Leadership is tricky. Good leadership can be illusive and there are no set factors that will help someone be a great leader in all circumstances and contexts. As I think about the great leaders I have seen, worked with, read, listened to and learned from as well a handful of moments of good leadership on my part, I have noticed 5 key things all leaders have (and need). After sharing them in this post, I will write about each specifically in future posts.
The five things that I believe all leaders need are:
-Trust
-Teachability
-Self-knowledge
-Authenticity
-A Focus on Christ & Kingdom
Great leaders have high levels of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is hard and takes constant effort. Perfect self-knowledge is impossible not only because we are ever chaining and growing, but because no one can fully understand another human being or themselves. That said, the pursuit of self-knowledge is essential to be a good leader. The pursuit and the process may be as important and as meaningful as gaining in self-knowledege. A leader who has strong self-knowledge is wiser, more savvy, more empathetic, authentic and trustworthy amongst other things.
Leaders recognize that they must first be able to lead themselves. We also all tend to lead out of our own instinct, personality and experiences which can be good or it can be very unhealthy. Self-knowledge helps us to see when we are doing this, filter these responses and gives us the ability to think through whether or not our instinctual response is actually the healthy response. Additionally it allows us to learn more about others and ourselves and causes us to be strong, more effective leaders. Every leader has blind spots, weaknesses, personality flaws, temptations and challenges. The more we know about ourselves, the more we can recognize these things. The more we recognize these issues, the more effective we become at leveraging them for good, removing them when they are unhealthy or managing them when they appear to be insignificant.