The Four Keys To Becoming A Good Leader

I wrote an article elsewhere about the 4 keys to becoming the best leader you can be. You could say it’s a high-level summary of my leadership book, The Three Levels of Leadership. It’s too long to fit in this blog, but the 4 keys are:

1. Have a clear practical definition of leadership (many of us have a fuzzy, unhelpful view of it).
2. Know the purpose of a leader (because “leader” and “leadership” aren’t the same thing).
3. Know what leaders have to do behaviourally to make leadership happen.
4. Know how to grow yourself as a leader from the inside out… and start growing yourself.

The first three keys are intellectual, but you might be surprised how many problems they cause if a person hasn’t grasped them. I see this all the time in my work as an executive coach and I wish I’d known them when I was a CEO.

The fourth key is the big one and it has three facets:

• The first is expanding your technical knowhow and skills.
• The second is cultivating the right attitude toward others – the attitude that they are as important as you (which leads to the view that your role is to serve those you lead).
• The third is self-mastery. This is the all-important psychological part – taking control of your mind and its contents through practices like mindfulness meditation and self-enquiry.  Self-mastery is the key to growing your leadership presence (sometimes called executive presence).

That’s a quick summary. Hope it helped.