motivates, and inspires followers, a great leader is able to transform his or her organization. A good leader needs to be able to laugh; a great leader needs to be able to laugh at oneself.

What kind of leader are you being? Where is your organization in relation to your vision?

What do you think makes a great leader? Who do you think was a great leader?

What qualities did or do they routinely exhibit? What do your followers want to know in order to believe in you? What are the words that lead them to believe you?

Consider the following as a beginning list of Qualities:

• Cooperation 
• Collaboration
• Consistent
• Creative
• Conscious
• Caring
• Capable
• Courageous
• Innovation
• Understanding
• Integrity
• Sense of Humor

Now consider the following Questions that relate to those Qualities:

Do you cooperate with the best in your people or do you demand from them?

Do you routinely work with them to bring innovation and best practices to your organization or do you push your ideas on them?

Are you consistent in demonstrating the principles of leadership you wish others to emulate, or do you vacillate in your own modeling?

Do you encourage creativity with brainstorming or are your ideas the only ones that work?

Are you conscious and present with your employees, or are you in a conversation in your head while with them?

Do you balance caring in the choices you make that effect your organization or are you only interested in the bottom line?

Are you the only one capable in your company, or do you unleash capability by empowerment through equality in responsibility and authority?

How courageous are you? What does risk look like to you? Does your organization go through frequent paradigm shifts continually advancing your corporate vision?

Do you foster a collaborative working environment or does your leadership style reflect mainly "telling?"

Do you balance understanding with expectations on deadlines when the circumstances dictate?

Do you model integrity? What does integrity look like to you?

Are you able to laugh at yourself and laugh freely and openly with your leadership team?

One of the joys of coaching emerging leaders is the well-spring of ideas that surface in the coaching conversation. I find that both new and the existing leaders understand the dynamics of leadership required for today's complex business environment. Many of them emulate the qualities covered above. Where do you stand?

Business Tips From 7 Highly Successful Entrepreneurs

Article Byline Information

Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Running a business can be challenging, and it takes hard work and perseverance to achieve a high level of success. Whether you're already in business, or looking to start a business, it pays to heed the advice of others who have walked in your shoes. I asked a few self-made millionaire entrepreneurs to share their advice for being successful in business. Here's what they had to say:

Even when you have everything to lose, act like you don’t

I used to have nothing to lose, but now that I have a lot to lose, I have a whole new perspective on this. Even after you've made it to the top, you still have to act like you have nothing to lose. And beware a man who has a great deal to lose, but acts like he doesn't. Regardless of the amount of money a person has or the size of their company, or the amount of wealth they have—those people that take action and risk without the fear of failure are the ones that will ultimately take market share.

Ryan Blair is the CEO and Co-founder of ViSalus. He is a former gang member turned serial entrepreneur multimillionaire. [Photo Credit: Sally Peterson]

Work toward being significant

If you want to have success, you can't make success your goal. The key is not to worry about being successful, but to instead work toward being significant—and the success will naturally follow. If you do work that you love, and work that fulfills you, the rest will come. I truly believe that the reason I've been able to be so financially successful is because my focus has never, ever for one minute been money.

Nellie Akalp is the CEO of CorpNet, a passionate entrepreneur, small business advocate and mother of four. She has formed more than 100,000 corporations and LLCs across the U.S., building a strong passion to assist small business owners in starting, running, and protecting their small businesses the right way.

Seek and you shall find

There are thousands of clues and even direct blueprints to how to make money if you know where to look. Find a successful company that is creating products or services that you are interested in and figure out HOW they are doing it. I use a process called reverse engineering to isolate two important factors: Their traffic and monetization. Where are they getting people to see their products? How are they converting them into buyers? If you can answer these two questions with a systematic approach, you can start to build a business around it immediately.

Trey Smith is the founder of Kayabit Games with over 11,000,000 downloads, GameAcademy.com and L-System Records. He's created three different 7-figure businesses over the last 6 years totaling over $18,000,000 in sales of his own products and services. Trey recently finished authoring a book on reverse engineering wealth.

