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 Mitigating co-employment risk: Are the risks you’re allowing worth the reward?

Mitigating co-employment risk: Are the risks you’re allowing worth the reward?

The last few years have shown the importance of running a tight ship. With insights across Enterprise Solutions, we explore the key risk factors you need to consider when engaging with contingent expertise.
 
Co-employment risk is inherently part of any working relationship where a non-employee worker is engaged and performing work for a manager or organisation. The need to mitigate risk is higher than ever with today’s rapidly changing workforce and unpredictable economic environment.
 
Whether it’s a managed programme, with a technology or without, or if it’s the “Wild West”, we’ve found that there are several crucial areas overlooked when it comes to risk and compliance.
 
Below, we break down risk and compliance into three categories: Financial, Reputational and Contractual.
 
There are multiple components to each, and they’re closely related. A breach of contract often results in a financial and reputational impact, and a reputational impact often has a major impact on the finances of a business.
 
Whether you’ve chosen to self-manage your contingent programme or are searching for the support of a workforce solutions partner, it’s crucial that you understand the scope and size of each risk category.
 
 

Financial Risk

 
This category of risk often rears its head in unapproved spend, initially. This can range from a hiring manager going outside of a defined process and engaging suppliers with a budget or headcount they don’t have approval for.
 
However, it’s more common that the manager did gain initial approval of a contractor for a specific time period or budget, but that has since lapsed without approval to extend. Suddenly, a contractor has been on assignment for an extra six months and you’re $40k over budget.
 
The onboarding process, or lack thereof, can generate additional forms of financial risk. Is there a comprehensive process in place to capture onboarding documentation?
 
For example, when engaging Independent Contractors, do you have agreements in place for Intellectual Property protection and proper insurance? Do you track what equipment is provided at the time of onboarding for all contractors?
 
 

Reputational Risk

 
While reputational risk can be difficult to quantify, it is quite easy to identify. Consider what types of press would be good and bad for your organisation to receive from an employment and business standpoint.
 
  • Do you have a defined process in place that tracks what systems contractors have access to?
  • How do you monitor that activity in systems with confidential or sensitive information?
  • Do you have a process to shut down system access when it’s no longer required, or a project has ended?
Similar considerations must be made for physical access granted to contractors. Typically, when a contractor is onboarded and begins work, they’re given a key card to the office. Is the key card for the specific floor or department they need, or is it for the entire campus?
 
What happens if the project or requirements change for the contractor, and they now need to have access to a different floor or department? Will their old access be shut down? Do you have a process in place for how equipment is returned when someone leaves or is terminated?
 
Taking this a step further in the face of a sudden disaster or emergency, do you have a way to quickly and accurately identify all of your non-employee workforce? Which workers are active, which suppliers deployed them, what projects and departments do they work with? How can you effectively communicate with them about abrupt and hugely important changes?
 
 

Contractual Risk

 
This category of risk becomes critically important as you begin looking at the type of work that your contractors are performing. Are they working on anything that would affect client contracts or regulations like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) or PII (Personal Identification Information)?
 
If so, it’s imperative that any agreements and regulations that you need to maintain are also maintained by your contractors.
 
This category also includes how you’re classifying contractors. If you’re engaging Independent Contractors or Self-Employed workers, it’s vital that you have a process in place to validate the work and worker, to ensure they are properly classified. Are you building audit defence files, updating them, and keeping them for the appropriate amount of time?
 
 

The value added by a partner

 
Organisations need access to the right people , at the right time and place, for a fair price. However, without a capable and experienced partner to help guide the way, companies can come to the painful realisation that what got them to the point where they are, will not necessarily propel them towards successful future.
 
It is not uncommon, for example, to see an organisation’s HR and/or Procurement team completely overwhelmed in the details and lack of processes for engaging with contingent workers.
 
We’ll help you gain clarity. Contact the team at Hays today to explore how we can manage risk, together.

 

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