Army Family Team Building Level II

Introduction to Leadership

Leader Characteristics Explained

Honesty
1. Honesty has been selected more often than any other leadership characteristic. It
emerges as the single most important ingredient in the leader-follower relationship.
2. It’s clear that if people are to willingly follow someone, whether it be into battle or into
the boardroom, the front office or the front lines, they first want to assure themselves
that the person is worthy of their trust. They want to know that person is truthful,
ethical, and principled.
3. When asked about the qualities they admire in leaders, people use “integrity” and
“character” as synonymous with honesty.
4. No matter what the setting, everyone wants to be fully confident in his or her leader.
To be fully confident they have to believe that their leader is a person of strong
character and solid integrity.
5. Followers want their leader to be honest because the leader’s honesty is a reflection
upon their own honesty.
6. It’s the quality that can most enhance or most damage our own personal reputations.
7. Regardless of what a leader says about his/her own integrity, people want to observe
the behavior.
8. Consistency between word and deed is how people judge someone to be honest.
9. A leader must know the difference between right and wrong.

Forward-Looking
1. People expect a leader to have a sense of direction and concern for the future of the
organization.
2. A leader must know where he/she is going if the expectation is for others to willingly
join him/her on the journey.
3. Forward-looking is the ability to set or select a desirable destination toward which the
company, agency, congregation, or community should head.
4. Followers want their leader to have a well-defined orientation toward the future. They
want to know what the group or organization will look like within the next six months or
six years.

2006/7 2.14 Handout 4-1

Army Family Team Building Level II

Competent
1. To enlist in another’s cause, followers must believe that the person/leader is competent
to guide them where they’re headed.
2. People must see the leader as capable and effective. If they doubt the leader’s abilities,
they’re unlikely to enlist in the crusade.
3. Leadership competence refers to the leader’s track record and ability to get things done.
It doesn’t refer to the leader’s abilities in the core technology of the operation, but
rather the leader’s ability to guide the entire organization, large or small, in the direction
in which it needs to go.
4. A leader must have the ability to bring out the best in others, to enable others to act.
5. The most important aspect of competency a leader brings to the table is the ability to
work well with others. Leadership is a relationship and relationship skills are what shape
success.

Inspiring
1. Followers expect their leaders to be enthusiastic, energetic, and positive about the
future…inspiring.
2. A leader must be able to communicate the vision in ways that encourage others to sign
on for the duration.
3. Although the enthusiasm, energy, and positive attitude of a good leader may not change
the type of task, he/she can make doing it more meaningful.
4. When leaders breathe life into people’s dreams and aspirations, they’re much more
willing to enlist in the movement.
5. Inspiring leadership speaks to the followers’ need to have meaning and purpose in their
lives.
6. To get extraordinary things done in extraordinary times a leader needs to communicate
in words, demeanor, and actions the belief that the followers will overcome!

2006/7 2.14 Handout 4-2