This article appeared in Leadership now about a month ago, and we used it in Solutions Foorum, but I think it deserves wider dissemination. Besides, one of my private clients just acted on it an promoted a female inside sales person who showed signs of leadership to his production manager. So far, a month in, she’s justifying his faith in her.
But, here are some more signposts (ranked in Leading Blog’s order):
1. Demonstrated integrity. Does he/she display a strong ethical code? This one surprises me, and doesn’t say much about the ethics of other workers.
2. Lead Through Relationships. No surprise here: does he/she form and lead teams, sort of naturally? Strong interactive skills.
3. Focus on Results. What does it take to get the job done? My client was impressed that his inside person followed orders that might be difficult through production and smoothed out potential problems.
4. Remains Customer Focused. Duh. I would think this should be number one, but we’ve done lots of blogs about it. It’s a big picture focus.
So, there you have them. Now go put them to work on Monday.