One Surprising Positive Attribute for Leaders
I was recently introduced to the GLOBE Project’s list of Universally Desirable Attributes for leaders. These apply to every leader in every field.
The twenty attributes were sort of obvious and generally passed the sniff test. The sort of words that we love to see and think — “Yes — I’m Positive too.” Or.. “I Plan Ahead. I’m doing great!”
Except one.
The list of Universal Positive Attributes:
- Trustworthy
- Just
- Honest
- Foresight
- Plans ahead
- Encouraging
- Positive
- Effective Bargainer
- Win-win problem solver
- Team builder
- Dynamic
- Motive Arouser
- Confidence Builder
- Motivational
- Dependable
- Intelligent
- Decisive
- Administrative Skills
- Communicative
- Excellence Oriented
Disbelief
Initially I was surprised to see Administrative Skills on the list. This one did not feel like the others. This one was not a kind of moral-high-ground platitude that we all have been told to strive for. In fact, half of the others overlap with moral codes like the Boy Scout Law and Bushido Code.
Why would this be on the list? Aren’t these trivial skills for people further down the hierarchy to worry about? Don’t we want leaders to be focused on Big Picture stuff?
The surprise was enough for this to stand out and becoming something my mind couldn’t easily let go of. It become a recurring question “Why Administrative Skills?” This began the sort of background mulling and occasional resurfacing over the following weeks.
Ultimately I found more and more examples where this is in fact — True.
Belief
First, note that one or two people don’t need a leader. They work in isolation or in a partnership. As team sizes and organizations grow, more and more emphasis gets put around processes. If you are going to maintain a hiring budget for a group of 100 employees or more, you need all of the headache inducing process around approvals and sign-offs to make sure that you are hiring the people you need with the correct priority and within the budget. Larger groups mean more interactions and potential for legal or HR issues.
This means when you are a manager trying to hire a new role or replace someone who has recently left the company you need to know how to navigate these processes to not waste any time. A manager with good admin skills will have that role hired a month faster than one without.
A manager with good admin skills will have that role hired a month faster than one without.
And there will be a computer waiting and systems access already granted when they arrive.
Look again at the other items on the list — Dynamic, Dependable, Intelligent, Decisive, Problem Solver, etc — these are influenced by the leaders ability to get tasks done and in a timely fashion. Often times, Admin Skills are exactly how a leader gets those tasks and then appears dependable, decisive, and so on.
I know personally I have been overly reliant on others for some administrative tasks. Every time I work with someone who has better skills than me in this area, they seem magical and amazing quick to accomplish things.
In other areas where I am more skilled I have the opposite reaction, why is this taking others so long?
Acquisition
Not only are Administrative Skills key for leaders, this is potentially one of the easiest attributes on the list to acquire. Being actually a set of skills and not an inherent predisposition or quality, it is something you can work on and get better at.
It is attractive to delegate these smaller tasks to other team members and this is appropriate much of the time. But never do that to the detriment of knowing how to efficiently accomplish those tasks yourself if you need to.
Like any other skill you’ll build in this area simply by doing. Ask others to show you how if you’ve really gotten away from some of the mundane. Be humble and embrace the need to improve in this area and go after it.
