ESSAY

Four traits of Effective Leaders You Should Steal Today

Business leaders are responsible for setting the company’s vision, being the change agent, promoting continuous learning, leading strategy, and maintaining the company’s values and culture. A pretty light workload, huh?


An effective leader can spur innovation, elevate a company high above its competitors, and empower employees to accomplish things
they never thought possible. On the flip side, an ineffective leader (and they do exist) can run a company into the ground.

What separates effective leaders from ineffective leaders?

While most leaders are intelligent, competent, and competitive, the results they create vary significantly. Effective leaders have a strong, intuitive grasp of the future and make good choices and sound decisions.

Ineffective leaders tend to misread reality and make poor decisions—often repeatedly. They avoid risk and treat change as an exception rather than a rule. They also consistently use the five words that should never be said in any organization: It’s not a problem yet.

So now that you know what doesn’t work, here are four traits that effective leaders possess that you should copy and adapt as your own.
They are future-savvy in that they not only predict the future, but also rehearse it by looking at the range of possibilities and possible courses of action to address each scenario. They ask the right questions and generally make good decisions.


They are pioneers because they are willing to explore new market territory, new domains, new customers, and new businesses. They break the traditional rules and seek market opportunities that are not well served.

They are realists who are in tune with the marketplace and possess the skill to communicate this reality to the rest of the organization. They are willing to make brutally frank and honest assessments of everything inside and outside of the enterprise, and they are not afraid to tell it like it is.

They make choices—large and small. While making the large choices (major strategy issues, new alliances, and partnerships) is important to the organization’s well being, many successes and failures are created in the details of the small choices—whom you listen to and whom you avoid, meetings you attend or blow off, what excites you and what bores you, etc.

Here’s a parting thought… Prior to his death in 1995, Darwin Smith had been CEO of Kimberly-Clark for 20 years, a long time in CEO-years. The secret to his longevity?

In his own words, “I never stopped trying to become qualified for this job. The job is always changing and so is the skill set to do it. The key is ‘how do I make sure I keep learning as a CEO so I can prove my leadership style is worth it?’”

We think he was on to something.