What defines a good leader? Look for these six qualities

WHAT DEFINES A GOOD LEADER? LOOK FOR THESE SIX QUALITIES

Modern business challenges can require new approaches. Leadership will need to evolve in order to continue to guide organisations in tomorrow's world of work. But what are the characteristics of a good modern leader in the workplace - and how can organisations develop them? 

Many studies draw parallels between effective leadership and solid organisational performance. But whether they’re a junior manager or a senior executive, the qualities that leaders need are changing.
 
Nearly 1,500 HR professionals ranked leadership development as the number one priority for 2025, with managers feeling 'overwhelemed' by the expansion of their responsibilities. In today’s unpredictable world, you must combine traditional leadership skills with new abilities. So, what does an effective modern leader look like?
 

1. Remember what makes a good leader

Before looking at the new skills future leaders may need, it is worth reflecting on what a leader actually is.
 
What are the qualities of a good leader? It’s not what you may think.
 
Being in charge of colleagues does not necessarily make you a ‘leader’. Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg explains: “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.”
 
Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield believes that good leadership is: “Not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it. Especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter.”
 
There may be varying opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of leaders. But overall, most people believe that great leaders motivate their team members to perform their best and achieve common goals.
 
What traits do you need to achieve this in the modern workplace?
 

2. Use blended leadership styles for a VUCA world 

Stacey Philpot from Deloitte Consulting maintains that the core skills needed historically in leadership roles have remained unchanged.
 
“These skills allow someone to become a leader faster than their peers. This is even true in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment,” she says.
 
The core skills for leading in a VUCA environment include:
 
  • Pattern recognition
  • Motivation
  • Agility
  • Emotional intelligence
  • Ability to understand, control and express emotions
 
This represents psychological assessments of 23,000 senior leaders globally over the past 25 years.
 
Consider introducing servant leadership:
 
Leaders need new styles of leadership to deal with changing cultures. Being comfortable with not having the answer and owning failure can create an environment of trust and openness.
 
Collectively, these behaviours form ‘servant leadership’. The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) defines servant leadership as emphasising behaviours and values such as:
 
  • Active listening
  • Empathy
  • Leading by example
 
These are instead of opting for a more authoritative, ‘command-and-control’ leadership style. Leaders create the conditions for team members to excel by displaying vulnerability. But given the stigma around servant leadership, how can organisations encourage it?
 
How to combat stigma surrounding servant leadership:
 
Alsu Polyakova, HR Leader for GE Healthcare, says reducing stigma around servant leadership will take a specific strategy. Most importantly frequent performance appraisals for leaders.
 
“We give leaders lots of opportunities for self-reflection, so they understand how they behave,” she says. GE Healthcare’s most successful leaders help to encourage behavioural change, Polyakova says. The company measures success by how well employees rate leaders on achieving GE Healthcare’s ‘cultural pillars’. These pillars include inspiring trust and empowering employees.
 

3. Create a culture of trust in the workplace

Gaining workers’ trust is more important than ever. One way to build trust is for leaders to take action on issues such as climate change. 71 percent of employees consider their CEOs’ social awareness as critically important, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer.
 
Social awareness may yield rich rewards. The Edelman poll shows that workers who trust their employers are far more engaged and remain more loyal than their more sceptical peers.
 
Leadership styles are clearly changing. The most effective leaders will need to tailor their styles to suit different scenarios, says Professor Sattar Bawany. “Leaders need a broad repertoire of management styles and the wisdom to know when each style should be used,” he says. “In crisis scenarios like cybersecurity breaches, for example, leadership should be authoritarian because the scenario is unstructured.”
 

4. Adapt your leadership style for different generations

Managers must also balance leadership styles to suit different generations. Modern workplaces will soon house up to five generations under one roof. Therefore, there will be many people with differing preferences on leadership style.
 
As of 2023, millennials are the biggest group in the UK workforce, at 35 percent. Modern leaders must mix old and new leadership styles that meet the needs of younger generations. Doing so will future proof organisations. However, new leadership approaches cannot come at the expense of alienating older workers.
 

5. Commit to lifelong learning

With the workplace evolving so rapidly, leaders cannot rely on past experience alone to get by. Ben Farmer, Head of HR at Amazon UK agrees: “Experience is not always synonymous with wisdom and judgement. And naivety doesn’t always engender novel thinking and openness to change.”
 
Organisations should look for leaders who understand the future as well as those with experience. “Success comes from the ability to combine understanding of exciting, new trends with the experience required to put that knowledge into action,” says Farmer.
 
But what is the right balance? There is no one-size-fits-all approach when balancing experience with adaptability. Achieving the right balance will mostly depend on the organisation and the sector it operates in.
 

6. Be conscious of culture

Organisational culture is an important factor. Risk-averse firms may prefer experience over novel thinking. Leaders may be fearful of a backlash from stakeholders should novel thinking fail. To lower risk, companies should seek leaders who use both scientific evidence and intuition when making decisions.
 
Ultimately, there’s no single blueprint for an effective modern leader. Each organisation must tailor their approach to leadership development. There must be a focus on organisational culture, industry nuances and employee mix.
 
But above all, leaders should recognise that today’s reality may be old news tomorrow.
 
 

For more expert advice, take a look at the following articles: 

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null How sustainability will shape the future workplace

HOW SUSTAINABILITY WILL SHAPE THE FUTURE WORKPLACE

How sustainability will shape the future workplace

4 grams. That is how much carbon dioxide was generated by your last email, according to research by BBC Futures. If you sent an attachment, the carbon dioxide generated grows to 50 grams.

There is a strong business case for being more sustainable. Can we deliver sustainable workplaces simply by sending fewer emails? The evidence suggests that may be a start, but the story of how sustainability will shape future workplaces is still in its early stages.

The latest step on our sustainability journey is delivering our net zero commitment, through which we aim to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions significantly by changing where and how we work, and our state of mind.

Sustainability is a state of mind

Environmental regulation plays an important role in driving sustainability. However, using regulation to punish, rather than promoting sustainable practices by incentivising and winning hearts and minds, only gets you so far. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) highlights in its Sustainable Development Goals that being sustainable is a lifestyle choice. It is achieved through adopting a state of mind.

The pandemic has resulted in two major outcomes that pre-COVID policy frameworks have not yet delivered by forcing us to look at how we work and where we work. It has accelerated trends, such as digitalisation and remote working. As a result, sustainable workplaces may become the norm faster than would otherwise have been the case.

Limited studies and data are available to fully assess the impact of the pandemic on sustainable workplaces. A recent report by Everest, which focuses on global service businesses, highlights that the transition to working from home (WFH) has been largely successful, with some caveats.

This suggests the WFH or hybrid model will remain. Superficially, reduced numbers of energy intensive office centres, less commuting and fewer business trips indicate a more sustainable workplace.

However, as pre-pandemic research highlights, this is not the full story. The concentration of workers in a single location leads to energy efficiencies in, for example, winter heating. And we know there is an energy and carbon cost associated with email, messaging, video calls and the infrastructure to support home working.

With data supporting both office-based and remote working, the issue is more complex than it appears. There is insufficient data to fully understand how the COVID-19 pandemic will shape sustainable workplaces. However, with a growing number of companies working successfully on a hybrid model, there is an appetite for new research and assessment.

Employees are driving, and building, the sustainable workplace

According to Mercer’s 2021 Global Talent Trends study, a third of employees want an employer who shows ‘responsibility toward all stakeholders’. The same study also highlights that ‘85 per cent of business leaders agree an organisation’s purpose should extend beyond shareholder primacy’.  Should your organisation do the same?

Skilled knowledge workers can switch employer quickly and work in any location. This means they can choose employers that share similar values and reject those that do not. Mercer’s study confirms that over a third (36 per cent) of employees ‘favour companies that focus on social equity and environmental protection’. Being responsible and embracing sustainability underpins employer brands, helping you both attract and retain workers who identify with your culture.

The messaging from governments, non-governmental institutions (NGOs) and other stakeholders is that individual action on climate change, taking measures in our homes and lifestyles, is as important as national and international policies and agreements. Our workplaces are no different. Individual employees have as much of a part to play as employers. In fact, unless your workforce buys into your net zero and other sustainability commitments, many of your targets cannot be met.

By attracting a workforce that identifies with your corporate values and positioning on sustainability, your environmental strategy goals have the potential to become self-fulfilling. And your talent acquisition strategy will also benefit.

Developing green skills in-house and with partners

No matter how willing and on board with the sustainable mindset your workforce is, organisations need the green skills to implement sustainability strategies. Our journey to net zero includes making sense of and measuring some highly complex concepts. Not only is measuring your business required, but you must also examine your supply chains - where you do not have in-house skills, you must outsource those needs to experts.

To advise on and support our sustainability journey, Hays has partnered with ClimatePartner. This arrangement fills a gap in our capabilities, as ClimatePartner will audit our carbon dioxide emissions, including energy usage at company facilities, business travel, employee commuting, external data centres and more. Alongside making informed choices about our business, we are greening our supply chain through decisions such as investing in greener assets and procuring more sustainable solutions, including offsetting.

Valuable and long-term partners such as ClimatePartner are a vital element of the solution. Changing hiring mindsets and reskilling are also essential. A virtuous circle begins when you attract new hires to your business because of its core responsible values. These workers enter your business already equipped to help it evolve. Offering existing workers upskilling and reskilling opportunities becomes a self-selecting process of retaining the people who will add greatest value in the future.

Start your organisation’s sustainability journey by asking if you should send that email. 4 grams is a modest start, but it is a beginning.

“Here at Hays we believe that sustainability is a crucial component of the future of work. As such, it lies at the heart of our commitment to Net Zero by the end of 2021. We are proud of the progress we have already made, becoming carbon neutral and partnering with ClimatePartner and Ecometrica to measure our carbon footprint. We recognise however that more needs to be done and have set new targets to reach our goal, like reducing business flights by 40% by 2025. Throughout this journey, I have been delighted and proud to see the engagement and commitment of our Hays workforce who actively participate in our fight to do what’s right and continue to inspire us to become a sustainable, green business.”

AUTHOR


Matthew Dickason
Global Managing Director, Hays Talent Solutions & Group Head of Strategy
Matthew is the Global Managing Director for Hays Talent Solutions & Group Head of Strategy, having joined Hays in 2005. Previous roles held at Hays include Business Director in the UK and Chief Operating Officer for Asia Pacific. He is now responsible for leading the global business of Hays Talent Solutions and investing to ensure clients retain a competitive advantage in talent acquisition from the delivery of Hays MSP, RPO, technology and modular service solutions.

Prior to joining Hays, Matthew worked within Engineering, Research, Operations and Commercial areas at Johnson Matthey and Corning Inc. He has formal qualifications in Organisational Psychology and Industrial Engineering.