 What would you say if I asked you what is it that makes a good leader? Well, you know some people would say well they have to have charisma and Certainly, there are leaders lots of leaders in history. We could point to that have Great charisma and are able to command a crowd with that charisma for better or for worse There are also leaders that some people would say that that they need to be able to inspire you We need to be inspired by these people and there are again leaders that certainly can inspire groups and and lead through Inspiration and sometimes, you know people would say well leader is whoever they put in charge of you And I'm sure we've all had bosses at times who've had that that that Authority and that power whether or not they were leaders we can argue the effectiveness leaders we could be argumentative So it really comes back to again. What is it that makes a good leader? What is a leader first of all and then what is it that goes into making a good leader an effective leader? So I want to take a look at that as we start our discussion here with the idea of identifying leaders What does that mean identifying leadership and then identifying leaders in within that? So let's start by defining leadership Leadership is very simply the ability of an individual or group to influence and guide others toward the achievement of a goal Now that sounds pretty simple and straightforward. It is really but there are a couple things I want to break out here and take a look at this and really make sure we understand What we mean by leadership so first of all leadership is the ability of an individual or group to influence and guide others Note that this is not necessarily You know to be able to to command or force people or punish people into doing this Although that could potentially be part of it, right? But but really we will a leader influences and guides people rather than you know beats them into submission or forces them To do something so that the leaders than influencing and guiding others So and that others as a key component in there as well You can't very well lead if you don't have followers You can't you can't very well be an effective leader if you don't have anybody To lead right so there are other people are required for the achievement of this goal of being an effective leader You've got to have other people who are willing to follow your lead then and then finally we leaders Work to influence others and guide them toward the achievement of a goal It's not just that we're you know, it's not literally just follow the leader or walking around that you know The playground or wherever you're at is following this person and doing whatever they do for no real purpose other than to Copy them and to imitate them a leadership involves having that goal We have to have somewhere where we're leading people to or something that something that we're leading them to right? So leadership requires that we have the achievement of a goal something that we can work toward So again the ability of an individual or group to influence and guide others toward the achievement of a goal Now there are a variety of ways that somebody can become a leader We're gonna take a look and just kind of divided into two kind of basic categories But there are lots of different ways that this can happen But one of the primary ways is that they are designated a leader that they are picked at that You know somebody in authority says you are the leader of this group You know if I were to assign you and 10 other people to a group and so okay, you're in charge That's a designated leader, you know It could be that they were designated for a particular reason or it could be just that they drew them out of a hat Or it could be you know for it could be that they're the bosses, you know son or daughter or whatever who knows But but for whatever reason that person was selected as a leader. So they do have a a sense of inherent Authority over the others and so but but it does come with challenges as well If you're not a leader that that as we'll talk about the other kind of leader But if you're somebody who's you don't picked in advance or or picked from from one of the higher ups Then people could question that they may not be as willing to just follow along So you may have some work to do in that regard But it can carry some advantages in terms of the speed first of all with which you are assigned a leader And and you don't have to spend all the time waiting for somebody to emerge or selecting somebody yourself or or whatever So anyway, but there are sometimes people that are designated as a leader I think they're picked by whoever else is in charge and said and somebody say you are the leader here Other ways another way you can become leaders because by what we call an emergent leader So stepping out from the crowd somebody who emerges from the crowd from the group to become the leader And they could become a leader and we have leaders emerge for a variety of reasons One of those reasons is traits. Maybe they just have kind of the inherent traits of a leader things that we expect from a leader We're talking about early. They may have that that charisma They may have the ability to inspire people or or you know, whatever it is They may have the traits that we commonly associate with a leader and so they emerge as a result That those traits could also just be that they are the tallest and and most handsome or or good-looking in that group That's another reason that that somebody can become a leader We look for those kind of traits sometimes not necessarily to our benefit, but we do so for whatever reason though a Leader may emerge because we perceive that they have the traits that we typically associate with a leader and want in a leader somebody else could could emerge as a leader based on the situation or context that you find yourself in maybe they have an expertise in that area, you know if you are Trapped on a desert island and you have somebody who's a survival expert Well, they're gonna emerge as a leader pretty quickly probably because they know how to build a fire They know how to build shelter they know how to call for help They know how to do all these things that you need in that situation, right? If you're in a situation where you're in a plane and the pilot, you know It has an art attack or something