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If we do a google search for leadership traits we will find endless lists:
10 qualities of a leader; 16 leadership characteristics; 12 necessary leadership traits; 6 characteristics of an effective leader; and endless other links providing somewhere between 3 and 101 crucial traits for leaders.
So, what do we do with all of that?
One problem is that some of these lists confuse traits with skills, but even when we remove skills from the lists, we are still left with a bigger problem: These lists assume leadership is about collecting the right traits. But leadership doesn’t work that way.
- Leadership traits don’t exist in isolation; they interact with each other.
- The same mix of leadership traits that drive success in one situation will create problems in another context.
- We may be strong in some traits and have gaps in others.
- And no list can tell us when to lean into our strengths, or when to pull back.
That’s because leadership isn’t about having the right traits. It’s about understanding our unique personalities and how to be effective in different contexts.
And our traits are just one aspect of our personalities. We are made up of our motives, emotions, intellect, identities, behaviors—and our traits.
Only when we are self-aware of how these parts of us emerge and intersect with our environment and the people in it that we can we truly lead effectively. Self-curiosity and self-acceptance are keystone traits for all the others.
Let’s look at how this played out with one of my clients, Dave.
Case Study: When Leadership Traits Become Blind Spots
Dave asked me if I could help him understand why two of his senior leaders had unexpectedly left the company. Dave was the CEO of a 2-year-old Silicon Valley biotech startup that had recently completed a $100M funding round. A successful cardiologist and researcher, Dave had come up with a novel way to target medication delivery right where it was needed. Innovation in drug delivery meant that Dave and his team were constantly challenged to solve chemical, mechanical, material, and technological problems.
As a clinical psychologist and leadership coach, I begin these engagements by first getting the CEO’s perspective on the problem. Dave, not someone to shy away from having an opinion, had no idea why they had left, but suspected that it had something to do with his leadership. My next step was to interview 8 of Dave’s senior leaders about his leadership and their thoughts about the recent departures.
When interviewing leaders about a CEO, my questions tend to fall into 3 categories:
- What are the CEO’s extraordinary gifts that make them successful leaders?
- How do they behave in ways that interfere with being successful?
- What advice do you have for the leader?
Dave’s team described him as brilliant, creative, warm, caring, humble, decisive, curious, responsible, and passionate about their mission. They also said, “He’s too much of a doctor and doesn’t always know when he should be acting like a CEO”, and “He’s humble, until he isn’t, and then he’s arrogant, that’s why people have left the company.” Dave possessed many traits associated with being a successful leader, but is successful leadership as a doctor different from a CEO, and can someone be both humble and arrogant? Dave’s team certainly thought so.
I needed more information to determine how I could be helpful to Dave.
And then I saw it.
When Dave and his team were engaged in solving challenging problems, he would ask questions and listen thoughtfully to the answers. All team members were enjoying the intellectual challenge, working together toward a solution, and then suddenly Dave would announce that he had the answer, thank everyone, and move on with his day. I saw how Dave sometimes behaved as a physician and not as a CEO, and how he could be both humble and arrogant.
The same traits that made Dave a successful leader—his responsibility, curiosity, and decisiveness—became overused strengths, and people experienced him as arrogant and a terrible boss.
When Dave had treated a patient in crisis, his responsibility and decisiveness had been optimized for the patient’s benefit. But as a CEO, Dave assumed it was also his responsibility to have the answer and be the decision maker, leaving his team feeling marginalized and dismissed.
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When I helped Dave see how his strengths were undermining his success as a CEO, he could begin to determine when sharing responsibility and decision-making with his team produced the best outcomes. Becoming aware of when he wanted to stop asking his team questions was the prompt for Dave to be aware that he was at risk of becoming arrogant. He needed to realize that his leadership traits worked for him most of the time, but his future success depended on his ability to recognize when those same traits actually worked against his success.
Self-Awareness in Leadership: The Key to Managing Traits and Avoiding Blind Spots
So, do successful leaders have specific traits? Clearly, it isn’t that simple.
First, there definitely are traits associated with successful leadership. And many leaders have traits that are consistently expressed throughout their careers. But no trait is universally effective.
Leaders who are self-aware of their strengths and default leadership behaviors can recognize when those traits aren’t helping, and when they’re becoming leadership blind spots. With that awareness, they can be strategic and deliberate about when to express those gifts and when to back off and experiment with different leadership behaviors.
