Leadership Wisdom of Crowds

At a recent Sterling Bank Women's Business Initiative Luncheon, I asked attendees to submit their perspectives on leadership.  The fascinating list had few duplicate responses, but two characteristics did receive multiple mentions - listening and leading by example. 

• Accept the limitations of your staff
• Attitude – your team follows your mood
• Authenticity
• Be consistent
• Be organized
• Being open to the possibilities
• Character
• Commitment to excellence
• Committed
• Communication
• Compassion
• Confidence
• Connected
• Connectiveness,  inspiring excellence and creativity yield new ideas and new ways to approach challenges
• Courage
• Decisive
• Delegate
• Direction
• Empathy
• Employee engagement
• Empower your people with clear expectations
• Faith in God
• Go beyond self to help with an open mind
• Guidance
• Humility
• In order to lead you have to be willing to follow
• Integrity
• Know your limits so you don’t lose credibility
• Lead by example
• Lead yourself
• Learning to be like Jesus, servant leadership, a servant to others’ needs
• Learning your strengths, recognizing the strengths of those around you and developing ways to use all of those combined in order to provide the best service or product.
• Listening
• Love
• Make every encounter a networking opportunity
• Mentor
• Motivating
• Passion
• Patience
• People development
• Perseverance
• Readers are leaders! Have you read a great business book lately?
• Respect
• See the good in people
• Selflessness
• Sense of humor
• Set goals
• Sharing knowledge
• Sharing opportunities to do challenging things
• Smile
• Smoothly handling transitions from challenges to solutions in meetings without negativity - keep everyone happy
• Stay focused
• Strength
• Trust
• Vulnerability
• Willing to teach
• Without leadership there is no going forward
• Working as a team

I'd love to hear your perspectives!