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What Makes A Good Leader?

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There was quite a discussion in the Shout box about what qualities "good leaders" share.  I think it warrants a thread.  Help your leaders out or simply share us your insight as what you think makes a good leader.

 

I was personally saying vocabulary, spelling and grammar isn't required for good leadership.  I didn't mean to make it sound like it wouldn't help, and it's vague enough to not scratch out other characteristics such as charisma.


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I had a quick glimpse of the shoutbox talk and I was quite curious. In my opinion a good leader has a strong and confident voice while at the same time he or she is open to suggestions and willing to build a plan or an idea based on their team and not only him or herself. He or she needs to know when things are taken too far and when to step in, also when to let things slide as a joke to keep the morale up. Someone who is very knowledgeable about the position and/or job who is willing to teach and assist those who need it. One of the biggest things I see in a good leader is the ability to put aside their own feelings and bias and take a neutral perspective on the situation.

 

Obviously there are many more attributes of a person that a good leader can have as certain roles have certain responsibilities or a skill set required but that's my general opinion on a good leader.

 

 


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You have leaders in both the overt (as in public) and covert (as in behind the scenes) senses. There are some qualities that universally benefit all such individuals, yet it is important to distinguish which traits uniquely affect a certain category of leader more than the other.

 

Overt leaders benefit more from charismatic liveliness, compassion, courage, adaptive emotional control, and a capacity for telling half-truths.

 

Covert leaders benefit more from charismatic taciturnity, pragmatism, caution, stoicism, and a capacity for telling the truth.

 

Bear in mind that one individual can fall within both of these categories, as the best leaders will often flex these attributes depending on what the situation calls for. It is inevitable, however, for people to incline towards being one of these types over the other. And that's fine, isn't it? Both have their worth.

 

The example that I used in the shoutbox was the Conservative-Labour coalition that governed the United Kingdom in the middle of WWII. The two individuals at the helm of this government were Winston Churchill (the Conservative Prime Minister) and Clement Attlee (the Labour Deputy Prime Minister). Despite being political rivals, these two men were nothing short of a dream team. Churchill was by far the most charismatic of the two, which served him well in being the "face" of British politics during the war. He was naturally adept at public affairs, and so he was the leader that British people rallied behind over the remaining course of the war. Attlee's own level of charisma couldn't even compare to Churchill's, but Attlee's strengths lied in his pragmatic and efficient approach to handling matters of a more private nature. They played to each other's strengths and weaknesses, and both men were exceptional leaders in their own domains of power.

 

Charisma, as you say, is not an absolutely necessary trait to being a good leader. Despite that being true, I would still call it one of the most important aspects of a leader, if not the most important. It is important enough that both of the previously mentioned types of leader benefit from it, although not quite in the general sense. You see, charisma falls on a spectrum. The kind of charisma that a covert leader would call upon is similar to what an overt leader would demonstrate, yet it is different. Both types have audiences that they want the attention of.

 

A covert leader's audience is a closed circle of individuals with whom they have likely come to know on a more personal level. Since it is usually a very small audience, the covert leader easily has the time to converse with their audience on a more personal level. In other words, the rhetoric of the covert leader is directed towards individuals of the audience rather than the audience as a whole. Again, some degree of charisma in their character is strongly preferable since the covert leader also has an audience to capture. They want to be as truthful as possible in order to keep their closed circle equally efficient as possible, but the luxury of taking advantage of the strengths and weaknesses of these individuals is important to exploit. The Ancient Romans were masters of this.

 

The overt leader's style of rhetoric is usually much more straight forward, as they are more inclined to appeal to the masses. The vast majority of the audience are complete strangers to the overt leader, which means they cannot play to the whims of individuals. It also means that there would be no time to address the audience as individuals, and so the most feasible option is to address them as a group. The type of charisma that one would demonstrate within that circumstance is a talent for packing as many details into a tiny rhetoric as possible, whilst still making said rhetoric consumable to the masses. Only the most necessary of details are needed for that. The Nazis (a la Goebbels) were masters of this.

 

Practically, almost anyone has the capacity to be a good leader. They just need to recognise when to flex certain virtues.


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What I think a good leader is that the one who chooses to lead, show, and follow. Someone who can stand up and take charge while no one is. Someone who can think out side the box when needed too. Who can take responsibility and do what needs to be done. Follow others. who is willing to commit to what his or her doing. teach others and to  help others. I'm sure there is a lot of ways to be a good leader. but everyone has there own way.


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This is a very interesting topic, and one that is highly important to me due to circumstances I have stated many times throughout this website, making it a bit redundant if I were to explain it here as well. However, I will bring it up when relevant to my reply.

 

The first thing I believe makes a good leader is that of communication, the second being drive. I mention them both right off the bat because of a very important example that is still fresh in my mind one-two years after the fact. Back when I moderated Dark Roleplay alongside Jailbreak, there was an Admin(on here, that would be a Server Manager) that I shall leave nameless to not reopen a long-since-dead can of worms. This server was a rather popular one, so much so that we had to lower the player limit because of the unbearable lag that occurred as a result, and it was likely unanimous amongst the staff that it was a good idea to have the server. While the player count remained at a lower standard amount, it consistently had many players around the clock, which was pretty neat. With that said, one would think that everything was going well, as after all, how could you really go wrong when everything was on a silver platter? Well, after the first day, our Admin completely disappeared, and we could not get back in contact with him no matter what, neither with his senior moderator(senior admin on here?). As a consequence, we were unable to ask for rule clarifications and modifications when things came up unaddressed in the rules, and due to not having the appropriate authority, there was ultimately chaos in the server because of being unable to enforce what needed to be enforced, and many different interpretative enforcement from staff, since necessary rules and such were not documented. Because of his lack of drive and care, alongside not communicating with us, me and other staff members had to save the server ourselves, figuring out and enforcing standard interpretations of rules and adding what was needed, in order to maintain order. To make a long story short, the Admin was not pleased, made one update to the rules(maybe more, but only one major one) making clear that all that we had done was null and void, before disappearing again and putting the server back into chaos, us having to clear it up again. The only times he ever came on was to spawn in a tank and kill random players for fun, players complaining and us not being allowed to do anything. Ultimately, this is an example of a terrible leader, yet his technical knowledge I have nothing bad to say about, since apparently he was great at that job, just not a good leader. One must be able to communicate and have the drive to make something succeed, or one should not be the leader of a potato army, much less a team of people and a popular server.

