The Leadership Journal

Earlier this month, I attended a great leadership development event – featuring Michael Schutzler. I’d read the man’s bio and I was very intrigued by the depth of his International work experience.  As we kicked off the session, he asked for feedback on what people wanted to get out of the session.

One key theme which resonated with everyone – was the desire to understand key leadership traits of great leaders. Here are the 4 key traits which Michael defined and explained. All great leaders are Great Listeners, Great Storytellers, Great Negotiators & Great Judges of people/character.

Great Listeners – I cover this trait in more detail in my next post. However, here are some ideas to think about:

        I.            The average attention span of your colleagues in corporate America is less than 60 seconds. The “always on” nature of  electronic media has helped drive down attention spans in the U.S and around the world.

      II.            Try to increase your attention span by actively listening to others – active listening will give you an edge over other leaders.

    III.            Actively ask questions that force you into listening mode.

    IV.            93% of communication is non-verbal – active listening is a great way to communicate with others.

Great Storytellers – Leaders who are great storytellers understand how to provide context for how each person’s role provides real value to the entire organization.

        I.            Good leadership is about developing great relationships, communicating effectively with diverse audiences

      II.            You cannot consistently tell great stories unless you truly believe in your ideas, so – be authentic, be creative, report facts

    III.            Be expressive – your body language should tell a story about your passion and your level of engagement with your audience

    IV.            You cannot consistently convince people to go that extra mile for the team, without creating a compelling vision, through storytelling

I’ll address the remaining 2 traits in a few weeks…….

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2010 at 2:08 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.