CEO Corner: What Makes A Good Leader

Written by Soong Chong, CEO

There has been widespread coverage of the political leadership challenge between Julia Gillard & Kevin Rudd. This leadership challenge has inspired my article for this month, which is about "what constitutes a good leader".

In my opinion, leaders must possess these top 3 traits:

Trust

One of the most important traits of a leader is their trustworthiness. If your people do not trust you, you will not succeed as a leader, since your followers will have no faith in you. Trust has to be earned, not gained and can be done so through various ways including always being truthful, living up to your expectations & delivering on your promises. Honesty & integrity are values that must be highly adhered to by a leader in order to gain trust.

Accountability

Leaders must be held accountable for their actions. What makes a great leader is their ability to step up and recognise their role in a certain task or promise & not shift the blame onto others. A great leader must also be able to reassure his/her public that any unfortunate turn of events can be explained, and that he/she would be able to rectify the issue without being forced to rely on others.

Inspirational

A leader must be able to  inspire others. The best way to do that is to lead by example. By demonstrating endurance or exceptional performance in mental or physical activities, it will inspire others to follow and aim for the same or higher goals.

In  conclusion, I would like to share with you a quote on leadership by John Quincy Adams which says "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader".