I am often asked what qualities are the most important in a leader, what do my employees or staff expect from me and how can I deliver to meet and exceed their expectations.

Although the answers are simple, they may not always be easy. The reason being, leadership is something that you become after sometimes years of studying and experience, it is not something you just do.

Granted, there are people who appear to be natural leaders. Don’t be fooled, natural leaders are only successful because they take discipline, focussed action towards their goals. It isn’t just by chance.

Here is a list of the 7 traits I believe you need to be a high performance and profitable leader.

1. Be a Dreamer – Martin Luther King had a dream, he didn’t just have a vision, he didn’t just have goal, he didn’t just have plans. He had a dream that ran through every part of his being. He owned it, he protected it. He alone carried the torch.

We constantly hear the word ‘Vision’ as the highest quality of leadership, however vision on its own can get lost. Having a vision is a great concept, but if it is going to run the course, it has to run much deeper. It has to compel you to act and to stay on course when the hard times come. It has to ignite your passion, put a fire in your belly and make you desperately want it.

Your dream has to have a shape and form to it that is easily explained to those around you, if you want them to jump on board and start screaming your dream from the Mountain tops. Just remember it is your dream, nobody else has your exact dream. Everybody has their own dream and will help you toward yours more often than not, only if it helps them toward their own dream.

2. Be Courageous – You have many eyes on you all waiting to see how you act and re-act to every situation. As the leader you set the tone for the pace of change in your organisation. You also create the environment that allows people to shine and add more value or shrink because they do not feel that their contribution is appreciated or respected. It is your job to lead fearlessly, with fairness, conviction and honesty. You are the chief risk taker and you have to be prepared to fail in public. As you saw earlier in this section. I am a big advocate of the fail first, fail fast and fail cheaply principle.

This might be a good time to say that some humility would be a great advantage in your role. The humble leader always achieves more, because they have more people working in harmony with them.

3. Be Real – This is one of the highest traits of an inspiring leader. They see the world for what it is today, they see themselves, those around them and their organisation for what they really are. You should be able to stand back from your self and your company and take a helicopter or dis-engaged view of what is going on.

Once you have identified exactly where you are in all areas, then and only then can you move forward with specific, analysed plans and strategy.

A recent client I worked with owned a small real estate business that employed 35 staff. His business was in financial trouble and even though everybody who worked in the business knew it, the owner denied it. Worse yet, he denied it to himself, thinking that if he kept working hard things would turn around and he would all of a sudden be successful and on top of his game. He never faced reality and as a result he could not see the flaws in his business or the opportunities for growth. When I started working with him the first thing I got him to do was to get real about his position.

Only then could we move towards fixing it. Within 3 months we were able to go from being on the brink of disaster to starting to see growth.

Staff were much happier to perform and out performed themselves month on month, because they realised they had a job which was not about to pulled out from under them.

The owner after some serious reflection and help with strategy was able to turn his business around. He is still running a profitable business today. It only happened because he was prepared to face reality.

4. Roll your sleeves up and do the dirty work – In order to get the most out of your people and to create a culture that encourages creativity, pro-activeness and harmony, you simply have to lead by example. This is not an us and them situation it is an ‘us’ situation. If we are all in this together we can accomplish up to 10 times more than if you are marching to the beat of your own drum.

Whether you are in a sales environment, team or individual situation, you have to show that you are prepared to do what it takes to reach the objective.

Many years ago, I worked in a company where the Mayor of the city was on our board. He would come into the office once a week, selectively choose who he was going to talk to and who was not important enough to acknowledge.

There was one afternoon when he arrived at the office, after going to the lavatory he came out and announced to the 10 people in the office that the toilets needed to be cleaned.

I was initially impressed when he said, “well if nobody else will do it I will,” at which a number of staff said they would do it.

The sad thing here is what he could have turned into a good experience and leading by example, his entire attitude was pointed towards the fact he was too important to do it, and somebody else should be doing it.

Even though he said he would, he never meant it. Imagine the brownie points he would have got if he came out and said, “hey I notice the toilets need a quick clean, where can I find the cleaning gear?”

Everybody would have been absolutely stunned and he would have won over an entire team. Instead he lost the mayoralty the following year. The moral of the story is if you want followers, then you have to be prepared to do the hard yards in the little things that earn you respect. It is no longer just enough to show up for the main game. Please don’t think I am encouraging you to clean the bathroom. I only want you to know your actions have a massive and lasting impact.

People want to know you place a high value on them. If as a leader you position yourself as more important you will not only lose your followers, but you will have renegades.

