Today in this competitive world, great leadership is the need of the hour. And if you want to become great leaders who attract quality teams, then the only key to success is to become a quality person yourself.

Leadership is a great challenge though. Not all the people who are leaders have something to offer to their subordinates and followers. To become a great leader, it is important for a leader to refine their skills. All leaders should keep on working on themselves until they become really effective leaders. In this article, we are going to talk about 5 pointers a person must possess and incorporate in their daily routine to become an effective leader.

• Learn to differentiate between becoming strong and impolite.

Many leaders think that they are impolite because they are strong.  They think humiliating someone is a sign of showing their power to the subordinates. But that is not true. A leader is a true leader only when he knows the difference between possessing power and becoming impolite.

Learning the difference is an extra step one must take to become a powerful and capable leader with a wide reach. But unfortunately, a lot of leaders mistake rudeness with power and strength. Hence, for a leader, it is very important to keep a note of this point.

• Learn to differentiate between kindness and weakness.

Many leaders don’t possess kindness because they are not weak. Many leaders associate kindness with weakness, whereas truth to be told, those leaders who don’t possess kindness are the weakest leaders as they will never be able to lead their teams in the best way by incorporating Intelligence Quotient +Emotional Quotient +Decency Quotient which is a must-have quality in any organizational leader to become successful.

Mistaking kindness for weakness is wrong. If we check the history, few of the best leaders were one of the kindest people. Kindness is not weakness; it is a type of strength which is not seen so often in leaders. Because of which, the leaders fail to understand their team members and subordinates which leads to unsuccessful leadership.

Hence to become a great leader, one must possess kindness.

• Learn to differentiate between bold and bully.

A lot of leaders misunderstand bully with boldness. Whereas boldness is the characteristic that defines your personality and bullying is an act of weakness which takes place out of rage or fear. The difference between boldness and bully is that boldness is a key to win the day and bullying leads to loss of real talent. Bullying does influence others, hence to build your influence on others, it is necessary to walk in front of your group and to be able to take the first arrow and tackle the problem first.

Discover the first sign of trouble. Just like farmers, if you want any rewards at the time of the harvest, you need to be bold and face the weeds and the rain and the bugs straight on. You’ve got to seize the moment.

• Learn to differentiate between humble and timid

Some leaders mistake timidity for humility. But humility is a quality; timidity is a disease. It’s an illness. There is no cure for this, but it is a problem. Humility is almost a God-like word—a sense of amazement, a sense of wonder, an awareness of the human soul and spirit, an understanding that there is something different about the human drama versus the rest of life. Humility is a grip of the distance between us and the stars yet having the feeling that we’re part of them.

• Learn to differentiate between proud and arrogance

It takes pride to build your ambitions, fulfill your goals. It takes pride in your community. It takes pride in a cause, in accomplishment. The key to good leadership is to be proud without being arrogant. Do you know what is the worst kind of arrogance? Arrogance from ignorance. It is intolerable. If someone is smart yet arrogant, we can tolerate that. But if someone is ignorant yet arrogant, that is just too much to take.

Hence, as we know, life is unique and so is leadership. The skills that work well for one leader might not work at all for others. However, the above listed fundamental skills of leadership can be adopted by the leaders to work well, in the community or at home.

Compiled by Faber Priyal & Faber Mayuri