Happiness Through Humanism: being a good leader

Showing posts with label being a good leader. Show all posts

Top Ten Traits of Humanistic Leaders

I was complaining about governmental leadership being bad leadership. I was asked - how I define good leadership. What follows, in no particular order, is my top 10 list of traits a good humanistic leader should have/exhibit:

Compassionate: If you don’t care – you won’t care to be ethical

Tactful: Everyone has issues – a good leader knows how to work around those issues to get the work done.

Rational: If what you want people to do doesn’t make sense – then you aren’t a good leader.

Strategic: Knowing which battles are important and which ones aren’t – help you deploy resources effectively to you can achieve your goals.

Responsible: The only thing worse than an uncaring leader is one who doesn’t follow through on promises.

Conscientious: Working hard and making sure that every member of the team has what they need to get the job done is important.

Critical thinker: Being able to tell truth from lies is necessary. Otherwise you may lead your team off course.

Inclusive: Good leaders know that every member of their team is there for a reason and has something valuable to contribute. They know their team knows things they don’t and they make sure to get that input so that the decisions being made are well informed.

Confident: Insecure leaders are horrible to work with because instead of fixing problems, they spend their time trying not to get blamed for problems. There is a big difference. Most people want to fix problems – not provide cover for incompetent idiots.

Humble: Knowing you might be wrong helps ensure that you take the time to make good decisions and not just expedient ones.

How do you go about developing these traits? Practice. You have to prioritize being compassionate in order to remind yourself to be compassionate when you are stressed or making decisions. You have to ask yourself – what is the compassionate thing to do. It’s the same with all of these traits. It’s a choice – which then gets manifested in behavior through practice. Over time, these traits become second nature.

To get started, chose one trait and start reminding yourself to practice it and when you fail, think through what you might have done differently if you had actively chosen to exemplify that trait and then next time – do better.

If you want to learn more about Humanistic Management - check out my courses at Humanist Learning Systems: The Principles of Humanistic Management

Reality

Reality isn’t always pleasant. But we don’t solve our problems by pretending they don’t exist.

Accepting reality will help you be a better leader. A leader who sticks their head in the sand isn’t a leader. They are a coward that is too afraid to lead.

Good leaders accept reality, even when it is unpleasant. The don’t flinch from their responsibilities, they just get on with the job of fixing the problems whatever they are.

Resist the temptation to ignore reality or to plan for the best case scenario. Plan for the worse case and be pleasantly surprised if it turns out to be easier to deal with then you thought.

I am currently running numbers for a property rental business. Sure, I could run optimistic numbers, but I would be lying to myself. Instead, I run real numbers. What is it I have right now. How much is it really going to cost me to do whatever it is I need to do. A good cost benefit analysis is based in reality. Anything else is a flight of fantasy and won’t lead to good problem solving.

I used to be in franchise sales and I helped a lot of people create their business plans. Almost all of them were overly optimistic about income and overly optimistic about expenses. My advice was always - halve your income, double your expenses. Do you still want to do this? That is reality based decision making.

To learn more about reality based decision making – check out this course.

Who are you?

Turns out, who are you is not an easy question to answer.

There are multiple dimensions to who you are. There is who you think you are. There is who others perceive you to be. How you are perceived may depend entirely on context, where people know you from. You are most likely a different person to your friends then you are to you co-workers and you are probably also a different person to your lover. You are also probably different at different stages in your life and perhaps at different times of the day, depending on what you ate or didn’t eat and how that is affecting your brain processes at any given moment.

For those of us who aspire to lead, we have to answer this in at least 2 dimensions. Who do we wish to be, for ourselves. What are our personal ethics and what sort of behavior are we ok with and what isn’t. This helps us resist temptation when it presents itself.

We also need to know what sort of impact we want to have on others. I have written before that it isn’t enough to want to do good. Your reputation may not hinge on who you actually are, but rather on who you are perceived to be. This is especially true for people who put themselves out there to be leaders.

Being a good leader, because it depends on perception, requires you to perform as a leader would. This doesn’t mean being inauthentic. It means understanding that presentation matters and taking the steps necessary to make sure your presentation is consistent with your core values as a person.

Some leaders fake it. Their presented self is a lie and doesn’t jive with who they really are. However, the good leaders are ones whose personal and professional lives are consistently ethical and visionary and rational and hardworking and fearless.

Don’t be afraid to wear your ethics on your sleeve. Being open about who you are personally, helps people understand who you aspire to be as a leader. This is where the fearlessness comes in. Most of us are quiet about our ethics and values. Those are personal to us. For leaders, they need to be explicit which means you need to perform your ethical values publicly for them to be understood.

Will this protect you from attack? Of course not. Unethical leaders who lie to gain advantage will lie about you if it helps them. But being clear about who you are and who you aspire to be as a leader, will help you confront and take on the challenges that come with being a leader.

Learn more about humanistic management with these courses.