What are the characteristics of a successful leader?

What are the characteristics of a successful leader?

On January 2nd, Luis Fortuno became Puerto Rico’s new governor. It is no secret that he will be facing challenges that no other governor in history has ever faced. He will definitely be put to a tough test, very early on if I may say, and we will see if he can rise up to meet it.

I will never forget Abraham’s Lincoln quote, one of the best presidents the United States ever had, “Any man can withstand adversity, but if you want to test that man’s character, give him power”

I planned to cover his inauguration but my flight got delayed a few hours and I missed it. I have however, thought about this subject for quite a while, I have thought about what leadership characteristics should a leader of a country, company or organization have in order to be successful at his job.

Well, there are actually many but space limits me to cover only the most important ones, in fact, we could say, the ones that are essential for a leader to have.

I must start with leadership and vision. The person that occupies the most important job in a company or country must have vision and be a leader or he or she will certainly fail. He must be able to analyze the urgent and important problems the country faces, (they are not the same) and he must know what available resources there are or what resources he can get. He then must have a keen eye to pick the best people for the job and be able to persuade them to take the job. The way things stand today, not every capable person wants to jump into the fire and accept the available positions.

A good leader needs capable managers, honest public servants that can defeat the great enemies of every administration, bureaucracy and corruption. Bureaucracy helps no one except the bureaucrats, delays everything and demotivates everyone. To attack this problem, a leader must get the right people on the bus, get out the wrong people off the bus, sit the right people in the right seats and then decide where they need to go.

In every study about leadership and management, there is one quality that is always ranked in the first three places: Honesty. A leader must reject corruption, it doesn’t matter where it comes from and not only that, and he must make sure that it is forcefully prosecuted whether the people are in his political party or not. Corruption is equivalent to cancer and if it is caught early on, the probabilities of saving the patient are greater.

Another important characteristic is integrity. A leader is consistent in what he believes, what he says and what he does. In other words, he behaves in private the same way he demands others behave in public. I was watching the other day a couple of interviews of some of the leaders down south and it was pathetic how they lie to everyone. That is why they must retain power by force and they don’t like elections.

Another quality I would like to mention, not always associated with leadership but in my opinion, it should, is humility.
A leader that can say “I don’t know” when truthfully he doesn’t know, or that can say “I made a mistake” when a mistake is made is a good, honest leader.
This type of leader usually recognizes the talent of his friends, collaborators and even his political adversaries and takes with a grain of salt the compliments he gets from the manipulators that surround him. This is difficult for a leader to do since we all like people that compliment us. It takes a special person for someone with power to behave like this.
Benjamin Franklin the famous American patriot, whose picture we can see in the one hundred dollar bills, in his memoirs confessed that humility was the most difficult virtue to practice. In fact, when he wrote down the list of virtues he thought he needed to be a man of good, he left out humility, only to add it later on when his personal advisor recommended it.

Another characteristic not mentioned when discussing leadership and yet is the big rock in Buddhism, is compassion. I define compassion as feeling the suffering of others. Today, more than ever, the leader must feel compassion.
We must accept that there is poverty in Puerto Rico and many people are having a tough time. There is a big difference in our society between the haves and the haves not.
This applies to the whole world, of course, in fact, out of 6 billion citizens of the world, 3 billion live with less than 2 dollars per day. This is unacceptable and the developed world must take action before things get much worse.
There are entrepreneurs in this world, such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that have given over 30 billion dollars to help fix this problem, but it is not nearly enough.
In Puerto Rico, we need more charity and compassion towards the needy and we must make sure that new industry and new jobs are attracted to our island. This is one of Governor Fortuno’s biggest challenges.
I only have space to mention two more: You need to be a good communicator and you must be able to work with a team.
An effective leader must be able to connect, transmit information persuasively and rationally to all segments of society. This leader must be effective in communicating what he is doing, why is he doing it and what consequences or results can be expected.
To be able to work as a team is essential for a leader to be able to govern effectively. A leader must understand that people must follow him because if they don’t, he is not a leader. He must know that the work of a leader is not to micromanage a bunch of bureaucrats but to inspire his team, communicate clearly the expectations, assign responsibilities and then get out of the way so that the team can do the work. This doesn’t mean that he will disconnect from the team, absolutely not, all members of the team must assume their responsibility and report periodically on their progress.
I firmly believe that a good leader can transform a country, provide the conditions for society to progress and to raise the standard of living for all. That is Governor Fortuno’s challenge, and we should all hope that he will be able to do it, for our own sake.