Critical Characteristics of a good Leader
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Mariswaran
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Leadership
Critical Characteristics of a good Leader: Mike White, PepsiCo International’s chairman and chief executive officer, told a Stanford Graduate School of Business audience March 6 what he considers the six critical characteristics of good leaders:
- All good leaders have perspective. They simplify problems, ask the right questions, and balance long- and short-term interests. They listen more than they talk. Good leaders “need to be able to cut through the clutter and come up with a solution.”
- Successful leaders turn strategy into results. They face reality and adjust plans to achieve their goals. They motivate people and are decisive, adhering to the 70-30 rule: If you have 70 percent of the information it’s time to make a decision because “if you hold out for the last 30 percent you’re probably toast.”
- Great leaders have the courage to make changes, even when things are good. In 1996, when PepsiCo announced it was spinning off its restaurant business, Forbes magazine called the move a huge and irretrievable strategic blunder. It turned out to be a good move, but at the time it took a lot of courage, White said.
- Effective leaders are self aware and savvy. They know how to read people and organizations, and they flex their style to achieve results.
- True leaders have unshakeable integrity. They set the moral tone and ethical standard of an organization. They ask for help and seek the council of others.
- Proven leaders know how to build strong teams. A leader’s ability to recognize potential in others and foster it builds successful organizations.
| MIT Recommended Materials on Leadership | |
|---|---|
| Arthur, W. Brian. "Conversation with W. Brian Arthur: Coming from Your Inner Self." 2001.Interview by C. O. Scharmer and Joseph Jaworski, Xerox Parc, Palo Alto, California, April 16, 1999. | |
| Fritjof, Capra. In The Hidden Connections. New York: Doubleday, 2002. Castells, Manuel. In End of Millennium. Oxford, UK, and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. | |
| Global Institute for Responsible Leadership. 2003. Background paper. http://www.mckinsey.com/ideas/mgi/index.asp | |
| Handy, Charles. "What's a Business for?" Harvard Business Review (December 2002): 49-55. | |
| Jaworski, Joseph. In Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership. SanFrancisco: Berret-Koehler, 1996. Kahane, Adam. "How to Change the World: Lessons for Entreprneurs form Activists." Relfections Vol. 2, No. 3 (2001): 16-26. | |
| Käufer, K., C. O. Scharmer, and U. Versteegen. "Reinventing the Health Care System from Within: The Case of a Regional Physician Network in Germany." MIT Working paper #WPC 0010, 2003. | |
| Kao, John. "Conversation with John Kao: The Seventh Career: Building an Innovation. 2001.Keiretsu. Interview by C. O. Scharmer, The Idea Factory. San Francisco, April 12, 2000. | |
| Kelley, Tom. The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm. New York: Doubleday, 2001. | |
| Kofman, Fred, and Peter Senge. "Communities of Commitment: The Heart of Learning Organizations." Working Paper, Organizational Learning Center, MIT, Cambridge, MA, 1994/2001.McDonough,William and M. Braungart. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. New York: North Point Press, 2002. | |
| Perlas, Nicanor. Shaping Globalization. Civil Society, Cultural Power and Threefolding. Saratoga Springs, NY: GlobeNet3, 2000. | |
| Pruitt, Bettye H., and Katrin Kaufer. "Dialogue as a Tool for Peaceful Conflict Transformation." Reflections Vol. 3, No. 4 (2002): 50-65. | |
| Rosch, Eleanor. "Conversation with Eleanor Rosch: Primary Knowing: When Perception Happens from the Whole Field." 2001. Interview by C. O. Scharmer, University of California, Berkeley, Dept. of Psychology, October 15, 1999. | |
| Scharmer, C. O. "Self-transcending Knowledge: Sensing and Organizing Around Emerging Opportunities." Knowledge Management Vol. 5, No. 2 (2001): 137-150. | |
| Scharmer, C. O., W. B. Arthur, J. Day, J. Jaworski, M. Jung, I. Nonaka, and P. M. Senge. Illuminating the Blind Spot. 2002. www.dialogonleadership.org.A shortened version of this paper was published in Leader to Leader (Spring 2002), 11-14. | |
| Scharmer, C. O. The Blind Spot of Leadership: Presencing as a Social Technology of Freedom. 2003. Introduction to a forthcoming book with the same title. www.ottoscharmer.com | |
| Senge, Peter. "The Leader's New Work: Building Learning Organizations." Sloan Management Review Vol. 32, No. 1 (Fall 1990): 7-22. | |
| Senge, Peter, and Goran Carstedt. "Innovating our Way to the Next Industrial Revolution." Sloan Management Review Vol. 42, No. 2 (Winter 2001): 24-39. | |
| Senge, Peter, and Katrin Käufer. "Communities of Leaders or No Leadership at All." In Cutting Edge Leadership. Edited by Barbara Kellermann and Larraine R. Matusak. College Park, MD: James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, 2000, pp. 119-36. | |
| Senge, Peter, and C. O. Scharmer. "Community Action Research." In Handbook of Action Research. Edited by Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury. Calif: Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, 2001, pp. 238-249. | |
| Senge, P., C. O. Scharmer, J. Jaworski, and B. S. Flowers. Forthcoming. Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future (working title).Shiva, Vandana. Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology. London and New York: Zed Books, 1993. | |
| Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York and London: Norton, 2002. United Nations. 2003. Global Compact: Corporate Citizenship in the World Economy. www.unglobalcompact.org | |
| Varela, Francisco. "Conversation with Francisco Varela: Three Gestures of Becoming Aware." 2001. Interview by C. O. Scharmer, Paris, January 12, 2000. | |
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May 22, 2012 at 5:26 AM
To be a successful leader, we should know what ideas to implement for the company's sake, how to communicate with others, how to motivate them.
Also, at Toronto team building camp, I've learned that we must have the capacity of taking decisions and risks why not. Thank you for sharing this article!
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