At Salesforce I’ve worked for 7 different executives in just over 6 years. Each of these leaders had a different mixture of leadership characteristics, and what I try to always look for is their ‘killer app’ - the leadership behaviors, and skills that they brought with them that were differentiated. New tools I could add to my personal leadership “tool box”.
Here are a few that I strive to master:
- A leader who builds a coalition of influential stakeholders around their vision, who proactively seeks high-impact projects or opportunities for growth for their team
- A leader that can embrace change and adapts to a dynamic, ambiguous environment
- A leader who can communicate empathetically and vulnerably when things are not going well, but also strives to bring back positivity to challenging situations.
- A leader who is a master at identifying high potential individuals, directly recruits them, and inspires them to grow and deliver their best work.
- A leader that is able to build trust through a mix of humility and courageous communication so that team health, boundaries, and accountability to the business find a stable balancing point.
- A servent leader who shows gratitude, who takes time to celebrate, and who shines the spotlight on teams and collaboration (vs. individuals) when celebrating an accomplishment.