Top 8 Interpersonal Qualities of Great Leaders
A leader believes in the impossible when some of us don’t; they see things from a perspective that can be a limitation for others and thinks a bit ahead of his/her time.
People who don’t have good interpersonal skills to be leaders can still develop them and increase their chances of becoming a leader.
In this article, we will list the Top 8 Interpersonal Qualities of Great Leaders and talk a bit about how we can see and develop them.
- Believer
- Delegating
- Helper
- Humbleness
- Inquisitive Mind
- Opportunity Seeker
- Decision-maker
- Perseverant
Top 8 Interpersonal Qualities of Great Leaders
- Believer
A leader is someone who believes that it is possible to be, to do, to transform anything they would like to, even in critically challenging situations; Leaders are that pillar of hope and belief for a better tomorrow.
The first thing you need to have in order to become a believer is to listen to that BIG desire we all have but usually, ignore and that is making the world a better place in whatever little or big way we can.
The areas that we see today as the most promising areas of investment for a business were risk areas yesterday; the important thing here is to take the first step towards change: to believe in it.
Once you believe in our idea or vision, we find people who will genuinely engage and feel the passion to make our vision a reality.
| Interpersonal Qualities of Great Leaders | How can this interpersonal trait help me become a leader? | A TIP ON HOW TO START IT! |
| Believer | People will engage with us in a long-term condition because there is a feeling of trust that makes them stay; Believing in ourselves and our vision boost our confidence, which is vital to any Leader; | Spend more time with exciting people, and learning, discovering how you would solve problems that bother you and how they would be useful for others. |
- Delegating or Allocating Tasks to Others
A leader must be the one who makes things happen; however, one single person cannot build an empire by himself, and this is where it’s important to learn how to share the load and become more efficient while developing others.
A task-oriented person sets goals and turns them into reality by aligning activities, even when we a petit business is crucial to the leader.
In this case, the leader defines a set of activities that each teammate becomes responsible for, and in some, they must have the freedom to innovate within the framework of the required project.
We become leaders because we see something that others don’t and but above it all, because we have the guts to raise our big desire for the improvement we want to make in a specific area.
Check out next: 6 Interpersonal Skills for Effective Teamwork
And that takes honest upper communication; we don’t need to be in charge to lead all we got to do to be vocal with our teams and attribute responsibilities bearing in mind their behavior, skills, and what our project needs.
Interpersonal Qualities of Great Leaders | How can this interpersonal trait help me become a leader? | A TIP ON HOW TO START IT! |
| Delegating | It helps us to practice how to delegate and be organized to accomplish deadlines; | Explain the task, give some context, and the objective of completing the task and then giving them space. |
- Helper
Is a Leader someone who bosses people around?
Most people think that a leader is a boss, a manager, or someone who calls the shots and calls it quits. However, the most amazing leaders show that they care, think, actively listen to others, and are genuinely willing to help to make it happen!
One of the key aspects of being a leader with strong interpersonal skills is recognizing people’s skills and challenges and identifying ways to help them out and get them excited about keeping the run alive, completing their tasks with excellence and materializing that vision.
Interpersonal Qualities of Great Leaders | How can this interpersonal trait help me become a leader? | A TIP ON HOW TO START IT! |
| Helper | One thing that makes you a Great Leader is being willing to serve the team that will serve you with the materialized version of the vision you couldn’t possibly pursue by yourself. | Be humble and honest about things that you don’t know and appreciate and find people that do know. |
- Humbleness
When we are humble, we want to learn with every step we take, and we are modest with what we know because of our awareness that there is still so much we need to learn.
A humble leader is willing to work shoulder by shoulder with the team and appreciate the challenge that they face in order to deliver results; When you get close to your team like that you become a much better leader because you get to see ways in which you can make your team’s life easier.
Being humble means that we value every single experience we had or could have, whether we can be the actors or viewers through the connections we establish with the people we want to work with.
Craig Groeschel, the owner of the Leadership Podcast, once said,
“If you want to influence others analyses your motives, selfish motivation, leading up with pure motives don’t point up problems but bring solutions, bring an attitude to serve to help others.”
Interpersonal Qualities of Great Leaders | How can this interpersonal trait help me become a leader? | A TIP ON HOW TO START IT! |
| Humble | It enables us to recognize our limitations, with modesty and absence of pride; | Start inputting in your mindset that knowledge is diary activity; |
- Inquisitive Mind
A leader must have a critical mindset towards things he experiences and chooses, which means to be inquisitive; it means that we are not neutral to things that come upon in our life.
