Have you ever asked yourself if you have the qualities to be a leader? Do you wish to shape your personality to embrace leadership qualities?
Leadership is something that many of us aspire to but few of us ever get to lead. That is because leadership often demands unique personality types to handle the demands that come with it.
Below, we look at the best traits for leadership that you can learn.
Extraversion
According to the Big Five Personality traits, developed by psychologists a few years back, extraversion refers to the ability to be social and open to making new connections while also being assertive.
While this could suggest that good leaders need to be extroverts, it is far from the truth. What it means is that people who make good leaders need to possess good social and communication skills. So, whether the person is an introvert or extrovert, they needed to know how to be tactful in communication. So, if you want to become a good leader, begin working on your communication and social skills.
Openness to Experience
This is another trait of good leadership because it signifies the ability to take risks and be flexible with your course of action, and also being creative and innovative.
Openness means that you will more likely encourage others to share their views and thoughts openly and also, you will be welcoming of dissenting opinions.
It is also linked with creativity and innovation, meaning you can lead people to new discoveries.
Conscientiousness
To be conscientious is to have the tendency to be organized, responsible, goal-oriented and hard-working.
When you are conscientious, you have great impulse and self-regulation. When it comes to leadership, this is key because it means that you will set and keep long-term goals, you will hold back on rash decisions due to great impulse control and you will take responsibility for your actions.
Previously, these traits were thought of as those that make a great employee. But, in recent times, we have learnt that it is also important that a leader possesses these traits.
However, one thing to note is that the relationship between leadership and personality is not as straightforward and possessing these traits does not necessarily mean that you are destined to lead. Work on developing your full-skillset and not rely totally on your personality. Leadership is work, not merely personality.
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