10 PSYCHOLOGICAL RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BEING A GOOD LEADER

1. Give direction for people to follow. By excellence, leaders are visionary people who set the direction for people to follow. Leaders don’t get bogged down in details. They think big and see the medium and long-term future. They are the locomotives of the company and the organisation.
2. Be a role model. Leaders inspire people by the example they set. If a leader talks about “morality”, he or she must be an example of “morality”. If a leader talks about “professionalism”, he or she must be a good professional in some field. If a leader talks about “scientific progress”, he himself must be an example of promoting the latest technologies and so on.
3. Develop initiatives, be creative and innovative. By their very nature, leaders demand change. This change should lead to progress, development and even revolutionise areas of work.
4. Take care of people. A leader who cares about people is a popular leader, even when he or she imposes some unpopular measures (for example, a leader may ask people to put their lives on the line in the fight to defend the country). Although it seems a paradox, reality has shown that people need to believe in the leader, and the leader needs to be able to rely on the people, even in the most difficult times. Caring for people is essential in this equation, at any level of society and in any type of organization.
5. Invest in people. People are an organization’s most valuable resource, regardless of its type. Training staff, instilling the right organizational culture, respecting organizational ethics, practicing merit-based promotions, supporting wellbeing policies are just some of the ways a leader can invest in people.
6. Seek feedback from people. No matter how good and great a leader’s plans are, periodically he or she needs to get real feedback from people. Failure to do so risks alienating them and realizing later that they are alone. Psychology offers multiple mechanisms for obtaining this feedback: analysis of the organizational climate, mood or morale, ad hoc meetings with people, crowd-sourcing, etc. Thus, depending on the feedback, the leader will be able to adjust ideas, policies, actions and impose measures in an informed way.
7. Keep as many communication channels open as possible. Communication skills are one of the greatest assets of a successful leader. Communication must be clear, convey strong emotional/cognitive messages, be well tailored to the target audience and be well understood by the audience. Nowadays, communication channels have become much more diverse and leaders’ messages can reach large masses of people instantly. For example, print media, television, radio, internet, public speeches, etc. Sometimes these channels of communication can help the leader to respond appropriately to criticism or to explain failures, if necessary.
8. Give credit where credit is due. People, by their nature as gregarious beings, enjoy their social usefulness and need social recognition. A leader who values people in this way cannot be accused of being a dictator and moreover, is appreciated by the community/organisation for succeeding in rewarding the deserving. When people are given social responsibilities, they can devote their whole being to fulfilling them to the best of their ability. Leaders can and should reward people.
9. Accept that you can’t control everything. The days when the king controlled the fate of every subject in the kingdom are long gone. Leaders need to focus on the strategic, high-impact things. The rest he must leave to strategic, operational and tactical level managers or institutions, as appropriate. These entities will strive to implement the leader’s thinking in real life, in line with the regulations in force. Sometimes leaders make mistakes too. They need to learn from their mistakes.
10. Seek advice. It is hard to imagine that one person can cover all areas of work today. Therefore, the leader should consult, regularly and as needed, with people who have expertise in particular areas (his/her own managers or experts from outside the system). In this way, he will be able to adapt his ideas to the realities of human society and make the best informed decisions in his area of interest. Asking for advice or help is not shameful for a leader, but, on the contrary, it shows that the leader is well grounded in reality, regardless of his/her field or position in society.