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Leader exists everywhere in our daily life, and everyone might experience once in their life. Some people lead a big company, some are the leader of a team, and some just lead themselves. These are all leaders in different forms, and they might require different characteristics. However, what are the traits that all kinds of leader should possess? The answer would alter by discovering in different perspectives. In my opinion, leader is the captain who is patient, intelligent, and selfless in any situation, and can lead others to a better direction.
Why? Here are the reasons.
First of all, I personally think patience is one of the most indispensable characteristics of a leader because it provides several advantages. In order to be competitive, some leaders will always be motion. They always consider timing as the most important thing and desire to finish tasks in a short period. However, this might bring drawbacks and lead to a terrible result. Instead, cultivating patience not only can help leaders but also can benefit the whole team.
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To start with, patience can reduce stress while facing issues or difficulties. People often get anxious while something goes wrong, and they make snap decisions which probably regret later on. By being patient, people can relax and consider more about the situation, and think about the impacts of decisions. This helps leaders to bring team members to the correct path without creating more obstacles.
Moreover, leaders can show respect through patience. While listening to members’ opinion, it is always impolite to be impatient and not focusing on their words.
In order to gain trust from members, showing patience and respect is always inevitable. Trust is a vital relationship between members and leader, so being patient can contribute to a higher level of trust. In addition, by being patient, it can encourage members to speak out, and express their ideas and feelings. This is significant because it relates to communication skills, which can help a team to interact more and share what they are thinking about. The team will have a positive attitude through these processes, and perform better in the later tasks or performance.
By the large, there are plenty of benefits by being patient, and take their time while making decision. Speed should not be in the first order in the long term tasks, while leaders should always keep in mind that learning how to temper their pace with a reflective patience that allows the team to move forward is necessary. To support these ideas, here are some specific examples of historical leaders succeed by managing their level of patience well. For instance, George Washington, who was the first American President and the commander of the Continental Army, was exceedingly aggressive and eager to gain status and wealth when he was young, and his reckless actions brought him to trouble. In 1777, the winter frozen everyone and soldiers starve to death in front of commanders’ eyes. What’s worse, several serious diseases ran through the camp. He wrote down: “Men without clothes to cover their nakedness, without Blankets to lie on, without shoes, by which their Marches might be traced by the Blood from their feet, and almost as often without Provisions as with” (Washington). The situation was so harsh that George Washington realized the importance of patience. He went against his own ambitious nature, which used to force him to fight and invade. Instead, he showed his perseverance and his belief in patience. He rejected to start an imprudent attack. This brought the war to a successful ending, and enabled him to change. His patience was rewarded at the end and contributed to a good consequence.
The other example that shows the significance of patience is Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon. From his interview, he always emphasized the importance of being patient. While people are creating new things, it is impossible to create a perfect product in a short time. If they are going to invent, then they require doing experiments and hypothesis. This is a long-term goal and it takes time, so it is irrelevant to rush everything. “Big things start small,” he said. Shortcuts do not exist and never skip steps, and all steps should be full of passion.
To conclude, patience should always be valued since it brings advantages and can get rid of detrimental and unnecessary effects.
Additionally, intelligence is considered to be an essential trait of a leader as well. To define intelligence, people mostly think about having massive knowledge and are able to reflect and observe with what they have understood. However, this is not the only skill that a leader should have, emotional intelligence should also be taken in account. How can leaders show their emotional intelligence? The five key elements are self-regulation, self-awareness, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Leaders who can manage their emotion rarely hurt people’s feeling, make rush decisions, or blame others without reasons. They are able to stay in control, and keep calm in any situations. Moreover, in order to be self-aware, leaders will exactly know their strengths and weaknesses, and behave with humility. They will also work perpetually to achieve their goals, and they value the quality of work.
Additionally, leaders with good emotional intelligence have the ability to put themselves in others’ shoes. They listen and care their members by being empathic. What’s more, they are good at dealing with conflicts and communicate well. These characteristics contribute to build an effective leadership, and cultivate a well-being leader. There are a lot of leaders that have high level of intelligence, one of the example is Martin Luther King Jr. He was the leader of the African American civil rights movement in the United States. He delivered a powerful speech called “I Had A Dream” in 1963, and what he conveyed was influential. By being a non-violent leader, he motivated people by creating a positive emotional state, which included words like “honor,” “righteousness,” “freedom” and “happiness.” These words inspired followers to join his action, and successfully bring everyone to victory. During then, people’s lives were hard and they lost their hope. To develop a stronger relationship between followers and leader, he tried to help people to get a better sense of how someone is feeling. This is how he utilized the skill of empathy, and let others feel understood.
The other example of having great emotional intelligence is Thomas Jefferson, the third United States president. He was recognized as one of the most accomplished United States president in history. The key to his success was emotional intelligence, which can represent by his ability of connecting multiple levels of people well. He can express his vision of how can the country be better explicitly, and showed good ability in solving problems. Also, he had good impulse control, which could prevent him from making wrong decisions. Although he was in an unstable political and economic world, he didn’t mess up his pace, but trying to find other effective solutions to resolve those issues. These made him to be a model of others, and a relevant example of the leadership.
Last but not least, a good leader will always put others before themselves. A quote from a Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu can fully exemplify a selfless leader: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” This kind of leader is also known as servant-leader, they focus on the growth of their team members, put the needs of other first, and help people discover their abilities and perform as great as possible. However, why is it important to be a selfless leader? I believe that being a leader is not managing or controlling team members, but to influence them in a good way. In order to reach the terminate goals, not only leaders but also members will need to grow. Some examples can demonstrate the importance of selflessness, such as an important figure in history, Mother Teresa. All she did in the past can fully show how selfless she was, and how she did everything for others. She believed that people should spread love to others. “Money can be gotten, but people need your hearts to love them” (Mother Teresa). Therefore, instead of living in a big house and had a normal life, she chose to do something to make the world different. She tired her best to help the poor, and spread happiness to everyone. She never wanted to give up, instead she just kept doing what she think was right and thought about other continuously. She never draw attention to herself, all she had did were spread peace and help people who were suffering. Even when she was ill, she still put others in priority, dedicating to create a peaceful and no violence world. All of her hard works made her an inspirational leader, and people recognized her as a true hero because of her beautiful heart.
Not only Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela also sacrificed himself to create a better world. He was the first black president in South Africa, and an anti-apartheid revolutionary for 20 years. Through non-violent actions, he successfully made South Africa become multiethnic country. This was a huge and tough process since racial discrimination was a serious issue then. In his opinion, no one should be oppressed and all people should have freedom to do what they want. Everyone should have equal rights even that they have different gender, race, or nationality. Moreover, he worked hard to make South Africa as a political-free country. In 1990, when he was released from prison, he devoted to change the state from decaying apartheid regime to a new non-racial democracy.
In conclusion, being a great leader is not an easy task. Leaders should be aware of their personality and how they treat people. Most importantly, they should require three characteristics: patience, intelligence, and selflessness.
Three Characteristics Of a Good Leader. (2024, Feb 29). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/three-characteristics-of-a-good-leader-essay
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