The whole attitude shifts from, “yes I would love to do all that extra work to help us achieve our common goals “to” why should I, it’s not like you appreciate me, so why should I put in the extra effort?”

Immediately, it becomes an us and them scenario, which slows down both growth and retention.

5. Display Exemplary Character – otherwise known as integrity. This is the critical component of being successful when working with people.

The people that work in your company want to be part of something big. They want to feel like what they do makes a difference, like they are contributing in some way.

They want to rise up for a worthy cause, they will rise up for you if you show that you have integrity. People must know that they can trust you with delicate information that you will not publicise their difficult or personal situation among their peers.

It is also important to ensure that when you make a decision you stand by it. There has to be reassurance that you are reliable and dependable. If you do change your decision then it is important that you bring in the people involved and explain why, so that there is credibility behind your judgement, rather that people hearing through a third party that you can’t even make a decision and stick to it.

This is often where people perceive favouritism within an organisation. Even though you know that you cannot treat everybody the same you need to treat everybody with the same amount of respect.

Once you discover the different personality types you will be able to tailor your style of leadership to meet the needs of every individual in your company.

Remember a business can never outpace its leader. A leader that causes turmoil and conflict within his or her own team, is only making his or her life so much harder in the long run. The flow on effect into every area of the business is massive.

6. Response + Ability – Your ability to recognise that the success of your business ultimately rests on your shoulders and yours alone, is a major component to success in any business.

You can’t blame the employees as you picked them. If you didn’t, you employed the person who did pick them. They are a result of your judgement.

If you have gone down the path of cheap labour that is exactly what you will get. Do not be surprised when the quality of the product and service is compromised. You created it. If you have made a commitment to hire only the best people in the industry, even though it costs you more, then that is what you will get. The best people, products and services. You get what you pay for.

Equally what you put into your people is what you will get out of them. If you are a crap leader nobody will want to work hard for you. If you educate yourself on how to lead people and put in disciplined focused action, you will have an entire workforce wanting to get behind you.

This would be a good time to do a total analysis of your people assets. You want to know how happy they are, what they want to achieve out of their position. Are they contributing to the company dream, if all is not in harmony, why not?

There is a very good chance that the problem revolves around you. There is an old quote that says: “If you want me to change, you first must change.” This is so true. The BOSS mentality no longer works. This is a good time to point out that for every action there is a re-action. You can’t do anything without it having an impact somewhere. Your ability to take responsibility for 100% of what you do and say, will set you apart in the market place.

Another point under this trait is that part of your role is to stay calm and controlled at all times, when you are interacting with clients and staff. There is no excuse for losing your temper with people – You are the leader, you have to act like it.

An easy way to avoid this is to decide never to respond out of anger. Walk away, process the situation. Come back to it when you have perfectly, calm, clear thinking. By taking the heated emotion out of the situation, you will work it through to a solution. Much better than focusing on who is to blame.

Have you ever walked into a business and it feels flat, almost lethargic? Everybody is hard at work, but with no atmosphere in the place, just robotic actions.

Nobody wants to work in these places. It’s your job to make sure you create an environment people want to be in. It is essential for performance. As a leader you are the measure of the fun factory. Is your workplace solemn and sleepy or does it have great energy, buzz and momentum.

If you are not sure, go to work tomorrow and look around. Ask yourself – who’s smiling?

7. Focused, Disciplined Action – You are the biggest resource that your entire company has. How you distribute your time will determine how quickly your company moves towards its goals. If you can master this one skill then you are already way ahead of your competition.

The ability to deploy yourself and create the greatest return on your time spent, can be the difference between explosive growth or pottering along to the finish line which is somewhere far off in the distance. If you have read Robert Kiyosaki’s book cashflow quadrant you will have a great understanding of the difference between working on your business and in your business. If you have not read it and you want to learn to step back from your business, then it has some great practical examples.

Planning to spend your time wisely is not a simple task. It takes rigorous discipline to stick to the task, with all of the interruptions you experience throughout the day.

It might be helpful to know, that when you start a task and you see it through to completion, without interference you can save as much as 60% of the time that you would have spent, by going back and revisiting the task after an interruption or two.

Just imagine saving 60% of your time, full stop. Think about the possibilities of having that precious time available to you. You could invest it in the innovation of your businesses, spend it with family, and go on more holidays. You could spend it growing your revenue streams. The possibilities are endless.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want you to work harder, I want you to work fewer hours, accomplish more and create a brand of attraction that people consistently want to come to.

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About the Author

Michelle Reynolds is a business coach, entrepreneur, key note speaker, behavioural change expert and an author.