Great leaders share many common traits. Though criteria for leadership in the workplace can vary from company to company, the majority of effective leaders exemplify certain skills. By focusing on developing these same skills, you can take your leadership abilities to the next level.

Develop the important traits necessary to become a great leader:

1. Self-motivated. As a leader, it’s important to be able to motivate yourself to take action to move forward toward your goals – whether they’re personal or team goals. Leaders are driven to get things done and they lead their team to do the same.

2. The ability to delegate. You can’t do it all yourself. The most effective leaders surround themselves with skilled people, define their responsibilities, and then get out of the way. A single person is quite limited, but many hands can get a lot done. Learn how to share your workload.

3. Communicate effectively. You might have a clear picture in your mind of what you’d like to see happen. Unfortunately, no one can read your mind. A leader is responsible for sharing his vision and making his desires known.

• People can give you what you want when you can communicate clearly what needs to be done.
• Provide status updates and keep everyone on the same page. Employees lose motivation when they don’t understand the current situation fully.

4. Develop others. Being a leader isn’t just about utilizing others to reach your goals. It’s developing those around you. From a more selfish perspective, the more skilled your employees, the more they can assist you and the company.

• Share your expertise and help everyone around you to grow.

5. Be committed. You can’t expect greater commitment than you’re willing to provide. A leader sets the ceiling. Everyone else settles in somewhere below that point. Set the ceiling high and show them what true commitment looks like.

6. Inspire others. A great leader knows how to inspire others to do their best work. It’s not always easy to inspire those content to simply show up each day and collect a paycheck, but it’s possible. Show your motivation and commitment.

• Even if you’re only able to inspire a few people to do their best, it will make a positive difference.

7. Have a clear focus. If you don’t know what you want, you won’t get it. Leaders are clear on their vision and readily share it with others. A clear vision serves as a roadmap. Employees can easily ask themselves if their actions are contributing to the attainment of your vision. Know your focus and communicate it effectively.

8. Show respect. Strive to treat everyone fairly and avoid playing favorites. Everyone is worthy of a basic level of respect. Ensure that you’re giving it.

9. Confidence. It’s natural to be drawn to others with confidence. You are viewed as more capable and trustworthy when your confidence level is high. Be comfortable with your skills and your plan.

• A lack of self-confidence will limit the ability of others to trust your vision and judgment.

10. Decisiveness. Leaders make the tough decisions fearlessly and take responsibility for the outcome. It’s easy to make quick decisions when you’re clear on your values and those of the company. If you can’t make up your mind, your leadership skills will be called into question.

• Practice by making small decisions quickly and following through on them. It gets easier with practice. You’ll be surprised by how much more you accomplish when you’re able to make a clear decision.

Leaders are necessary in any organization. Great leaders share common characteristics that you can develop in yourself. Even if you don’t feel you currently possess these qualities, you can grow your capacity to be an effective leader.

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Great leaders know how to motivate others. Since the amount you can accomplish on your own is limited, it’s necessary to have the assistance of others. Someone that can motivate others to do their best has an incredibly valuable talent. When you can inspire others, you can accomplish much more.

Motivate others to do their best:

1. Be emotionally supportive. To help others shine, removing the fear of failing or looking foolish is critical. Most people are frozen by fear and prefer to remain comfortable. When fear is greater than motivation, nothing happens. Removing fear can be just as effective as instilling additional motivation.

2. Provide additional support. Ask what resources are required. Does your employee require additional help or funds to get a project off the ground? Perhaps your child needs a tutor or assistance with creating a resume. Determine what resources are required for success and provide them.

3. Follow up regularly. Show that you care by monitoring their progress. It’s enough to ask and then listen. Asking questions will also help to keep them on track.

4. Be publicly supportive. It’s one thing to support an employee in the privacy of your office. It’s quite another to be supportive in front of her co-workers. Parents are guilty of this, too. Avoid only supporting your children around the dinner table. Support them in public also.

5. Acknowledge and reward. Acknowledge progress and effort regularly. Everyone needs a little boost now and then. Ideally, give acknowledgement publicly. Conversely, your disgruntlement and any discipline should be handled privately. It’s as simple as handling praise and reprimands most effectively.

6. Ask for ideas. You might hear a few ideas that are better than your own. It’s easier for others to get excited about their own ideas than to get excited about yours. Using ideas from your team will create a sense of purpose and involvement.

7. Be clear. Vagueness breeds confusion. Confusion saps enthusiasm. When the objective and the necessary steps are clear, motivation is easier to generate. Ensure that everyone is clear on their roles.

8. Set a good example. If it’s important to you, it will be important to your employees, spouse, or children. Don’t just tell them it’s important, but show them by your behavior. Make the objective a priority in your own life.

