How to become a great leader: Skills, traits, and strategies
Tempo Team
Good leadership comes from the ability to recognize and amplify human potential. It requires individuals to inspire others toward something greater than themselves, and the best leaders create something people want to support.
Great leaders must be open to change in order to create something their team and their audience are excited about. The ability to take smart risks and pivot when necessary keeps an organization competitive. For example, Jeff Bezos transformed Amazon multiple times, turning the online bookstore into a global commerce and technology empire. His success came from an unrelenting commitment to reinvention.
If you’re wondering how to be a great leader, you can gain powerful insights from the success of industry giants like Bezos. Here, we’ll share success stories to illustrate how you can lift your organization to greater heights.
How great leaders inspire and mobilize their teams
Author and inspirational speaker Simon Sinek said, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”
Effective leaders communicate a “why” to convert passive participants into active advocates. This requires them to translate corporate objectives into a narrative that resonates with fundamental human desires for meaning and connection.
In business, good leaders use emotional intelligence and connect with the people who make up their organizations. They create ecosystems where individual contributions are recognized as essential components of a whole, turning employees from resources into strategic partners.
Steps to cultivate essential leadership skills
Becoming a better leader requires self-awareness and intentional growth. This is where one of the most important – yet often overlooked – leadership skills comes in handy: the ability to listen. By engaging with your team, you’ll uncover valuable insights and opportunities to improve.
The following steps will help strengthen your skills through introspection and external feedback:
Set clear personal development goals: Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses to identify leadership qualities you want to improve.
Regularly seek constructive feedback: Ask for feedback from your team members, peers, and mentors. Maintain various channels for constructive criticism before, during, and after projects.
Delegate and trust your team: A good leader empowers others. Building trust between team members promotes efficiency and creative problem-solving.
Develop a decision-making framework: Find a system suited to your leadership style that allows you to evaluate options effectively while encouraging team member and stakeholder input.
Regular reflection: Self-reflection allows you to learn from successes and mistakes, further sharpening your skills.
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RegisterKey traits of a great leader
Great leaders foster an environment of trust, engagement, and motivation. They inspire loyalty and commitment from their team members by aligning their actions with their words, especially in tough situations.
The following examples demonstrate how strong leaders guide their team members with qualities like empathy, resilience, critical thinking, and creativity:
Empathy
Employees who feel respected invest themselves in an organization’s success. Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks, ensured the company offered health insurance to every eligible full- and part-time employee even though he wasn’t legally required to. He provided insurance to part-time employees because he understood genuine care inspires genuine commitment.
Resilience
Leaders use pressure to sharpen their resolve. When Howard Schultz returned to Starbucks as CEO in 2008, the company was in crisis. Profits were plummeting, stores were closing, and its brand identity was fading.
Instead of panicking or making short-term cuts, Schultz doubled down on the company’s core values. He temporarily closed thousands of stores for barista retraining, reinvested in quality, and refocused on customer experience. His steady leadership style eventually restored Starbucks to profitability.
Critical thinking
A good leader challenges assumptions and asks the tough questions others overlook. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella transformed his organization by shifting its culture from knowing everything to learning everything. He upended the previously insular and competitive work environment, encouraging team members to learn from failure and continuously grow.
Creativity
Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world.”
Creativity helps teams break free from the norm and envision new possibilities. Effective leaders see opportunities where others see obstacles, and they encourage experimentation.
Leadership skills to develop for long-term success
Professional development is an ongoing process. Good leaders don’t just possess the previously mentioned traits; they continuously sharpen specific skills to better serve their organization.
These are some of the most essential leadership skills:
Focus
Leaders must project a clear vision and purpose to inspire and motivate team members. Praticing discipline and maintaining focus upholds organizational values while adapting to new developments and embracing change.
For example, Warren Buffett understands the importance of perseverance when facing challenges. Buffett’s ability to navigate market shifts, avoid fleeting trends, and stay focused on long-term goals has kept Berkshire Hathaway thriving for decades.
