Leadership With Attitude

Dear followers,

The manager gets in the meeting room. He is 15 minutes late. The meeting has already started since someone else took the initiative to start gathering information from the various participants. The team is used to such a scenario! The manager then asks:

- What is the agenda for today? What do we need to discuss?

Someone then replies:

- Well, you were supposed to talk to us about the plan for next year. Don’t you remember?
- Ah yes! The annual plan. Well, I have not worked on it at all. I’ve been side-tracked by something more interesting. What else?

A cell phone then rings. The manager leaves the room to take the call. He never comes back.

Do you think that manager is a good manager? Of course not! However, sadly enough, I’m sure you have experienced scenarios similar to that one at least once in your corporate life. A manager shows up late and unprepared for a team meeting. His attitude does not show very much respect for his employees, doesn’t it?

I think leadership is made of two components: process and attitude. I have a mini-course coming up shortly on the process of leadership (more on that later), but in this post and the following one, I’ll try to give you indications of what should be the attitude of a good leader. If I miss some or if you disagree with the list, then please post your comments so that we can start a discussion!

Integrity
This is probably the most important attitude that a leader needs to have. A manager must do what he says he will do. If he does not, how can he expect his team members to deliver when he will ask them to? When you tell your team that you will have something done by a certain time, always make sure that it is done and well done!

Interest
The leader must show interest in all the tasks that his followers are doing. Just imagine if a leader delegates something to one of his team members and does not even remember that he delegated that task. How will the team member feel, you think? Do you think that he will complete the task or feel good about doing so? Without interest, the leader loses his credibility!

Passion
I mentioned in the previous post that a leader must have a vision of the future for the team. He must show a lot of passion towards this vision if he wants to have people following him. The road can be bumpy. Only communicated passion can ensure that people will push through and finally succeed.

Respect
A leader must show a lot of respect towards his team members. He must trust them and be proud of what they do! Without respect and trust, there are no teams possible! A good leader must know that.

I’ll add more pragmatic elements of the leadership attitude in my next post but until then, what do you think of this list so far? Are you a good leadership example, showing the right attitude?