What personal characteristics help develop-leadership skills?

Self Assessment Tool

These personal characteristics, traits, and innate abilities are attributes thought to be associated with leaders and leadership. Research has linked them to leadership success. To develop-leadership focus upon building these characteristics. Source: Encyclopedia of Leadership, Sage Publications, 2004. Assumptions One person cannot embody all 33 characteristics- even if they are outstanding leaders Many of these characteristics can be viewed along a continuum (vs. you either have it or you dont). Assessing the strength of these characteristics can be done by self and/or others. 1. Achievement Motivation the desire to achieve a personal or public standard of excellence. 2. Ambitious to be aspiring, hardworking, striving. 3. Authenticity the quality of being authentic, trustworthy and genuine, free from hypocrisy. 4. Broad-minded ability to be open-minded, flexible, receptive, tolerant. 5. Caring appreciative, compassionate, concerned, loving, nurturing. 6. Charisma quality that some people possess that allows them to relate to & inspire others at a deep emotional level. 7. Conformity social influence that induces others to follow their vision and ideals without threat or surveillance. 8. Creativity able to develop new ways of thinking and acting that change the norm or baseline. 9. Credit the extent to which past relationships have resulted in a credit balance that a person can draw on to take innovative action on behalf of group goals. 10. Dominance exercising controlling power or influence over something, usually other people, either through prosocial (popularity) or antisocial (overly aggressive) approaches. 11. Cultural Intelligence understanding ones own culture and cultural values, others cultures, and adapting oneself and ones leadership to the needs of culturally diverse followers. 12. Efficacy the belief in the ability of self and others to enact behaviors leading to desired outcomes.

13. Emotional Intelligence the ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth. 14. Ethics inquiry into right and wrong, good and evil, and virtue and vice and thus determining how one responds to morally relevant features & situations of the world. 15. General Intelligence having good academic abilities (such as those measured by IQ tests). 16. Happiness a sense of subjective well-being that has a positive effect on others. 17. High Hope a pattern of thinking that includes clear goals, identification of effective strategies and motivation to implement those strategies. 18. Humor is used as a creative and positive feature, enhancing dialogue and communications. 19. Inner-Leading understanding of inner identity, purpose, vision, and core values to cope with the ever-changing, fast paced world. 20. Mental Models using human mental representations and ideally adjusting them to context and dynamics changing over time as circumstances evolve. 21. Modeling & Leading by Example a person who others admire thereby affecting their behavior; and/or involves imagining how this person would behave in a situation. 22. Motivation the means through which leaders motivate their followers to engage the tasks and activities necessary to actualize a decisions or vision. Either intrinsic finds the activity satisfying in its own right, or extrinsic rewards or punishments. 23. Narrative storyteller expressing a vision in terms and symbols and in ways reflecting the shared culture embedded in the minds and hearts of the people. 24. Negative Capability is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts with sustained reflective inaction. 25. Optimism ability to retain a belief in their ability to control events & subdue its tendency to transmit negative, despairing messages. 26. Personality and Group Roles ways people emerge as the group leader include bidding for a role where previous experiences matters and/or a person exhibits personality characteristics deemed suitable for the group leader. 27.Power Motivation the desire or will for power to have impact on the world or to acquire prestige and reputation in the eyes of others. 28. Resiliency the positive psychological capacity to rebound, to bounce back from adversity, uncertainty, conflict, failure or even positive change, progress and increased responsibility.

29. Rhetoric the ability of individuals to articulately shape and express their ideas through oral communication. 30. Risk Taking the understanding of the possibilities that the choices one makes may bring suffering, harm, loss, or danger to the risk taker. 31. Self-Interest acting in ones own interest. 32. Social Intelligence to think and act wisely in social situations and to understand and lead people. 33. Tacit Knowledge understanding a complex set of links between problem situations with particular characteristics and the actions that should be taken given those characteristics. 34. Trust ability to trust another. 35. Verbal Intelligence learning and using language to accomplish certain goals.