Love what you do

1) Choose something that is in line with your own personal interest and passion, then it never seems like work. 2) Don't be afraid to fail. 3) It's critical to spend the time early on to hire the right people. If you are disciplined in finding the best and brightest people who are also team players then management is easy. 4) There is no substitute for talking directly to customers. Whether they are happy or upset about something, it feels great to connect with people who are using your products, because you immediately get a good sense for how to make it even better.

Brian Sharples co-founded HomeAway with Carl Shepherd in February 2005. Since then, he has raised nearly $405 million in private funding, completed a successful IPO in 2011 (NASDAQ: AWAY) and acquired 17 websites, to create the world's leading online marketplace of vacation rentals.

Don't let them intimidate you out of your dream

1) Work harder than everyone else—I may not be the most formally educated, the most financially set up, or even the smartest, but I will give them a run for their money when it comes to ambition and determination. It's a bit cliché, but I always remember this quote: "Always go the extra mile, there's a lot less traffic up there." 2) Every expert was a newbie at one point—don't let them intimidate you out of your dream. Learn as much as you can, as fast as you can. 3) Ethics do matter—I don't care what they say about "it's just business," the world comes full circle. Be competitive, but stay true to your beliefs and principles. It always comes back around eventually.

Amber Schaub is the Founder and CEO of RuffleButts.com. The company landed at #166 of the 2012 Inc. 500 list and surpassed $10 Million in total sales that year.

Focus on quality and execution

1) Hire exceptional people, make sure they feel valued and can work as a team. 2) Work to achieve synergy (energy and alignment). 3) Practice Kaizen (Japanese for "small improvement" and "better") everyday focusing on getting a little bit better with the belief that over time outcomes become significant. 4) Focus on expands and set outcomes that are bold, passionate, measurable, written and positive. 5) Worry less about growth and more about quality and execution. When you take care of your customers and exceed their expectations, growth and opportunity follow. 6) Remember that success often comes to those who get in front of the inevitable.

Brothers Chad and Troy McWhinney made themselves millionaires when they founded their own real estate investment and development company, McWhinney, in 1991 with the purchase of 440 acres of prime Colorado land. Since founding McWhinney, Chad and Troy have taken on over five million square feet of development projects throughout Colorado and beyond, partnering in the redevelopment of Denver's historic Union Station, set to re-open 100 years after its original opening in 1914.

Be a thought leader

Based on my own experience, it pays to be a thought leader in your own industry. In today's world, it is easy to publish your own information (including videos), but the traditional media outlets still carry a lot of weight. Get positive exposure and help others by sharing your expertise. By building up a following and strategic partners, good things will happen. On a side note, it pays to love what you do. Hard work and dedication can separate success stories from those that do not have their heart in it. As the old Confucius quote goes, "Find something you love to do and you will never have to work for the rest of your life."

Mike Byrnes is a national speaker, owner of Byrnes Consulting, LLC and has been published over 250 times. His firm provides consulting services to help businesses become even more successful.

TL Direct acquisitions Leader of the week

Who is this weeks leader of the week? 

Kiara Hamilton is this weeks leader of the week.  

Words from Kiara:

"Why work hard for someone else when I can work hard for myself to build my own empire!"

Every week we nominate a leader who exemplifies all the qualities of a top leader. 

So what is a leader?

A leader is someone who leads by example. They inspire a shared vision while challenging you. They encourage and enable you to act. They help you succeed.

So what do we consider a top leader? 

This is a person who demonstrates all of the skills needed to excel in and out of the field as well as the office. 

5 Practices of Leadership

1. Model the way
2. Inspire a shared vision
3. Challenge the process
4. Enable others to act
5. Encourage the heart

A leader is someone who inspires people to have a vision and then leads the way.  A leader challenges you to go beyond the person you think you. To do the things you don’t think you can. A leader challenges you to become more, do more, and develops the leader within you. 