9. Create a vision. Paint a picture of the end result in the minds of those involved. The work is rarely enjoyable, but it’s the end result that matters. Keep reminding everyone of how great things will be when it’s over. The work is the path to reach that endpoint.

10. Deal swiftly with dissenters. It only takes one dissenting, charismatic employee to bring the whole thing crashing down. There’s often one complainer that tries to undermine the enthusiasm of everyone else. Don’t underestimate the damage this one person can do. Have a heart-to-heart conversation with them or move them out of the group.

• Motivation isn’t just about adding positive motivation. It’s also about removing the obstacles. Dissenters are obstacles.
• Encourage others to do their best work or to follow their dreams. Motivating others is a skill that anyone can develop. You can only be as successful as your team. Avoid the belief that you can do it all alone. You can’t.

Great leaders are tasked with the responsibility of inspiring others to be overachievers. It’s a challenging task, but if you’re good at motivating others, you’ll always be one of the most important people around.

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The inspiration for this blog post came from a training I recently attended with one of my mentors Peter Wolfing, CEO of National Wealth Centre, in which he talked about the 20 Qualities of Network Marketing Leaders. I found the training so inspirational I decided to share the key points I took away from the training in this blog post. Peter is qualified to offer advise on the top qualities or traits of network marketing leaders because he is a very successful network marketer himself, having been in the industry for more than 20 years and in that time he has just about done everything you can think of in the industry.

He has suffered the highs and the lows of network marketing and come out the other side smelling of success. He has himself made a lot of money and spent time in the company of many others who have also made millions of dollars in the industry, including company owners and people that have come up through the ranks, just like himself. In this training Peter shares some of the things that these people have in common and in this abridged version I share what he calls the 5 core qualities of network marketing leaders.

1. Hard Work

Network marketing is hard work, period. You have to put in the time and effort. Many people have a misconception of the amount of work required to succeed with network marketing. If you think that all you have to do is join something, throw out a few posts on Facebook and Twitter and maybe an email or two, and magically people will rush to join your business, then you are in for a rude awakening. It just does not work like that.

This is a real business and you have to put in the hard work to make it happen, just as you would do in a conventional business.

2. Focus

This is very important. Speaking of society in general, there was a time when there were only a few radio and TV channels. Today there is proliferation of apps, social media, multiple TV and radio channels, and other distractions that make it very easy to lose focus.

Similarly, in network marketing, there used to be only a few big companies to chose from and once or twice a year you might find out about something else. Today, there is a new company launched almost every day, each claiming to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it can be very difficult to stay focussed on your opportunity.

So, one of the qualities of those leaders that have risen to the top in this industry is the ability to say no. They quickly learnt that you have to pick something from all the different programs that are available, stick with it and focus on what you have to do to make a success of it.

3. Belief

You have to believe in yourself and your ability do it, and you have to believe that the company you picked has your interests and the interest of your business at heart. You need to believe in your sponsor, your upline, your team or group that you are working with and you have to use and belief in the products.

You must have these multiple legs of belief because, if you don’t have belief in one or two of these, then your success will be limited. The most important of these is belief in yourself and a lot of what you do stems from these beliefs. As such, they act as reference points that feed your confidence and your posture, which helps you to maintain a steady ship.

4. Patience

Top network marketers have the patience of a saint. In today’s modern world where everyone wants instant gratification, people have very little patience. In a lot of cases they have unrealistic expectations and when they don’t get the instant results they are expecting, they quit and go off to find something else.

One of the reasons for this is that, generally speaking, network marketing is easy come and easy go, or perhaps it is more accurate to say, easy in and easy out. It is very easy to join a network marketing opportunity because of the low cost joining fees, which can be as little as $10 to $20. This makes it a lot less painful to quit compared with a traditional business business, which can cost as much as $50,000 to $100,000 to join, making it much more painful to quit. So you find that a lot of people will shrug their shoulders and quit a network marketing opportunity after only 30 to 90 days when they don’t see the instantaneous results that they are expecting.

So, in addition to hard work, focus and belief, you have to have patience because nothing comes easy and it doesn’t happen over night.

5 Embrace Change

Finally, you have to embrace change. Most people do not like change because it rocks the boat and often takes people out of their comfort zone. But as a leader you have to embrace change. You have to go with the flow and not offer too much resistance to the change that is inevitable.

There is a saying that goes something like “the only thing that is permanent in this world is change,” and embracing change means understanding that nothing is permanent in this world and sometimes things have to change. For example, sometimes the company has to change to make the improvements that will be to the benefit of everyone.

The same applies to what ever you are doing. You may have to modify whatever you are doing to make progress towards your goals. Doing the same things over and over again leads to stagnation and eventually your business will end up going backwards.

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