Quick fire leadership questions: Part 2

Welcome to part two of this series of posts where I tackle quick fire leadership questions. I receive lots of questions from various platforms which require concise answers. So in this series I will be sharing my responses to these questions.

Question #1: “What traits are seen as best for female leaders?” – Anonymous

Focusing on your question, one leadership behaviour that many female leaders display is empathy.

Apathy can destroy your connection to a person which ultimately destroys the relationship. A poor connection will lead to a poor level of influence, which is the currency of leadership. Displaying leadership behaviours of empathy will help you connect better, build strong relationships and develop higher levels of influence.

Leadership “traits” in general are not gender specific because great leaders do not demonstrate one specific trait, but an array of Right Behaviours, such as: Authenticity, Communication, Empathy, Sovereignty, Confidence over ego and more. Therefore, regardless of gender, aspiring leaders should look to practice and develop their ability to display the right behaviours depending on the situation.

Question #2: “What is the most important thing you have learned about leadership?” – Daniel Hickman

There will be many varying answers to your questions, many of which will discuss key lessons learnt. However, I have noticed that the biggest lesson to understand in leadership is that it is less about skills and more about behaviour.

To help people better understand what I mean I’d like to share with you my definition of a true leader:

“A leader is one who leverages their influence by using their experience to adapt and exhibit the right behaviours to influence any situation to create a positive outcome”

Jas Toor

The part that I would like to really focus on here is the end of the definition, “a positive outcome”.

Imagine these leadership success scenarios:

• You make a company $20 million profit
• You helped saved a team from crisis and lead them towards meeting a project goal ahead of time
• You guided a person away from a destructive path to a path of success and happiness
• You shared your values and thoughts to help a community better understand how to improve their town
• You help a team solve a technical problem through innovation

These are all different, but have one common thread; they create a positive outcome. This should be the ultimate accomplishment of any leader, to positively impact their environment. As you can see, almost all leadership success scenarios are not based on skills, but how one behaves in that situation to create a positive outcome.

Question #3: “How have you benefited from a leadership development program?” – Scott Rourke

Leadership development programmes allowed me to experience the following benefits:

• Shared experienced from others going through the process
• Grow my network
• Learn what not to do from others experience
• Practice

I will always be open to tackling challenging leadership questions, so if you have a burning question please do reach out and I will write a response.

Thank you for reading, JT