TL Direct acquisitions Leader of the week

Who is this weeks leader of the week? 

Margarita Crespo

My goal is to help as many people as possible get to their goals while I work on hitting mine. I appreciate the nomination by my peers. I hope to help each get here too.










Every week we nominate a leader who exemplifies all the qualities of a top leader. 

So what is a leader?

A leader is someone who leads by example. They inspire a shared vision while challenging you. They encourage and enable you to act. They help you succeed.

So what do we consider a top leader? 

This is a person who demonstrates all of the skills needed to excel in and out of the field as well as the office. 

Puerto Rico Trip

Melissa Burrell and her guest Kiara Hamilton attended the trip in Puerto Rico. Lets hear from them:

Melissa
“Puerto Rico was absolutely incredible. It was an experience of a lifetime to get to see another part of the world and get away to a place that was so serene. It just goes to show if you work for something that it pays off. In order to see or be a part of great things you have to work hard. I cannot wait to make it to owner and be able to do things like this all the time whenever I want. This is something that I will always remember I’m so grateful for the opportunity!”




Kiara
“Puerto Rico was amazing! Having the chance to see another country and being able to relax was mind blowing. The quote ‘work hard play hard’ is definitely true! When I make it to my goal of management, the sky is the limit will be my slogan.” 

Scientists have discovered a personality difference between entrepreneurs and employees

Steve Jobs said you need a broad "bag of experiences."

Around 13% of Americans are starting or running their own companies.

Almost everyone else is an employee.

We may have found out the difference between the two types. 

According to a 2013 Swiss-German study, the difference lies in disposition: While an employee is a specialist, an entrepreneur is a jack-of-all-trades. 

"Entrepreneurs differ from employees in that they must be sufficiently well versed in a whole set of entrepreneurial skills," write Uschi Backes-Gellner of the University of Zurich in Switzerland and Petra Moog of the University of Siegen in Germany. 

On the other hand, they say that employees are "specialists who work for others and whose talents are combined with those of other specialists (employees) by the entrepreneurs."

In their study, Backes-Gellner and Moog analyzed survey data from 2000 German college students. Their analysis showed that people with a broader portfolio of experiences were more likely to have a "disposition toward entrepreneurship." Qualities that predicted against entrepreneurship included a desire for job or income security, as well as, perhaps surprisingly, having an apprenticeship or internship — since those lead to specialization. 

Their study built on a decade's worth of research.

The "jack of all trades" theory first came from Stanford University economist Edward P. Lazear, whose studies of Stanford MBAs show that students who take a broad range of classes and a wider range of jobs are more likely to become entrepreneurs. A follow-up German study replicated those results. 

Backes-Gellner and Moog expanded on that finding by taking in social networks. Their research suggested that entrepreneurs don't just have a diverse set of skills, but they also have a diverse network of relationships — friends, parents, and business contacts that they can call on when launching a business. Findings in network science show that having such a diverse social network is hugely beneficial at a creative level, too, since the more perspectives you're exposed to, the more refined your ideas become.

So it's a double-diversity that leads to entrepreneurship: lots of experiences, lots of contacts. 

"It is the jacks-of-all-trades across a whole portfolio of individual resources and not the masters-of-one who are likely to become entrepreneurs," Backes-Gellner and Moog write. "The mere social butterflies or the mere computer nerds are not likely to become entrepreneurs because they are both too imbalanced and thereby less likely to be successful as entrepreneurs."

The research confirms a lot of folk wisdom about what makes founders function. None other than Steve Jobs used to say that creative people have a more diverse "bag of experiences" than everybody else. In a 1982 speech, the Apple founder told his audience that "if you're gonna make connections which are innovative ... you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does."

Qualities of a Leader

In his book How the Best Leaders Lead, Brian Tracy defines the seven qualities of leadership as:

1. Vision
2. Courage
3. Integrity
4. Humility
5. Foresight
6. Focus
7. Cooperation

Leaders are not born, they are developed. All of these qualities can be learned and then developed through repetition and practice.