Communication
Great leaders make their ideas easy to understand. They strip away the fluff to ensure team members and customers know what matters and why.
Steve Jobs sold Apple to investors, partners, and customers with inspiring storytelling, focused messaging, and simple visuals. He understood that technical jargon wasn’t as compelling as a straightforward acknowledgment of consumers’ needs and a simple explanation of his proposed solution.
Decision-making
Leaders gather insight, make the call, and take responsibility for the outcome. Indecision kills momentum, and those who wait for complete certainty will fall behind.
Jeff Bezos built Amazon’s culture around “disagree and commit,” meaning teams don’t have to reach a consensus on every decision. Once a call is made, everyone moves forward. Strong decision-makers adapt and adjust as needed.
Conflict resolution
Unspoken frustrations turn into resentment, which kills teamwork. When someone feels unheard or undervalued, they disengage. Good leaders create an environment where disagreements are aired early and handled directly.
Ray Dalio built Bridgewater Associates around radical transparency, requiring employees to address issues openly rather than letting them fester. Leaders who navigate challenging conversations and mediate disagreements earn more trust than those who pretend everything is fine as is.
Leadership vs. management: Understanding the difference
Leadership and management require different mindsets. Strong leaders drive transformational change, whereas managers maintain stability.
Nadella again provides an ideal case study. When he became CEO of Microsoft, he shifted the company’s focus toward innovation and cloud computing. Meanwhile, strong project managers within the company kept daily operations running smoothly, allowing the company to execute Nadella’s vision. Both duties are essential.
To summarize the distinction between leadership and management:
Leadership paints a vision of the future. Leadership’s role is to inspire people toward a shared goal. Effective leaders cultivate trust, not compliance.
Management ensures execution and efficiency, guiding teams toward organizational goals. A company without managers will be chaotic; a company without leaders will be directionless.
Best practices for leading a team
Outstanding leadership starts with clarity and accountability. Leaders set expectations, define roles, and remove roadblocks so teams can focus on meaningful work. As part of this process, they should foster a culture of ownership that gives team members autonomy while holding them accountable for results.
Here are more strategies for maximizing organizational success:
Set clear goals
A team without a goal is just a group of people working near each other. Leaders define the mission, the milestones, and the meaning behind the work. Practice SMART goal setting by ensuring goals fulfill the following criteria:
Specific: All initiatives should have precisely defined outputs.
Measurable: Objective metrics allow you to quantitatively gauge success.
Achievable: Goals should be possible, given your team’s resources and skills.
Relevant: Outputs must support the organization’s mission and vision.
Time-bound: A set timeframe keeps team members accountable and motivated.
Encourage feedback
Interdisciplinary collaboration between developers, designers, marketers, and executives helps teams find innovative solutions and weed out issues before they get out of hand. Leaders can also learn from each other, helping them gain an outside perspective.
Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, built a culture where candid feedback was encouraged and essential to the creative process. At Pixar, directors and producers on each project regularly engage in the Braintrust, sharing their works in progress and soliciting constructive criticism. Instead of jumping straight to corrections and solutions, they seek to understand the issue and apply lessons learned throughout production.
Elevate your leadership journey with Tempo
Effective leadership is about making decisions that build a better organization. Tempo can help you refine those decisions and track progress with real-time data and intelligent insights.
Tempo’s suite of solutions streamlines every step of your projects, from ideation to execution. Structure PPM tracks multiple projects and portfolios from one Jira-integrated dashboard. Meanwhile, Strategic Roadmaps helps you present a high-level vision that will resonate with team members and stakeholders. And Portfolio Manager enables you to predict project completion dates with near-perfect accuracy using predictive scheduling.
Whether you lead a startup or a global enterprise, Tempo keeps you and your team aligned and ahead of the curve. Get started now.
