Anand Mishra — Guide to the Qualities of an Effective Leader

Guide to the Qualities of an Effective Leader

Is leadership a skill? Qualities of an Effective Leader are the topic of thousands of books, instructional videos, and blog posts. It’s clearly a topic that interests people, and if you’ve looked into it even a little, you’ve probably noticed a trend in articles with titles like The Top 10 Qualities of a Great Leader or How to Become a Better Leader Overnight. In these cut-and-paste articles you’ll tend to see the same pieces of advice about what is an effective leader: be a confident, delegate, communicate well, inspire your employees, and be positive.

That’s all sort of obvious, isn’t it?

Not to mention the fact that these are all qualities of a good leader which would benefit anyone, not just someone in a managerial or leadership position? Strangely, there are two qualities you tend not to see mentioned in these kinds of pieces, both of which are integral to the success of any leader in almost any position. These are qualities of an effective leader, not a good one, not a great one.

These qualities are dedication and goal orientation.

These two good leadership qualities work hand in hand—they sound similar, but they’re quite different. Let’s talk a moment about each.

Goal Orientation

“Goal-oriented” is part of the qualities of a leader listed on just about every resume out there. People think it sounds nice and that hiring managers like to hear it. The reality is that the term is so overused that most of the time it just ends up getting glossed over, similar to other cliches like being a “people person.” A fact is, most people are not goal oriented. How many people of character have you known who have some big dream or goal, but it’s always on the back burner and they never seem to get around to it? Or business people—who most likely had “goal oriented” on their resume—really never go the extra mile to work, get things done sluggishly, and really can’t wait to get home, crack open a beer, and watch the game?

Conversely, have you ever encountered someone who seems to get a lot done in a short amount of time? Or someone who seems to always be focused on their goals—and they tend to achieve them, including the education necessary?

These people are goal oriented.

And they are rare.

Being goal-oriented means that you’ll do whatever it takes to achieve a goal. Note that this is a quality, not a skill or a mindset. Despite the rarity of this quality, it can be fostered and developed in yourself over time, which we’ll discuss in a moment.

It’s also important to remember that the goal part of being goal oriented doesn’t necessarily have to be a huge goal, like becoming a millionaire or inventing a perpetual motion the machine. If you’re working as the manager at McDonald’s you could be more goal-oriented than, say, an executive at a Fortune 500 company (probably not, but it is possible).

Being goal-oriented simply means that you know what you want and you aren’t going to stop at anything to get it—even if that’s to serve the best Big Mac.

You might be scoffing. “Who cares about flipping burgers—I want to get a promotion at work by making my team work more productively.”

No matter what your goal is, you have to know what it is and not stop. Maybe the person flipping burgers at the fast food joint wants to learn everything they can about the business, use their minimum wage to put themselves through college to get a business degree, and open up their own franchise and own one or two or twenty McDonald’s someday.

If you don’t have an ultimate goal that determines where you’re going and why you will never become goal oriented. And no, “being a better leader” isn’t a goal—it’s a means to an end. What’s your end?

Dedication

Think of dedication like the fuel behind being goal oriented. You might know what your goals are, and dedication is how you’ll get there. Dedication is hard to pin down because it takes so many different forms—it might be as simple as waking up in the morning and being on time. It might involve putting in a few extra hours of work every day so that over time you can achieve your goals—and understanding that not all goals can be accomplished overnight.

Dedication is the ability to stay a course of weeks, months, and years. It’s easy to get discouraged for many people—you’ve seen it time and time again. A friend or family member gets very interested in something, maybe it’s a new business idea, a hobby, or even setting up a garden in their back yard. They’re great at it… for a while. At some point no matter how goal-oriented they appeared to be in the beginning, they didn’t have the dedication to pull through and make their goal materialize in the real world.

Tying it all Together

When you combine dedication and goal orientation, you become an unstoppable force. Goal orientation keeps you on track and knowing where you need to go, and dedication is the fuel that powers you along the way. They’re fine qualities to have by themselves, but in tandem, they’re very effective for whatever you’re trying to do—including becoming a better leader.

When you’ve got your goals in line and the motivation to keep slogging away toward them—no matter how tough it gets—you’ll naturally become better at all of those qualities we discussed in the beginning of this piece from the cookie-cutter articles and books. The two qualities of dedication and goal orientation are a means of aligning your every move with the same strategy. So when something needs to be delegated, you’ll delegate it. When something needs to be communicated well to your team or employees, you’ll do exactly that—you’ll find that it all becomes quite natural and obvious once you’ve successfully developed these two qualities.

How to Foster Goal Orientation and Dedication

Make no mistake about it, dedication and goal orientation are not inborn qualities. While it may seem as though the Steve Jobs of the world are born with these qualities and thus naturally have an edge over the little people, it just isn’t so.

Goal orientation is easier to train yourself into recognizing and executing than dedication. How you decide what your ultimate goal is, that’s a process that everyone responds to a little differently. You might need to sit down and write out a list, or you might know the answer immediately. Whatever it is, chunk it down into smaller goals that all point in the same direction. Everything you do (within the context of work and leading) should help you get closer to that goal, whether it’s a big step like a promotion or a tiny baby step like telling your assistant to make copies.

Goal orientation is more about an idea than an action. Dedication is harder to incorporate consistently into your daily life—the key word there being consistent. If you’ve ever found yourself highly motivated and dedicated before but petered out after a week or two, there’s one of two problems happening: one, your goal orientation is off point (e.g., you’re working toward something you don’t actually want), or two, you simply haven’t developed the “muscle” of dedication enough.

And make no mistake about it, dedication is absolutely like a muscle in many ways. It gets easier over time—the more you commit to something and the harder you work not to abandon the goal or settle for less, the easier dedication becomes. After a while, you don’t feel like you’re “acting dedicated,” you’re just acting like you. At that point, you’ve become a dedicated, goal oriented person.

Final Thoughts

The concepts of dedication and goal orientation are so important to leadership because they act as the foundation for everything else. Communication skills become easy when you know that in order to reach your goal you have to get an idea across to someone clearly. Delegation becomes a no-brainer when you need to free up time and energy to do the things you need to handle yourself. Inspiring your employees or teammates comes along with the territory because people naturally gravitate toward others that are driven and hardworking—they’ll be impressed by your energy and want to help.

And confidence? Well, you’ll have that in spades.

All of these other qualities that people talk about in conjunction with leadership are important for sure, but it’s always been strikingly obvious that the basics of what pushes a person to achieve more, to go further, and to attain their dreams are always suspiciously omitted. Think about the successful people you know in your life—why are they successful? Is it because they’re great communicators? Is it because they’re great at inspiring their teammates? Those things have probably played a part in their success, but at the end of the day, it’s probably because, at the core of their very being, they’ve developed both determination and goal orientation. And so can you—if you want it badly enough.