According to trait leadership theory, effective leaders have in common a pattern of personal characteristics that support their ability to mobilize others toward a shared vision. These traits include dimensions of personality and motives, sets of skills and capabilities, and behavior in social relationships.

The Characteristics & Qualities of a Good Leader

• Integrity.
• Ability to delegate.
• Communication.
• Self-awareness.
• Gratitude.
• Learning agility.
• Influence.
• Empathy.

The person with the ultimate responsibility for leadership development, however, is YOU. All the incentives, training, and mentors in the world will accomplish nothing if each individual does not take ownership of his/her own leadership development. Learning to lead is a lifelong process.

What best explains the comparison of the skills approach to sports such as golf and tennis? The skills approach suggests that many individuals have the potential for leadership. In the skills theory, technical skills grow in importance as one moves up the managerial hierarchy.

To summarize, the three-skill approach includes technical, human, and conceptual skills. It is important for leaders to have all three skills; depend- ing on where they are in the management structure, however, some skills are more important than others are.

Human skills are “people skills.” They are the abilities that help a leader to work effectively with followers, peers, and superiors to accomplish the organization’s goals. Human skills allow a leader to assist group members in working cooperatively as a group to achieve common goals.

Leadership styles based on authority can be 4 types:

• Autocratic Leadership,
• Democratic or Participative Leadership,
• Free-Rein or Laisse-Faire Leadership, and.
• Paternalistic Leadership.

Intelligence comes in many forms; it’s just not limited to mental capacity. There are other ‘intellectual’ factors perhaps more important at work in a leader’s life. I call them The 4 Intelligences of a Leader; they are wisdom, character, social and spiritual intelligence.

Intelligent leadership rests in the sweet spot of commitment to excellence, inner-core strengths, and outer-core competencies. Inner-core strengths include traits like character, positive emotions, positive beliefs, self-concept, and values.

Emotionally intelligent leaders are aware of their own emotions, and intuitively aware of the emotions of others. Through their empathy, emotionally intelligent leaders factor in emotions when presenting information, making assignments or otherwise engaging with their people.

Emotional intelligence for leadership can consist of these five attributes: self-awareness, self-management, empathy, relationship management, and effective communication.

Let’s focus again on Gemma and explore some of the less favorable implications of her high EQ.

• Lower levels of creativity and innovation potential.
• Difficulty giving and receiving negative feedback.
• Reluctance to ruffle people’s feathers.
• A well-developed ability to manipulate others.
• An aversion to risk.

It’s a tool. In other words, emotional intelligence can be used for good or evil. This is the dark side of emotional intelligence: using one’s knowledge of emotions to strategically achieve self-serving goals.

EQ Debate. In his book Emotional Intelligence, author and psychologist Daniel Goleman suggested that EQ (or emotional intelligence quotient) might actually be more important than IQ. 2 Instead, he suggests that there are actually multiple intelligences and that people may have strengths in a number of these areas.

Emotional intelligence helps you build stronger relationships, succeed at school and work, and achieve your career and personal goals. It can also help you to connect with your feelings, turn intention into action, and make informed decisions about what matters most to you.

The 10 Qualities of an Emotionally Intelligent Person

• Empathy. I love this definition of empathy:
• Self-Awareness. Self-awareness is the art of understanding yourself, recognizing what stimuli you’re facing and then preparing for how to manage yourself both in a proactive and reactive manner.
• Curiosity.
• Analytical Mind.
• Belief.
• Needs and Wants.
• Passionate.
• Optimistic.

A highly emotional person is someone who tends to feel things more deeply and for longer than the average person. People who are highly emotional are often deeply compassionate and self-aware, but at the same time may feel exhausted from feeling all the feels all the time.

The three states of mind are wise mind, emotion mind, and reasonable mind.