What Are 10 Qualities of a Good Leader?

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Some patients ask me how they might best lead their sports teams or school clubs. I start by telling them how I learned the beginning of the answer the hard way.

When I was 13 years old, I organized a school newspaper entitled The Etc. Gazette. This story takes place so many years ago that we duplicated this newspaper using a ditto machine in the days before photocopiers. This duplication process produced purplish copies and was the origin of our use of the word "ditto," which means "the same thing again."

Fortunately, the lessons of this story remain valid today. I convinced a few of my friends to serve as reporters for this newspaper, and we started off enthusiastically. Over the next few months, each of the reporters quit. I remember distinctly the day the last reporter quit. He said, "You can't get us to cooperate by telling us what to do. You need to listen to our ideas."

That was one of my earliest lessons in good leadership.

1. Effective leadership involves encouraging your followers to achieve to the best of their abilities and allowing them the freedom to pursue their own interests.

A good leader suggests various options that would help move a project forward based on the leader's vision, perhaps after a brainstorming session with the team. It gives each team member the freedom of choice regarding how they will contribute.

When I became the news editor of my college newspaper, I applied the lesson I learned in junior high school. Our newspaper typically had a staff of 3-5 reporters. By delegating the responsibility of choosing story ideas to our reporters, expressing gratitude for their work, and treating them with kindness, I grew our news division to 30 reporters that year.

As a young physician, I encountered more negative examples of what a leader should not do. I was researching at a major east coast hospital as a pediatric pulmonologist. I also had an opportunity at that hospital to see a few patients each week in the clinic. That year, I learned that I could best contribute within the clinical rather than the research realm, and I volunteered to pitch in at a second clinic each week.

When my division director found out that I was working at a second clinic, he confronted me and said,

“Your job is to do research and not to contribute clinically. If you want to do clinical work you should find yourself some other place to work.”

That admonition led me to begin planning to leave his department at the end of the academic year. If, instead, my director had shown empathy toward me and stated that he valued my clinical and research contributions to his department, I likely would have stayed.

2. Leaders who use positive feedback are more likely to maintain a successful operation.

Later that same year, I told my division director I wasn't sure the research project was progressing well. He said that he would make sure it goes well. He added, "Of course, I want you to do well. That would make me look good." I couldn't believe he said that comment aloud because it betrayed his selfishness.

3. I believe that an important part of the job of leaders with integrity is to help their team members grow rather than to use their team to benefit the leaders.

When I moved to another institution, my new division director did not clearly define what he expected of me. Often, I found out that I was expected to complete a task only once it became clear that the director was not around to do the work for which he had taken responsibility. Of course, his became a frustrating exercise, as I felt he was taking advantage of me.

4. In contrast, effective leaders place a premium on good communication with their staff, including soliciting their input regarding how they might be best supported in the workplace.

When I began looking for other employment opportunities, the director reportedly gave me a poor recommendation because he felt I had not carried out my duties to his satisfaction. I don't think he recognized that I had grown to distance myself from him and that our poor relationship affected my attitude adversely.

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5. Effective leaders should introspect when their staff appears unhappy to identify whether they need to change their leadership approach.

Nevertheless, I had built a sufficient record as a pediatric pulmonologist and was recruited to join a few medical institutions. One of the institutions that recruited me expressed great interest in hiring me. I very much enjoyed meeting the faculty at that institution, and two of them became life-long friends after my interview there, even though I did not accept the offered position.

The issue was that the chairwoman at that institution could only offer a salary significantly below what I was offered elsewhere. I believe that if that institution truly wanted me, funding would have been made available.

6. Effective leaders are willing and able to push hard to get important things done on behalf of their organization.

As it turns out, within the next five years, both of my new friends left that institution, likely because the leadership there was unwilling to support the needs of the pulmonology division.

When I was interviewed for the position of director of the pulmonology division in Syracuse in January, my wife called me to tell me that I could not return to Philadelphia, where I lived at the time, because the city had iced over. I was stuck because I had already checked out of my hotel. The chair at Syracuse invited me to stay over at his home overnight.

7. Effective leaders go above and beyond to help and show compassion to people who work with them.

My impromptu stay with the chairman helped me feel I was supposed to accept the position in Syracuse. Indeed, the chairman there proved to be very supportive of my efforts to develop a major pulmonology division.

Six years later, a new chairman took over, and he established new priorities for my institution. Implementing one of these caused significant turmoil in the department, yet my new chairman stuck to his plans. He told me that things would settle down over time, as they did.

I admired that my new chairman kept his focus on his goal to improve the department and, in this way, was able to keep in perspective the discomforts associated with the changes he instigated. Thus, I learned that:

8. Effective leaders are resilient, know when to be patient, and allow time to be their ally.

As director of my pulmonology division, I implemented the leadership lessons I had learned over 20 years and was able to help greatly increase the number of staff members and patients seen in my division.

To help maintain staff harmony, I established a weekly meeting where all the staff members were asked for input regarding their jobs and how the division might run better. We also had a few divisional nonwork get-togethers each year, including picnics, lunches, and parties.

9. I ensured that each staff member felt they were a stakeholder in our success and thus became more committed to doing their best for the division.

Fifteen years later, I retired from my Syracuse job and established a new center specializing in pediatric hypnosis and counseling. In this position, I became a leader of another team. As I did at my previous job, when long hours were expected of the employees, I continued to work 72 hours a week. I was able to do so because I loved my new position, and my day-to-day work brought me a lot of happiness. I learned that:

10. Staff members are inspired to work hard and find meaning in their work when the leader does the same.

Takeaway

I hope this review of some of my life encounters involving leadership can help develop future leaders. As occurred in my case, becoming an effective leader can take many years of learning from experiences involving failures and successes.