4 Personal Leadership Behaviours

Leadership is hard because so much of it is abstract. My purpose behind Leadership101 is to offer concrete things you can do immediately to improve your skills and get more out of your team and yourself.

I believe after much reading, thinking and actually practicing in my own business, that there are 4 core individual leadership behaviours, which I’ll outline below. I’ve written about these before, but I want to bring them together into one piece.

Ownership:

Ownership is where everything else starts. It's the difference between someone who sees a problem and moans about it, and someone who sees a problem and fixes it, or between someone who acts and someone who waits to be told. It's also deeply personal — no one else is responsible for where your career goes, what skills you develop, or how you show up on a given day. That sits with you. Furthermore, if you’re in a position of leadership, for example head of a sales team, the outcomes for that team are your responsibility. You can’t blame anyone else if things don’t happen.

This is the hard part of ownership. It's easy to claim credit for good outcomes and find reasons for the bad ones. But until you're genuinely honest about what went wrong and why, you have no real grip on what needs to change. Accountability isn't a punishment. It's the only mechanism by which yesterday's mistakes can become lessons, to drive tomorrow's improvements.

Humility:

Humility is terribly misunderstood. People hear it and think it means downplaying yourself, staying quiet, being passive. I can’t stress enough how wrong that is. Everyone has an ego, and frankly ego is necessary — when I think about some of the things I’ve achieved, it’s only been because of a perhaps slightly unhealth belief in myself. I back myself, and I love being in a corner because there’s only one way to go. At my worst though, I can complain, moan or feel a sense of entitlement that because I think something should happen, that the world should bend to my will. This is a fine balancing act that I don’t always get right.

For me, humility is the knowledge that you don’t have all of the answers, that others are worth listening to, and that your way isn’t always best. That needs to be paired with a concrete, disciplined view of the outcome you are pursuing; flexing perhaps on the route but not easily changing the destination. This is the best of both and is the way to achieve outstanding results over time.

The leaders I admire most have all had strong self-belief. What set them apart was that they knew when their ego was in the room and could manage it.

Work Ethic:

A strong work ethic is less about hours worked and more about standards maintained. Specifically, the standards you hold yourself to when nobody is watching and there's no reason to push harder. Those private standards are what your visible performance is built on, and people around you pick up on them whether they realise it or not. Teams rarely work harder than the person leading them, and they rarely care more either. What you model quietly is louder than anything you say out loud- this isn’t the first or last time I’ll write that people will do what you do, not what you say.

This also has to link to the natural rhythm of your workplace. It will flow through busier and quieter times; if you hammer your team the entire time, regardless of what stage of the cycle you’re at, the only outcome is burnout. If you flex with it, allow downtime when you can and ask for help when it’s busy, your team will back you, provided you’re right there with them.

Commitment:

This is being committed to their personal outcomes, as well as the teams. It’s supporting them and their progress, and their goals, even if it comes at a cost to you. The point of leadership is that the collective output of a team should be greater than the sum of the individual parts — but that only happens if people are genuinely committed to each other's success, and the collective success of the team or organisation.

It helps to define this, although that can be challenging. How do you articulate purpose for a small team in a huge organisation, for example? Well, I’d start however with embedding these behaviours into your own psyche. I’d also ask your team to embed them as well and apply them in pursuit of your team’s objectives.

It’s my absolute belief, after 4 years in my own business, that nailing these individual behaviours will drastically move the needle for your team. If everyone gets better at these, everything else will get better.

Next week I’ll write about the 4 team behaviours, and I’ll share the document I use in my own business to define and monitor all of it. It’s a great way to get everyone on the same page. If you’ve enjoyed this, share it with your team. Ask for feedback from a peer on their reflections of you in these 4 areas. But most of all, don’t read this and go back to business as usual- the time to make an improvement can be right now.

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