Desire to Inspire: Four Qualities of Inspiring Leaders

Who Has Inspired You?

If you are reading this today, my guess is that you are already a leader; a leader aspiring to be a greater one. I believe that true inspiration—and the potential for change and growth—comes from watching others and seeing great leaders in action.

If your goal is to improve your leadership skills, I encourage you to think about someone, or someones, who led you well. Someone who excited you with their vision, encouraged and brought out the best in you, and ultimately, inspired you. Someone who made you want to be a better leader yourself.

Think of the leader you admire most. What did they do? What qualities did they have? What made them stand out from other leaders you’ve observed?

I have gone through this exercise myself and, in thinking about the leaders I most admire and desire to espouse, I have found each of them had these qualities:

• Confidence
• Enthusiasm
• Faith
• Patience

Why these in particular? Here are my thoughts:

Confidence

Someone with confidence is trustworthy. You feel as though they won’t lead you astray. Because they know where they’re going, you can steadfastly follow them. When times get tough or things don’t go as expected, leaders with confidence can keep going—and more important, the people following them can keep going, too. Following a leader like this is easy.

Enthusiasm

Leaders who have passion, drive and excitement spur on those following them. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it, nothing great was ever achieved.” A leader’s enthusiasm can fuel others, even when their own tanks are running low. If nothing else, as a leader myself, I always try to exude enthusiasm. This can’t be faked though! True leaders are authentically enthusiastic about their efforts because they’ve chosen something about which they are passionate.

Faith

Every leader who has truly inspired me demonstrates that they have faith. Faith in their ideas, faith in themselves and primarily, faith in the people following them. This quality vibrantly stands out to me. If I am following someone, I need to know they trust me, not just that I trust them. And a leader who truly believes that if he or she works diligently and persistently, anything can be accomplished, makes me believe the same. What’s more, such faith makes me want to believe the same and work toward the leader’s goals alongside them.

Patience

Finally, every leader who has inspired me has had patience, and had it in spades. Why? Because nothing, absolutely nothing, goes someone’s way all the time. There will be roadblocks and errors and setbacks. Leaders who lose their patience often lose their followers. But someone who can see challenges as opportunities and remain calm in the face of adversity, make their followers want to rise to the challenge. If a leader truly has vision, he or she can see the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak, and is willing to wait and strive for it. Someone like that makes me want to do and be better.

These four qualities together in one person make what I think to be a truly great leader. Someone who inspires me and ignites my passions. Leaders I have observed with these characteristics not only accomplish their goals, but also create leaders who will come after them. People who are loyal to them and excited by their vision.

But these are the most important qualities I have seen in leaders who inspired me. What about you? Take a moment and jot down a few characteristics of someone who excited and spurred you on, or perhaps just think about them and why they inspired you.

In so doing, maybe something will spark your imagination and excite you to be the type of leader who others will desire to emulate. No matter who you are—introvert or extrovert, shy or outgoing, serious or infectiously funny, engineer or artist—I believe each of us has the ability to inspire.