12 Habits Of Exceptional Leaders Summary

Over the past couple of months, we discussed several traits, skills, and behaviors that have contributed to the success of both past and present leaders. Intelligence, integrity, charisma, and confidence are some of the traits that characterize many of these leaders. Interpersonal skills, oratory skills, and conceptual skills are some of the more important skills that helped to shape their leadership style. Some of these skills go hand in hand with the traits that are essential for strong leadership. Meanwhile, the behaviors that drive these leaders include inspiring and motivating others, collaboration, having a strategic perspective and trust. Combined, these traits, skills and behaviors make for effective leadership.

In the Leadership Challenge, 4th edition, it is Kouzes & Posner (2007) intention to present a road map for individuals to follow on their leadership journey. The authors stress that “leadership is not a gene and it’s not an inheritance.” Leadership they assert is “an identifiable set of skills and abilities that are available to all of us” (p. 23). They make clear that the “great person” theory of leadership is “plain wrong.” Leaders are our everyday heroes who do extraordinary things on a regular basis (p. 23).

Kouzes and Posner (2012) provided readers with a primer on relational based leadership using their Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. Based on over 20 years of research on leadership, using sources from throughout the world, the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership are described as a foundation for success in all areas of leadership. The Five Practices – Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart provide a framework for ensuring that leadership is viewed from the perspective of building and maintaining strong relationships.

The United States Marine Corps has been one of the most powerful military branches in the world for more than twenty-three decades. The most important things that have kept this organization as prestigious and powerful as it is are the famous leadership traits, leadership principles, corps values and the leaders that uphold those traits. Without these structures, this leadership hierarchy this “gun club” would not have lasted this long. The next thousand or so words will help explain those traits, principles and corps values that we hold so high.

Great leaders govern society today, but what qualities do these leaders possess that puts them above the rest? The qualities that are required to make good and lasting leaders are portrayed in the four texts Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Gone by Michael Grant, ‘The Iron Lady’ directed by Phylida Lloyd, and Macbeth by William Shakespeare.

The road to becoming an exceptional leader while rewarding, is one filled with numerous challenges. Developing the necessary skills required in order to successfully lead others is a life-long process. In this paper, I will discuss in details my leadership qualities. I will include results from my Seven Habits Profile, evaluate my strength and weaknesses and adopt leadership theories that will help guide my self-evaluation. In addition, I will analyze proven theories that will help me address skills, weaknesses, and behaviors in my leadership skills. These theories-based changes will help form and guide my set of SMART goals. I will draft a plan for success in my journey towards becoming a great leader.

In my reflections as I prepared to write this paper, I came to the realization that leadership is much more complex especially since the paper requires that I focus on a few traits. In an effort to make it simple, I wrote down the traits that came to mind and in process had over 10 important traits but an even bigger challenge was on how to narrow them down to 3 or 4 and this is the place that required a good deal of reflection. Eventually, however, I had to prioritize them since in any case; it is not possible to get a leader that has all the traits. As I thought of the various leaders who have inspired me, I noticed that while they strived to provide the best leadership by focusing on their strong points, they still had their weaknesses. To me this provided a justification for at least identifying key desirable traits and thereafter working to improve them. I did manage to settle on four traits, which for me are indispensible if a leader or a leadership is to become effective.

19). Still a part of the Great Man Leadership era, these trait theories just went a step further in attempting to pinpoint exactly which traits of these “great men” were consistently associated with the leaders, in an effort to more clearly define what a great leader was. This was again a further attempt to be able to identify a leader early on and predict which individuals were born to become leaders. It is thought that a major flaw with these theories was the failure to account for external factors, such as the environment in which the individuals were brought up in, as well as the situations they experienced (Horner, 2007, p. 270). Still today we do continue to study the characteristics of leaders in order to better define and understand what makes someone a good leader.

What leaders really do? This is the question I am sure everyone asked themselves many times. John P. Kotter wrote a book in title “What Leaders Really Do”, and throughout his book he explains how the role of good leader should look like. The book states that most organizations lack good leadership, and Kotter is trying to help its reader to understand what real leaders really do. True leadership, he reminds us, is an intangible quality, and too often we confuse management duties and personal style with leadership, or even mistake unworthy leaders for the real thing. With John Kotter on What Leaders Really Do, readers will learn how to become more effective leaders as they explore pressing issues such as power, influence, dependence, and strategies

In order for a leader to be a leader he/she must begin with the assumption that you are the one who matters most. As a leader you have to possess that level of confidence in yourself that you are capable of leading yourself “before you can lead others”. And when you develop this belief then you are better able of affirmative influence “on others”.

As a growing debate, the question at hand is whether great leaders are born with specific leadership traits, or if one can be taught certain traits over time. According to (Wikipedia.com) the approach of listing leadership qualities, often termed "trait theory of leadership", assumes certain traits or characteristics will tend to lead to effective leadership. I believe that leadership traits such as honest, competent, initiative, inspiring, hardworking, intelligent, and the ability to lead the masses, are some of the leadership traits one should possess. Within this paper, I will examine the overall concept of leadership traits, while observing the traits that were, or can be associated with successful leaders.

This theory is based on the premise that there are certain personality characteristics that are essential for a person to possess in order to be a leader. The main emphasis is on what the person is in terms of a constellation of personality traits. This theory searches for that set of universal leadership traits that will assure success. Numerous traits have been suggested: courage, integrity, loyalty, charisma, ambition, intelligence, honesty, clairvoyance, persistence, arrogance, health, political skill, confidence and vision.

The Trait Approach was the 1st systematic attempt to study leadership. In the 20th century it was known as the “great man” theory. This approach takes a look at the leaders personal attributes such as but not limited to: motivation, energy, intuition, creativity, persuasiveness and foresight. Some of the traits that are essential to this list include: intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity and sociability. Thus it focuses mainly on the leader and not on the followers or situations. The strengths of the Trait Approach includes: 1) it is intuitively appealing, 2) it has research to back it’s theory, 3) it highlights the leader, 4) it identifies what the traits of a leader should have and whether the traits we do

Before reading Learning Leadership: The five fundamentals of becoming an exemplary leader and The First Ninety Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, I had a very vague sense of what my strengths and weaknesses were. I know that public speaking has never been a high point for me unless, I felt very confident in the material I am presenting. In retrospect, these particular weaknesses are symptoms of larger issues that are clearly illustrated in detail in these books. Before going into the assignment, I was aware that acknowledging my strengths would be much more challenging than finding my weaknesses. This issue comes into play every six months when I sit down with my supervisor. When I am provided with a

The purpose of this paper is to reflect and make an analysis of the general strengths and weaknesses of a leader, provide recommendations, thoughts of overall performance to improve on this person’s leadership style in which practices and theories were utilized most effectively. Upon such, draw conclusions and provide an integration of this leadership practice into my own leadership practice. The accomplishment of this will be achieved by identifying several key practices from published documents surrounding and encompassing the leader, and comparing them to known relative concepts for a holistic view of the approach.