and somebody is a else is a pilot or has flown a plane in some regard You're gonna look at that person as the leader because of that situation in that context Their qualities lend themselves most most to being a leader of that group, right? So it could be the situation in the context that you find yourself in that causes somebody to emerge as a leader It could also come down to communication skill and competence again that kind of charisma or inspiration ability to do that If they have that effective communication skill and the competence that we're looking for and a leader That could lead to them lead them to emerge as a leader as well And so it could be any one of these things or some other things But we have people that will kind of step forward naturally or over time from the group to emerge as a leader And be identified as a leader and other people will start to follow them then, right? So you have designated leaders and emergent leaders so a couple of different routes through which people become leaders Now we're gonna spend just a minute here talking about leadership in virtual teams because this is becoming more and more common, right? That we're meeting virtually even if you don't work exclusively from home or you're not a remote worker or whatever if you work in office It's still maybe you're meeting with a client who's across the that the you know I have a group that's spread out across the country or across the world and around the world And so you may have to meet with them and lead a group Virtually or you may have people that are just you know for whatever reason you're meeting virtually So this does not have to be a full-time Thing you can have people who typically are together but aren't and now and you're leading though them in a virtual context So let's talk for a minute about what that means and for a leader as a leader some things we need to consider when that's the case First of all as a leader of a virtual team one of your first priority should be to create community You know this kind of one of those things that happens sort of naturally when you are meeting with an in-person group face-to-face You you have these little side conversations You start to hopefully as a group you'll start to become more cohesive because you'll become you'll become a kind of Small community you'll create that community in a virtual team It's easy to skip that step and just jump right in and that sounds appealing in some ways right to just say okay We're here to work. We're here for this purpose and we're here for this meeting So let's just get to it right as a leader in that kind of group though You've got to be intentional about building in some things that create community that will Help people to buy into that team and to become to feel like they're a part of something part of that team You've got it you've got to do what you can to create that community Intentional about that in a virtual team because it won't happen in the way that it will and a regular team That's meeting like face-to-face on a regular basis So one of the first things you got to do is be intentional about creating community in that virtual team That's any to set clear expectations and this goes for a lot of groups But it's really enhanced in these virtual teams given when it it can be harder to Keep people accountable because you're not there with them necessarily and you're nothing so you've got to set very clear expectations What are expectations not only for what's going to get done and what everybody's responsible for but what's our behavior going to be in this group? I think about that communication charter we talked about in a previous videos while creating a communication charter just for some simple things like How are we gonna log off and what what what channel are we gonna use so we're gonna use zoom or we're gonna use Microsoft Teams? Or we're just gonna email we got to set these expectations for you know The times that we're gonna meet and how we're gonna meet and how we're gonna behave during these meetings and what's gonna be going on Who's gonna be responsible for what? Set those very very clearly in the at the beginning and and revisit them throughout but set them very clearly at the beginning It's really important in a virtual team because you don't really have the same kind of Accountabilities you do in a face-to-face team to be able to to keep tabs on everybody in that way As a leader you also need to be really organized in a virtual team because you've got to be Ultra-responsive as we're gonna talk about but you just got to be organized people want to show up people want to do the thing and you've got to have your act together and So that you can lead this team effectively and efficiently Otherwise you're gonna lose people because people much easier to multitask in a virtual meeting, right? So it's much easier to be on your phone or checking your email and things like that It's noticeable, but still it's easier than it is when you're in a regular meeting those things would really stand out, right? So We got to have effective organization to keep people on task to keep people Moving forward to keep the org to keep the team moving forward and meeting their objectives You've got to have prompt and meaningful resources if you're leading a virtual team And they're looking to you for this kind of leadership Then you've really got to be on it with a prompt response when they ask for something and give them of course meaningful resources as well not just You know something something cheap or easy But you got to give them something that really helps them do what they need, right? So and you've got to be prompt with that. So again, you've got to be organized so that you can be prompt with these responses and and provide these meaningful resources to people and We need to keep our tone in interaction of feedback positive. This doesn't mean you have to kind of Gloss over everything and just make it all sunshine and unicorns, right? But but we've got to be it's very easy in a virtual Setting to become negative and to let that escalate very quickly, right? So we've seen that with the dissim this inhibition effect, right? We've got to be very careful about that and be intentional about being positive in our tone in an order interaction be providing constructive criticism and those types of things