Our Leadership Top Five: Five Qualities Every Leader Should Have
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• A leadership title does not make you a leader. The job is not to do the work yourself, it is to gather information, make decisions, and empower the people doing the work.
• Bias for action beats decision paralysis. Seeing a problem and choosing not to act is itself a choice, and waiting usually makes things worse.
• Belonging is built by leaders who value people. Humility, collaboration with people who think differently, psychological safety, and empathy turn a group into a team that performs.
SHOW NOTES
Natalie Parks and Anthony Butler, together in St. Louis, set out their own top five leadership qualities. This is not a model from a book. It is the list they built in pre-production, from their own experience leading teams. The episode opens with a distinction that frames everything after it: holding a leadership title and actually being a leader are two different things, and the episode speaks to people who are in the role already, as well as people who aspire to it.
The first quality is observation: be a gatherer of information. Before a leader decides, they listen, observe, and assess. That means knowing each person individually and the team collectively, what resources and time they need, what excites them about the work, and how the organization around them understands its own purpose. A leader with their head down, or shut in an office for an entire tenure, cannot gather any of that.
The second quality is a bias for action. Once you see something that is not working, or something worth replicating, act on it. The hosts draw a sharp line between communicating that you are working on a problem and actually taking action, and they warn that decision paralysis, waiting for a perfect answer that never comes, costs more than an imperfect first move. Time, they argue, is a leader’s nemesis: the longer you wait to deal with something, the worse it gets.
The third and fourth qualities are humility and a spirit of collaboration. The best leaders do not try to have all the answers. They empower their people to have the answers, and they recognize that even the highest level leader can learn from the most entry level person. Collaboration, in turn, means more than working with people you like. The hosts warn against collaborating only with co-signers, people who think like you, and argue for teams of people who think differently, including the frustrating person you may actually need. That only works with psychological safety: people must be comfortable presenting ideas that differ from yours.
The fifth quality, added last and to Anthony’s own surprise, is empathy. Being direct and to the point does not rule out being empathetic. Checking on a team member who has gone quiet, asking how a change affects their family, and recognizing that poor performance usually has a reason behind it are all empathetic acts. The payoff, the hosts argue, is a system that creates belonging: people who enjoy their work, or at least can tolerate coming in on Monday morning, and a business whose performance follows. They close by pointing listeners back to the Season 1 episode on managing through change, since the same skills apply when an external change hits a team.
QUESTIONS COVERED
• What is the difference between holding a leadership title and actually being a leader?
• What are Natalie and Anthony’s top five leadership qualities?
• How does a bias for action differ from rushing into a decision?
• How do humility, collaboration, and empathy create a culture of belonging?
“You have to have some level of empathy.”
Anthony I. Butler
WANT MORE?
Keep exploring: head to the Season 2 hub and get additional insight with the companion Belonging Matters blog.
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