Characteristics Of A Great Leader

Leaders are individuals who engage in doing right things and inspire others to follow their footsteps. The characteristics of leaders and leadership styles vary depending on many factors including the environment they work in. For instance, leaders of a community, religion, and politics have their own distinct futures. However, they also share some common characteristics – a power to instill their vision and philosophy into their followers in order to attain a specific goal. Thus, the success and failure of leaders depend on their ability to inspire and guide their teams. In today's dynamic world, we need to carefully scrutinize what characteristics are required to be a great leader and yet what are the main challenges that can hinder leaders

Vision is a fundamental aspect of leaders and used as a blueprint to achieve their goal. Jack Welch, emphasized the importance of vison in his quote; “in a good business, leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion”. Leaders also require the courage to achieve their vision regardless of risks involved. Without courage and firm commitment of achieving once own vision, attaining something would be a mere dream. Integrity is another important feature of a great leaders. This indicates a determination of leaders to achieve their goal and signals consistency and truthfulness for what they are advocating to achieve. Most importantly, great leaders are known by their humility. They have a self-confidence and yet humble enough to recognize the value of others. Great leaders have an outstanding capacity in a strategic planning - the ability to anticipate future opportunities and threat with some degree of certainty. This is what differs leaders from an ordinary people. Great leaders possess the ability to align their followers to cooperate with them. This helps leaders to seize the support of key individuals having specialized skills in the courses of achieving their

The reason for this could be attributed to internal or external factors. Internally, the leader may fail in developing the relevant skills required to manage the change. These skills are related to job prioritization, effective management of time, strategic thinking, making timely decision and other related skills needed to smooth their work. Leaders also face external challenges which are beyond their control. In this dynamically changing world, keeping up with an advancement of technology is the primary challenge facing leaders. The speed of changes we are experiencing may hinder the ability of leaders to suit their vision into the changing circumstances. Globalization is another challenge faced by leaders because any action taken elsewhere will have affect the actions of leaders everywhere. On the other hand, leaders are experiencing a failure to understand customer needs due to a swift change in customers need and expectations. Thus, fulfilling the need of customers is becoming a difficult