Summary 

There are five important qualities or characteristics of effective leaders. The first quality of an effective leader is intuition, intelligence, and cognitive ability to process information and analyze a business problem such as the need to identify the specific contingencies in a particular leadership situation. Employees are always ,,judging’’ their leaders. They respond favorably to leaders who demonstrate the ability to create viable business models and put them into action.

Effective leaders also display energy, drive and a need for achievement to employees. These leaders show, through their own actions, their commitment to work hard and perform at a high level. They put in long hours and always seem to be in the right spot when problems arise, ready to put their cognitive, problem-solving abilities into action.

Third, effective leaders tend to be self-confident and have an internal locus of control. . They encourage employees to believe in themselves and perform to the best of their abilities to help solve problems, something that often leads to success.

  A leader’s ethics and moral integrity are also an important determinant of how effective he or she will be. Leadership is about influence and persuasion. Effective leaders want to protect the right of their employees, and their personal reputation for making fair decisions is an important indicator of their moral integrity.

The fifth characteristic of an effective leader is emotional intelligence and empathy, a person’s ability to appreciate and understand the feelings and emotions of other people, as well as one’s own and to use this knowledge to guide one’s behavior towards others. Emotional intelligence helps a leader develop the social skills necessary to build good personal working relationship with individual employees and cohesiveness among people who work in groups and teams.