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 Mind the gap: Tips for tackling the disconnect in Learning and Development

MIND THE GAP: TIPS FOR TACKLING THE DISCONNECT IN LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT

“People want to learn, but they will leave their job if they aren’t getting enough support”.

In partnership with Go1, a market-leading online learning and engagement platform, Hays recently published the Learning Mindset Report, the result of a global survey that explored how employers and employees perceive and prioritise learning and development.

A learning mindset is defined as a person’s orientation to upskilling. Those who show a positive attitude, high levels of aptitude and make themselves available to learning new skills are considered to have a high learning mindset.

But the results of our recent survey show a worrying disconnect between the understanding of, attitudes towards, and application of learning. Employees are eager to acquire new skills, but organisations are ‘weighed down’ by the challenge.

The result? An unmet appetite for learning, creating concerns over skills shortages and prompting top talent to take matters into their own hands – or move on.

 

A skills gap will become a company crisis

But the demand and desire to learn new skills has never been more critical to not only organisational success – but survival.

A digital disruption is prompting a change in skills that marks an acceleration ‘over the shifts of even recent past’. Evolving business needs are creating an environment in which enhanced digital skills are in high demand. With top talent already in short supply, an overreliance on ‘buying in’ the skills necessary will see organisations fall short of their ambitions.

A more holistic workforce strategy that looks to leverage internal talent will be necessary, but current statistics paint a concerning picture. Research indicates that one in six people in the UK have ‘low or no digital skills’. A similar scenario plays out across the globe, with estimates that US and European economies have unlocked just 18% and 12% of their digital potential respectively.

Many organisations are also turning to Learning and Development (L&D) to create a competitive advantage. A culture of continuous development has increasingly become a cornerstone of many Employee Value Propositions, assisting organisations as they source emerging talent.

But L&D isn’t limited to the attraction and sourcing of candidates. 76% of employees are ‘more likely’ to stay with a company that offers continuous training. Put simply, those who can ‘grow and retain employees with the right skills, and the ability to learn new skills’ will outperform their closest competitors.

The worrying gap between expectation and reality is one that organisations must urgently bridge if they are to create workforces that can learn, unlearn and relearn to leverage changing priorities. Below, our workforce solutions experts offer their top tips.

 

Four key strategies for closing the gap

1. Align Learning and Development goals with business ambitions.

It may seem obvious that the training of teams should align with the objectives of the organisation. Yet research has found that many L&D functions ‘fall short’, with just 40% of executives agreeing that their learning strategy is aligned.

In the wake of the pandemic and facing a widespread ‘reshuffle’, L&D has become a more strategic function. As organisations regroup and realign, those companies that take the time to build a skills-based programme that is in ‘lock-step’ with their business strategy will reap the rewards.

Individuals are more likely to view training as relevant and necessary if they can link the time spent learning to the ambitions of the organisation.

Embedding L&D into the fabric of an organisation can also enhance the creativity of teams. Equipping workers with the tools – and mindset – to challenge the status quo encourages employees to consider alternative or innovative ways to ‘delight customers and beat the competition’.

And a culture of continuous development can form part of a holistic retention strategy. Investing in the training of teams sends a clear signal that an organisation is committed to the growth of its employees, helping them to build valuable skills that will encourage workers to ‘make moves’ within an organisation and remain energised, engaged and emboldened by a drive to succeed.

 

2. Pay close attention to the numbers.

The Learning Mindset Report demonstrated a disconnect in business impact that could be linked to L&D. While 81% of workers surveyed stated that they demonstrate their development on a regular basis, only 60% of employers agreed.

‘You can’t improve what you don’t measure’ - executives and leaders need to set actionable metrics that track the contribution of L&D in reaching business objectives, leveraging the huge volume of sales data readily available in most modern CRMs.

Some organisations are choosing to take this one step further, linking Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to performance bonuses and including development discussions as part of quarterly or annual reviews.

For those companies eager to promote ongoing education amongst their workforce, offering financial incentives sends a clear signal to staff , encouraging them to prioritise their personal development in the same way they would set aside time to meet the objectives of the organisation.

 

3. Turn to technology.

‘Employers and employees are aligned on the best ways to learn’, according to the results of the Learning Mindset Report.

Employees are more receptive to learning that is structured, closely followed by tutor-led online seminars. Mentoring was widely recognised as a ‘highly effective’ yet underutilised tool to facilitate development.

Many organisations are turning to technology to meet employee expectations, drawing on a range of existing and emerging tools to create a culture of engaging, tailored and evolving education.

Chatbots, for example, can send timely prompts to remind individuals of outstanding work, request feedback on recent sessions or reinforce learning with a series of quickfire questions. Virtual spaces, such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams, can foster mentoring programmes across borders, enabling employees to connect across the organisation.

And although it may still be ‘taking shape’, the Metaverse could offer a much-needed solution to the perceived shortage of supplies that facilitate development. A quarter of employees surveyed were ‘not satisfied’ with the learning resources made available by their employer.

Within this immersive universe, organisations can create ‘realistic but safe’ spaces to take measured risks and share key learns, within the safety of a simulated environment.

While the tech stack deployed may differ, the agility created by leaning into virtual resources will be essential to a workforce required to upskill and reskill at pace.

As the shelf-life of skills shortens and we undergo periods of rapid digital transformation, technology will become an essential enabler, allowing organisations to ‘plug and unplug’ into specific, individualised training programmes with a set of skills, pre-determined by the organisation, to be acquired.

Thrive, an online learning platform offered by Hays, enables organisations to build tailored training packages for their teams that are relevant, well-designed and available on-demand.

 

4. Train for today, plan for tomorrow.

Many organisations are offering training that meets the needs of today. But successful skills programmes will need to have an understanding of the competencies and capabilities that will be vital in 12 months, 5 years – and by the close of the decade.

Creating this future-focused mindset will require deep-market knowledge, global insights and timely analysis of key indicators such as salary expectations to guide decision-making. Those companies that commit to a data-driven approach can ensure that both talent acquisition and development pipelines are set up to ensure that the right talent is in the right place, at the right time.

In addition to recognising the strengths in skillsets and identifying opportunities in the market, an understanding of the skills needed to power progress can support organisations as they look to develop their Early Careers strategy.

With reports indicating that by 2030, 825 million children will not have acquired basic secondary-levels skills – a measure of workplace readiness – companies are looking to bridge the gap and ensure that tomorrow’s talent are equipped with both the technical and soft skills necessary to transition from education to employment.

 

Let’s talk about your Learning and Development strategy

Building a culture that is committed to continuous learning and development will challenge many organisations. But those that choose to invest in training will be able to offer their people an unparalleled ‘richness in opportunity’, reciprocated with stronger retention rates, a more innovative working environment and a passion for doing the right thing – for customers, colleagues and stakeholders.

For more information on our advisory services and how this can support your workforce strategy, speak to one of the Enterprise Solutions team today.

 

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