Every employee is different. They have different experience, personal values, beliefs or cultural backgrounds. A good leader is able to reveal their differences and use their full potential to work better together. This requires emotional intelligence and other abilities which were recently highlighted on Forbes.com. Do you have them?
1. Ability to allow employees to act naturally
A leader should not try to teach others to think the way s/he thinks. On the contrary, s/he should allow them to follow their natural instincts. S/he knows where they can succeed and enables them to do so. S/he believes in the identity of each individual and helps develop the full potential of her/his staff by following their way of thinking.
2. Ability to develop employees' decisiveness
A good leader also notes her/his staff's decision-making. S/he tries to find out the best and worst situations for predicting a particular employee's response to a problem. Then s/he helps them see the possible effects of early and late decisions.
3. Ability to let employees take risks
A leader observes how her/his staff are able to deal with problems, how they act under pressure, how they are able to take on new challenges. S/he forms a picture of their overall mental strength and teaches them how to try new ideas and change things for the better, even if it will involve some risk.
4. Ability to develop potential with the help of even stronger people
A good leader knows that it helps to surround her/his high potential staff with other people of high potential. Employees thus learn mutually not to be afraid of taking chances and facing the possibility of failure.
A leader should seek not only to ensure that her/his staff do their jobs better but also let them adapt to requirements and thereby discover new ways to work better.
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