Ten traits of great business leaders

Unless they are armchair generals, all successful entrepreneurs, executives, or business leaders stay on top of the competition – this is trait number one. Marketing Warfare by Al Ries and Jack Trout is still a great read.

Here are nine additional traits that are evergreen. Yes, even during the great resignation (which is most likely to be followed soon with a great return to work.).

Negotiate effectively. Have you ever heard a leader or CEO say that they hate to negotiate? I have not. It’s one of the most fundamental traits of a business leader. Negotiation requires critical thinking, creativity, and refined communication skills for successful outcomes. Once you learn to negotiate skillfully and begin practicing it, you will find it invigorating and fulfilling.

Learn from History and Experience Why do people write history? Why are the events and biographies recorded? Is it because they make a good read and will sell many books?

History’s primary purpose is to teach curious minds to learn from others’ experiences, failures, and successes and not fail. One life may not be enough if we try to learn everything by experiencing it ourselves. Learn from the insights of Bill Gates, Andy Grove, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Ratan Tata.

Prioritize and Focus. A CEO should focus on instilling the right culture, hiring and retaining the best talent, and ensuring a healthy cash flow—just three things. Delegate the rest. Your three things may be different. Fewer the things, the better chances of them getting done.

Act on intelligent decisions. It may sound simple, but it’s where even successful leaders are most likely to fall. They get lazy, take shortcuts, listen to yes-men, fall for BS, overreact to a single data point, or fail to act. It’s the single most preventable cause of leadership failure.

Engage key stakeholders. A CEO’s key stakeholders are employees, customers, and investors. Your stakeholders can’t be much different. Engage them regularly. Tell them what they need to know and give it to them straight. Ask questions and listen to the answers. Motivate and inspire them. It isn’t easy, but that’s what it takes to be a great leader.

Hire, train and promote the best. Let the unsatisfactory go. Hire when you must fill an open position with meaningful work. Do not just hire people with college degrees and an all-star GPA. Consider community-college students, mediocre GPAs, or dropouts. Discern between literacy and education.

Train people in soft skills, writing, and speaking. Soft skills are hard skills no matter what job they are performing.

Promote self-leaders. They do everything themselves for themselves. You want someone capable of taking a project to completion. You will have more time available for stuff other than their supervision.

When promoting, how many years someone has been doing something is hyped. What matters is how well they have been doing it. How much more have they learned than the minimum requirements of their job?

Most organizations have employees you can’t afford to lose and those you can’t keep. Promote and motivate the former and get rid of the latter.

Attend to the numbers. Suppose your customers love your products and services. Most likely, your employees are effective and engaged, and you’re doing a good job running the business. It will show up in the numbers. Financial statements provide critical metrics on the state of your business, especially year-to-year comparisons.

Follow the right path. Businesses present challenging situations and difficult tradeoffs. Critical thinking helps. When you are facing the dilemma of Now or later, ask yourself, “What will take me to the solution I seek?”

The tendency is to follow the most straightforward and comfortable path. But, the more robust way of solving a trickier problem is often the right path. Follow what will deliver the best results and not what is most comfortable.

Know when to abandon. Courage and perseverance are qualities of every great leader. But successful leaders also know when to leave an endeavor. They often ask themselves:

. Why am I doing this?
. Am I solving a problem?
. Is what I am doing useful?
. What value am I adding?
. Is this the best way?
. Am I setting the right priorities?
. Do I know when to quit?