 

The third thing to make a good leader is the ability to communicate properly in the primary language of your team, players, customers, etc.. @Joshy, you appear to disagree, and the only reason I think that would be is that you hold that one can properly show what must be done, and make proper decisions and the like, without having an eloquent grasp of the language he communicates in. While you are not technically wrong on a team-level, the problem lies that if a leader is unable to speak in a proper way, but only speaks in ways like this: "yo dud how r ya," then it gives a bad image for the team in question, hampers growth in the long run, and can lead to confusion and the like depending on what he is the leader of. I personally believe that you need to at least sound like a late middle schooler to an early high schooler to be effective with communicating with one's team and beyond, alongside maintaining an image of professionalism, which is vital to company's, organizations, and small teams alike, depending on the circumstances.

 

The fourth thing to make a good leader and simply a team member in general is the skills to do one's job, and/or the willingness to learn and grow to acquire said skills. I will not delve too far into this matter, but to give a short and sweet summary, a trial moderator that ended up becoming one of the people that ran the organization I volunteered with was promoted rapidly to a full moderator then to a senior moderator and beyond, barely having any knowledge regarding the rules or how to go about enforcing said rules, me having to hold his hand for a long time before he was no longer a moderator but an Officer. He was clueless in his positions, and despite him seeming to be a great person, there was nothing good about him as a team member or leader that I am able to note, which is incredibly sad. If one is unable or incredibly slow to learn, and/or does not have the skills to do what must be done, then he should not be a team member at all, much less a leader. Skills and the willingness to learn skills are both vital to success.

 

All other reasons would likely go back to those four points, but in summary, I think a good leader is one who has the passion to lead, the skills and/or willingness to learn to be able to do what must be done, is able and willing to keep up communication, and is able to communicate in a way that at least sounds like you have a decent level of education in your native or foreign tongue. If one does not possess those qualities, then they should not be a leader, nor even a team member of anything beyond school projects and the like(even then, it would depend).

 

Those are my two cents of course, and all of you may vehemently disagree. That is fine, and I would love to hear your objections to what I have typed here, and discuss this matter further.

 

Have a blessed one!

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2 hours ago, Jcfraven said:

The third thing to make a good leader is the ability to communicate properly in the primary language of your team, players, customers, etc.. @Joshy, you appear to disagree, and the only reason I think that would be is that you hold that one can properly show what must be done, and make proper decisions and the like, without having an eloquent grasp of the language he communicates in. While you are not technically wrong on a team-level, the problem lies that if a leader is unable to speak in a proper way, but only speaks in ways like this: "yo dud how r ya," then it gives a bad image for the team in question, hampers growth in the long run, and can lead to confusion and the like depending on what he is the leader of. I personally believe that you need to at least sound like a late middle schooler to an early high schooler to be effective with communicating with one's team and beyond, alongside maintaining an image of professionalism, which is vital to company's, organizations, and small teams alike, depending on the circumstances.

 

I said nothing about communication.


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12 minutes ago, Joshy said:

 

I said nothing about communication.

 

"I was personally saying vocabulary, spelling and grammar isn't required for good leadership." - I am genuinely curious, what exactly does that quote mean if not the manner in which one communicates to others?

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1 minute ago, Jcfraven said:

 

"I was personally saying vocabulary, spelling and grammar isn't required for good leadership." - I am genuinely curious, what exactly does that quote mean if not the manner in which one communicates to others?

 

You don't believe someone with a very basic vocabulary, and we'll even stipulate the poor spelling and grammar, that they cannot communicate such that their team members would understand?

 

You don't believe someone with an excellent vocabulary, and we'll even stipulate the wonderful spelling and grammar, that they cannot poorly communication such that their team members wouldn't understand?


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Just now, Joshy said:

 

You don't believe someone with a very basic vocabulary, and we'll even stipulate the poor spelling and grammar, that they cannot communicate such that their team members would understand?

 

You don't believe someone with an excellent vocabulary, and we'll even stipulate the wonderful spelling and grammar, that they cannot poorly communication such that their team members wouldn't understand?

It is apparent to me that you did not read what I wrote, as I answered the first question, and never implied the latter was false.

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3 minutes ago, Jcfraven said:

It is apparent to me that you did not read what I wrote, as I answered the first question, and never implied the latter was false.

 

Neither did I, and so I did not say anything about communication.  I read what you wrote.


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Just now, Joshy said:

 

Neither did I, and so I did not say anything about communication.  I read what you wrote.

You are making no sense. First you claim you were not talking about communication even though you said this: "I was personally saying vocabulary, spelling and grammar isn't required for good leadership." Then when I posed the question of what that could possibly mean other than communication to others, you redundantly asked those two questions. Finally, you return to claiming you were never talking about communication. Unless you have a radically different definition of communication, or you are simply trying to be a troll for some reason, I am unsure what the confusion is here.

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