What comes to mind when you think of a leader? For many, it connotes a manager, politician, CEO, etc. But leadership isn’t just about the title, role, and level of seniority someone has.

Many work for years on end striving to achieve a title that is commonly associated with a leader. However, moving up the ranks and getting promoted to a managerial position doesn’t automatically turn the person into a leader.

So that begins to beg the questions:

What makes someone a great leader?

What characteristics define a leader?

Why aren’t all leaders the same?

At a base level, great leadership is all about acquiring and honing in on different skills which enable one to be an apt role model for a team in any environment. With the properly honed leadership qualities, anyone can become a great leader, and you’ll often find them in all different corners of life: at home, at school, at your local grocery store, or at work.

Recently, I spoke with High-Performance Leadership Coach, Rosa Ponce de Leon, on the podcast to discuss the makings of great leaders and how to become a purposeful leader that gets the best out of one’s team. Based on the conversation, we landed on the three core C’s which are the cornerstones of great leaders:

1. Confidence

2. Compassion

3. Competency

Interestingly, we discussed how many subpar leaders lack two of these cornerstone elements and how many good leaders lack one of the cornerstone elements. To become a great leader, we find that one needs to embrace all three cornerstone elements.

As we delved a bit deeper, we found some of the following characteristics, all of which you can bucket into one of the above three core C’s, are often what great leaders exhibit:

1. Active Listening and Feedback

   Being an active listener and being able to provide genuine feedback is far more difficult than it actually sounds. For any great leader, good communication skills are at the heart of the core characteristics.

   The best leaders need to be able to interpret others properly and appropriately communicate back to display compassion as well as the competency to move a goal or aim forward.

   Leading from that point, if leaders are expected to help provide direction to their team to help others succeed, they should be constantly asking for feedback from others to ensure that they understand the situation properly and that they are communicating and listening effectively to their team members. Encouraging open lines of communication amongst your team and having an open door policy are great ways to practice active listening and gaining continual feedback for the greater good of the team.

2. Embracing Failure

   There is an outdated idea that leaders are in their position rightfully so because they have developed the competency to avoid failures nearly 100 percent of the time. However, we all know that no matter how much time and effort we put into initiatives to avoid it, failure is bound to occur.

   Great leaders are known for embracing failures and taking them in stride. While some leaders may begin to question and place the blame on their team, great leaders remain confidently composed and logically think through the situation to actively lead their team to a solution.

   Instead of worrying about the emotional turmoil subpar, and even some good, leaders would fall warry to, great leaders will look longer term and get to the root of the problem to help everyone on the team avoid a similar sort of failure in the future. At the end of the day, great leaders embrace failures in order to constantly and incrementally improve upon past events.

3. Growth Mindset

   Any good leader can tell you how important it is to foster and develop the skills of their team members. Healthy team development activities will help the team grow in their personal development, help improve the ease in which work can be accomplished, and generally improve team morale all around.

   Many leaders lead from a state of fear that someone may come after their position since they may potentially not be growing as a person as much as a member of their own team. Great leaders, on the other hand, have the confidence and humility to know that it’s in the benefit of the team and organization at large to share their own knowledge with the team and set up development opportunities to help them constantly grow.

   If you’re interested in learning more about how a growth mindset can help you become a better leader, I’ve also dived deeper into a comparison of the fixed and growth mindsets here.

4. Positive Attitude

   Great leaders know that a happy, motivated team starts with them setting the example with a positive attitude. This is especially true when things aren’t going the team’s way, so it’s important for leaders to create a happy, relaxed environment for their teams to operate within.

   All it takes is for some simple things like having weekly virtual team get-togethers to chat about life outside work or grabbing an afternoon coffee together with the team. When people feel they are a part of the team, they are likely to work harder for the team if they are happy and appreciated by your positive gestures as a leader.

   As mentioned in embracing failures, leaders will come up against lull periods where the team morale is low. However, the best leaders find a way to stay positive and figure out ways to rejuvenate the team.

5. Lifelong Learner

   Most, if not all, leaders have experienced periods throughout their career where they’ve entered unchartered territories and don’t have all the knowledge and answers. As a result, they have to draw on their prior experiences and skillsets to help guide them during these periods.

   The best leaders know there is always something to learn from their past experiences, and there will always be something new to learn from future experiences. With this in mind, great leaders embrace the growth mindset discussed earlier and connect all the lessons they’ve learned in the past with lessons to be learned in the future to make decisions accordingly.

   It’s a never-ending journey of learning for leaders since they are always trying to further enhance the team’s environment and experience as well as the organization at large.

The bottom line is that all of these leadership traits are learnable so as long as you’re willing to buy into the three core C’s and practice them consistently. Make fine-tune tweaks here and there to your working habits with a team and embrace the humility that you won’t know everything right from the jump.

No matter what, even if you’re not a manager or high-ranking official, all of our actions affect others since we all work with others in some capacity. That means every individual has the opportunity to develop the leadership skills that make great leaders - off you go!