Personality: Being a Great Boss

This week was full. There were many things to take in. But by far, the most compelling was an instagraph about personality traits a leader needs to have. Do you agree with the 12 traits? There’s one additional that’s sort of obscured because it’s w-a-a-a-a-y down at the bottom. It’s called encouraging good habits.

Although it’s more an advertisement disguised as a blog post, the content is still worth taking into consideration. It’s especially important for women who are climbing and clawing their way out of being a support person and into being a manager, a leader, a boss. It puts things into perspective and turns the lens of the camera [of investigation] back on the user. Many times, the problem is internal and comes from what you are projecting onto others and your environment.

It can be overwhelming to try to develop all of these traits in one sitting or one day. Habits are developed over time. Personality traits are developed over time. They may be deliberate efforts in the initial stages. But eventually, they no longer need any thought. It’s been internalized to such an extent that it’s simply the automatic reaction, a bit like developing muscle memory when training for a physical activity.

It was once said that in order to conquer something so that it becomes ingrained, it must be repeated at least seven times. With self governance practices, it would be more accurate to say it must be done at least everyday for about a month. But that isn’t the end of the exercise in developing a habit. Practice is usually done in a private place. So the next step in developing a habit is to develop the boldness to do it in public and without embarrassment. The goal is to make it your habit – your positive habit.

Let’s say you already have some of these traits in your arsenal of positive traits. What’s the first one you’re going to work on developing and the one after that? Are you going to seek out a support system to pull these things together? Maybe they don’t even need to be told they’re part of your support system. They’re merely your friends or colleagues who are part of your associations. Isn’t that great? They can watch you evolve before their eyes. You can measure how well you’re doing by the reactions they have to what you’re doing. Sneaky little thing, that. [snickering] Of course, another way to accomplish one of those traits is to learn how to encourage collaboration, which is another way of creating informal mentoring and training relationships. Get busy learning about developing yourself so you can do likewise with others.

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