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 to use skills-based hiring in your organisation

HOW TO USE SKILLS-BASED HIRING IN YOUR ORGANISATION

Man sat at a desk in a modern office

Organisations are recognising that relying on traditional hiring criteria will leave them at a disadvantage, especially in a competitive market. As a result, organisations opting for a skills-based hiring approach is on the increase.

Around three-quarters of companies test job seeker’s skills multiple times during the interview process. Now, skills are becoming the key focus when recruiting for specific roles. Hiring managers that use skills-based hiring practices are already seeing significant benefits. Organisations are saving both cost and time spent searching for the right talent.
 
With more employers than ever embracing skills-based hiring, will traditional qualifications and lengthy CVs become a thing of the past? There are still significant barriers to skills-based hiring, but breaking these down could be key to filling roles with the right talent.
 

What is a skills based hiring approach?

Skills-based hiring is a way of searching for, and attracting talent that meets the key job requirements. Instead of focusing on bachelor's degrees or other formal educational achievements, a skills-based approach looks at a candidate's experience.
 
Focusing on skills is surging in popularity. Amid ongoing talent shortages, businesses are increasingly open to considering candidates who may not have taken a traditional career path.
 
Prospective candidates may have the skillsets and related experience to succeed, and now they have the opportunity to show it.
 

What are the benefits of skills based hiring?

You can expand your potential talent pool:

One of the biggest advantages to skills-based hiring is having access to a broader talent pool. Removing arbitrary educational requirements can help to avoid disregarding valuable candidates.
 

Focusing on potential can save money:

If academic ability takes priority over all other skills, it can lead to some poor hiring decisions. Hiring the wrong person can cost your organisation significant resources. By implementing skills-based hiring, managers can focus on the best candidates for the job at hand. As a result, the relative quality of candidates often increases. In fact, 92.5% of companies report seeing a reduction in their mis-hire rate.
 

You can plug skills gaps and future proof your roles: 

We've previously discussed the importance of recognising transferable skills. By being more flexible with your job description, you can hire for soft skills rather than qualifications alone. Broadening your candidate search can provide long-term benefits for your business. After all, formal qualifications may not be relevant in a few years. By identifying opportunities for building technical skills, you can fill any skills gaps and future proof your organisation.
 

Your recruitment processes can become more efficient:

Using a skills-based recruitment process can reduce the amount of time it takes from application to job offer. Hiring managers can quickly identify and rank candidates based on their skills when using a skills-based process.
 

Hire based on skills and improve your retention rates:

By hiring based on skills, you can make sure the job description matches the candidate’s abilities. This makes you more likely to find the right match even without a degree. One study suggests that a skills-based approach means businesses are 98% more likely to retain high performers.
 

Skills-based job postings can increase diversity of applicants and reduce bias:

The Office for Students has uncovered that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to complete a university degree course. This general trend suggests that people from underrepresented groups are often discouraged from higher education. These applicants may be less likely to have a university degree.
 
If employers focus solely on education, they risk excluding these candidates from roles they may want to apply for. Skills-based hiring considers attributes relevant for the job and allows all applicants equal consideration.
 

Are there any barriers to adopting skills-based hiring practices?

The benefits of skills-based hiring are well known, but not everyone in your organisation will be on board with the changes. You may face challenges along the way, including:
 

Your hiring managers may be resistant to change: 

Many senior managers' opposition to skills-based hiring is due to a lack of understanding. For senior leaders, there is not enough clarity on the role that different skills might play in their organisation.
 
When 35% of large companies and 47% of SMEs removed their degree requirements, more than half cited that hiring managers were still insisting on certain qualifications.
 

Job descriptions still contain unnecessary requirements:

One of the key challenges of skills-based recruitment is validating the skills that prospective employees put forward. You can remove degree requirements, but how exactly do you judge a candidate’s skills through interviews alone?
 
A hiring manager might wonder if a candidate can learn the necessary skills without experience in a similar job. Some organisations want candidates to have years of work experience. However, research shows that having more years of experience does not always relate to better job performance.
 

How you can start to implement hiring practices based on skills

Implementing a skills-based strategy should begin with potential quick wins, such as removing degree requirements from job descriptions.
 
You also need to think of a plan for the long term, to increase your chances of success. For example, think how a skills-based approach can improve each stage of the employee journey:
 
  • Interviews: ensure that new employees are ready for success by interviewing based on skills. Using behavioural and situational interview questions are excellent ways to judge proficiency in specific skills. For more insight, read our guide to asking competency-based interview questions.
  • Onboarding: identify relevant skills and adapt your onboarding process accordingly. Also look out for skills gaps, to support new hires from an early stage.
  • Development: using skills-based practices can help to identify learning opportunities quickly and accurately. Skill assessments can inform continual professional development plans. This approach will ensure that new hires have the skills to grow and progress in the long term.
Now more than ever employees are aware of how important their skills are to potential employers. By implementing skills-based hiring practices, you can broaden your talent network and uncover candidates that may have previously been overlooked.
 
Committing to these new practices within your organisation can help to ensure your ongoing success and worker satisfaction.
 

Find more tips from Enterprise Solutions

Looking to future proof your organisation? Find more information on skills-based workforces here:
 

 

AUTHOR


Harry Gooding
Director UK&I, Hays Skills and Learning
Harry is part of Hays Skills and Learning, a new business in the Hays portfolio supporting our customer network to develop programmes that open up employment pportunities to 'undiscovered talent' communities.

After beginning his career in recruitment, Harry then worked in VC backed start-ups and scale-ups for six years across two different portfolios, before joining Hays.