As we make our way to become leaders, we must have the ability to have developed inquisitive thinking.
There is a difference between being inquisitive, being curious about something, and bringing non-constructive thoughts, namely judgments.
Having an inquisitive mind means that we hear that we analyze what people have to say, we’re curious, and we don’t stay in the comfort zone about what we know.
When you make judgments without listening or knowing, making assumptions, and exiling everything that the person tells you, then you are not being inquisitive, you’re just being self-centered and unappealing.
We can develop an inquisitive mind by paying attention to details, putting ourselves in an outsider and insider position, and analyzing from both perspectives.
Once I saw I TV Show about this man that owned a successful ice-cream company, he had all the reasons to keep himself comfortable; however, he decided to dress-up and went undercover to inspect his own company.
What he saw was very different from what he thought was going on; some of the systems and rules he implanted weren’t being as effective as he thought, and the reason for that was the people he put in charge and trusted without really inspecting/being inquisitive of their actual performance.
Interpersonal Qualities of Great Leaders | How can this interpersonal trait help me become a leader? | A TIP ON HOW TO START IT! |
| Inquisitive Mind | The fact that we have made a more in-depth analysis helps us develop a deeper understanding or choose a better course of action. | Dedicate at least 2/3 hours to people development projects, looking for new stimuli and perspectives. |
- Opportunity Seeker
Leaders are people who think ahead of their time, which doesn’t mean you need to be a magician or have some extraordinary insight. It means that you look around and you’re honest about the real situation of your project or business and you seek a better tomorrow.
To be an opportunity seeker means we are always finding a way to improve our work or day-to-day interaction with people; we dare to honestly say what is not working and when it is not, we want to know why.
A leader who is an opportunity seeker looks forward to anticipating the future, which comes with better solutions. The certainty of what we know sometimes can be our biggest point of vulnerability; what we know and are convinced of can be wrong. Opportunities come from trying, testing, and seeking the unknown in most cases!
To be an opportunity seeker is crucial that we train ourselves to not be driven by our assumptions; instead, let us become experts in diagnosing our own projects or businesses.
| Interpersonal Qualities of Great Leaders | How can this interpersonal trait help me become a leader? | A TIP ON HOW TO START IT! |
| Opportunity Seeker | People look to their leaders expecting direction, hope, vision and future success. Being driven to find ways to do things better is a great skill for a leader. | Get comfortable with change, e.g.: What would I do differently if I could recreate the company from scratch? |
- Decision-maker
As leaders, we need some decisions that will change our work environments and build for innovation, others that will solve problems;
As Craig Groeschel once said, some of us make permanent decisions based on temporary emotions, and we need to disconnect our emotions to make wise decisions.
That is why it is essential to have some emotional intelligence; we cannot live and let ourselves be driven by our emotions or pretend that we are not humans and ignore them; the balance would be just delicate.
| Interpersonal Qualities of Great Leaders | How can this interpersonal trait help me become a leader? | A TIP ON HOW TO START IT! |
| Decision-maker | It helps us understand the root of making progressive decisions; | Focus your time and energies on thinking and creating strategies to improve the company’s internal processes that generate ideas and help solve problems, and make sure they’re the best they can be; |
- Perseverance
Perseverance is a crucial skill for a leader, and it all begins when our idea to take action independent of other people wanting to engage or not. You believe in yourself, and that is enough to go forward.
| Interpersonal Qualities of Great Leaders | How can this interpersonal trait help me become a leader? | A TIP ON HOW TO START IT! |
| Perseverance | Make everything possible, because of this; we work hard for our ideas and dreams to come true; | Try having a gratitude book, and every time you feel down, look for positivity in everything around you.E.g., the fact that you are breathing, having doors at home. |
Conclusion
“The interpersonal relationship between the leader and the team members is one of the most relevant factors in facilitating or blocking a climate of trust, respect, and affection, to enable harmony and cooperation relations” (CARVALHO, 2009, p. 108).
We are doing now will not work forever, so we need to start anticipating the areas out of our comfort zone, discerning future threats from opportunities.
Leadership is not about position but actions; how we behave can show others how we stand and make people visualize where we are meant to be.
Reference and Further Reading
Seven soft skills that are crucial for great leadership (breathehr.com)
7 Interpersonal Skills Examples From Inspiring Leaders | Matter (matterapp.com)
