A while back I posted a leadership poll. Tonight I realized I have not posted the results so wanted to remedy that omission. People were asked to choose as many of these statements as they believed were true about leadership. Here are the statements in descending order of number of votes. Of 1,168 votes:
- An essential, necessary trait of a leader is integrity (actions match values) 10% of people responding voted for this statement
- An essential, necessary trait of a leader is communication skill 10%
- An essential, necessary trait of a leader is honesty 9%
- An essential, necessary trait of a leader is the ability to see potential in people 9%
- An essential, necessary trait of a leader is courage 9%
- An essential, necessary trait of a leader is ability to envision the future 9%
- An essential, necessary trait of a leader is the ability to see potential in situations 9%
- An essential, necessary trait of a leader is intelligence 6%
- For everyone, there is a situation in which he or she would be a capable leader 6%
- The essential, necessary traits of a leader vary from situation to situation 5%
- An essential, necessary trait of a leader is kindness 5%
- One can be a leader without followers 4%
- Leaders must understand complexity theory and how systems work 3%
- In studying leadership, it is more valuable to talk about the specific traits of leadership rather than the general concept of leadership 3%
- An essential, necessary trait of a leader is charisma 2%
- Leaders must understand neuroscience -- how the brain works 2%
- One or more essential, necessary traits are missing from above and I will e-mail them to [the e-mail address provided] 1%
- Leaders choose their followers 1%
- The ability to be a great leader is innate -- a person is born with it 1%
- There are no essential, necessary traits of a leader 0%
I do not know the algorithm pollhost.com uses to calculate the percentages. "There are no essential, necessary traits of a leader" actually received 4 votes. All I can say is that of those people responding, many chose: integrity, communication skill, honesty, ability to see potential in people, courage, ability to envision the future, and ability to see potential in situations. What I still want to ask: What statements do you make about leadership?
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