Successful Leadership

Leadership is often defined as the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. Success is often defined, simply, as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.

With this, I think it is safe to say a successful leader is someone who has been tasked, or tasks themselves, with motivating a group to accomplish a certain aim or goal and then proceeds to do so. And while that is a perfectly good definition, it leaves a lot of uncovered ground.

While this definition is more an outline of the event I'd like to focus on the execution of it; as well as the "little things" needed to achieve becoming a successful leader. To truly understand and comprehend what it is to be a successful leader I believe you must analyze and understand he traits, habits, skills and charisma of those who have influenced you, those people who just have the "it" factor.

It is my opinion, you will find that those individuals that have influenced you have a common attribute that all successful leaders must possess; the ability to inspire. Inspiration is not only a powerful tool that can bring those who are at the bottom all the way to the top, but it is also a complicated skill that is as rare as it is valuable. The type of person that I am referring to is the one that is able to walk into a room and produce an energy, a vibrant explosive and exciting energy that all others in the room are attracted. And with that, not only are they attracted to this energy but they also feed off it, and they feed off it in a positive manner. We have all met someone who possesses a skill like this and it is certain that these people are BOUND for successful leadership positions.

This same person will likely have the right mix of social intelligence, tactfulness, confidence, and listening skills. Most importantly they will likely have a personality that can both dominate and understand the opposition. These traits are often the perfect recipe for greatness because they come with a natural ability to create a following.

These traits and skill sets and recipes do not just pertain to the business world, they also pertain to any environment where there is competition involving a winner and a loser. These "it" factor individuals absolutely thrive in these environments, it is in their nature to NEED to win. My advice is to engulf yourself with these people, try to surround yourself with them, as their energy is violently contagious.

Another aspect you may notice is that these winners and successful leaders are the types of people that look into their productivity, constantly. They evaluate their daily activity to determine if what they have done lines up with what they wanted to accomplish that week. They analyze if their weekly activity lines up for with what they wanted to accomplish that month. Then evaluate if their monthly activities are lining up for what their goal was that quarter. And how about for the year.....and so on. Bottom line is that when end results are the most important metric involved in success, as they often are, you must not only accomplish but dominate the daily processes to win. And to win, or to be a successful leader in this case, means you have these traits and you work in this matter in order to master them, CONSTANTLY and RELENTLESSLY as if tomorrow you will face even harsher adversity than you did today.

So please, take a moment and view yourself as an identity by what you do daily basis; because you are, in essence what you continually do. And think further about all the people that have said or done meaningful things to or for you in you life. Ask yourself, what are the traits those people had that gripped you and made you listen? What did those individuals possess that made their words or actions so impactful or inspirational?

And what did you do as a result? Typically, those traits were a mix of charisma, intelligence, tactful placement of words the ability to inspire; and typically the end result concluded with you becoming BETTER.