Essential Leadership Characteristics for Effective Leaders: Cracking the Code?

Effective leaders of successful organizations realize that if a company is to remain viable, profitable, and survive over the long-term, they must hire quality personnel, invest in the development of employees, and promote the most qualified.

The key to promoting the best and brightest is not simply having individuals preparing and getting ready to assume leadership positions. It is more a case of having the people with the authority to promote such individuals into a key leadership position who truly understand what they are looking for, and clearly knowing the candidate selected has the right skill sets to be effective.

This book builds upon well-established leadership characteristics as determined by an extensive leadership survey conducted by the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) research group. Combined with this research and the author's extensive education and experience in relation to the topic of leadership, he has developed ten more essential characteristics that leaders today should possess.

Dr. Waite analyzes the Top 15 leadership characteristics and the Bottom 5 attributes and weighs them against 29 historical leaders. While not all 29 individuals would be considered good leaders, Dr. Waite wanted a more multi-dimensional approach to add some depth to the research. He also wanted a good cross section of gender, race, and socio-economic background in this selected group. Just as some of the individuals on the list of 29 may be considered poor leaders, or not even a leader at all, there are many people who lack the skill sets to be a successful leader in today’s environment, yet they occupy a leadership position! Hence, the problem with promoting the wrong individual.

Dr. Waite hopes this book will provide more detail and clarity to a topic that has been studied extensively over the centuries. His real hope is that people tasked with promoting individuals into leadership positions really understand what to search for.

This book can not only provide more detail on how to improve upon promotional processes in order to select the most qualified individual, this same information can be used effectively for hiring processes and identifying leadership potential.

Hiring people with leadership ability and promoting the most qualified that possess many of the desired leadership attributes is one major methodology that can result in a healthy and successful organization over the long term.

Dr. Waite has also developed a leadership profile decision matrix that utilizes multiple variables to add a more objective and scientific approach to hiring and promotional processes, including executive-level recruitment.

In addition, Dr. Waite has created a leadership survey, which consists of a series of questions posed to potential leadership candidates intended to reveal certain tendencies based upon the Top 15 leadership characteristics as outlined in this book.

Dr. Waite's unique insight into the topic of leadership can assist any type of organization with training and developing leaders, enhancing hiring and promotional processes, creating a positive organizational climate, and understanding how to shift an organizational culture, if necessary to do so.

This book is a must read for anyone who considers themselves a leader. While there are many outstanding leaders in the world today, there are many people promoted into leadership positions that do not possess the requisite skill sets to be successful. It is not the fault of the individual for accepting such a promotion, it is a downfall of those who promote such individuals not clearly understanding what to look for in a leader.

Dr. Waite is a retired fire chief and Colonel (retired) in the United States Army with a proven track record in the field of leadership. His creative and innovative approaches led to organizational success for the Wisconsin Rapids (WI) Fire Department and several military units he commanded.