How to be a great leader

What does it take to be a good leader? Early in my career in information technology, I was in a training session where the presenter asked that question.

My answer at that time was “charisma.” I was in my 20s and inexperienced.

Being a good leader is much more than charisma. As I found out when I was a data center manager leading a team of nine people, leadership is a relationship between you and a group of people. Being a great leader takes specific actions and attitudes on your part. Here’s what I discovered.

Build the relationship

Begin building the relationship with your team immediately, and continue to reinforce it every day. Start with some easy actions.

• Greet everyone when you see them. This simple step says they are important to you
• Treat people well. Always show them respect. Listen to them, encourage them to share their successes and difficulties. Be sympathetic.
• Remember they already know you are the boss. Sometimes managers and business owners think they need to say that they’re in charge. You never need to say that.

Define the relationship

You can build the well-oiled business machine you want by establishing the way your team works together. On my team, we had two systems managers, six data center operators and myself. We operated 24 hours a day, supporting graphics and drawing production at a large architecture and engineering firm. To form a cohesive, high-functioning team, I worked on the following:

• Be clear in your mind about what your role is and what the responsibilities are of the others in the team. You can’t grow and manage your business if you are doing everything, even a little bit of everything.
• Let your team know that part of your role is to help them get their work done. Don’t do their jobs for them, but get involved when there are new and unusual situations.

One way to help a team member to be more productive is to help them set priorities. For example, a highly competent systems expert came to me and said she was drowning in her work. She felt she was getting nothing done because every assignment had to be done right now.

To get her past this moment, I told her which task should be done first, and which ones to do second and third. Setting priorities is something that you as the leader can do best.

• Lead by example. If you want people to do something or behave a certain way, explain it to them and then do it that way yourself.
• Ask team members for their ideas. You will get great suggestions, and it will show that you value the team’s expertise and point of view. Include everyone as often as you can, even if you don’t expect them to contribute to the discussion.

Defining the relationship is a balancing act because people grow and learn by figuring out new and difficult situations. There is a point for each individual, however, where the stress of the task or the amount of work they face gets in the way of being successful. Be aware of that point for each team member so you can help them when they need it.

Furthermore, you can assist team members to stretch beyond their boundaries. For example, we had to electronically transfer data from one type of system to another, and our group had to figure out how to do it. This wasn’t what the team usually did, and it required them to go beyond the skills they needed to do their jobs.

But all of us who worked the day shift were busy with production and helping users. I asked one of the late shift operators if he would be willing to take on this additional task. He accepted the challenge, and he succeeded!

When there was an opportunity, I promoted him into a systems manager position where he quickly developed his knowledge and skills. He created innovative automation that I didn’t have the time or expertise to do. His efforts improved the quality of our group’s work and gave me more time for my tasks.

It takes time to build a leadership relationship. You will see good results after a few months, but the great reward is that once you create the foundation, you and your team will continue to grow and flourish for many years.

Jay Vaught is an experienced manager who has built and led IT teams in several industries. With degrees in communication and management, he writes about his experiences managing people and projects. Jay is based in Chicago, Illinois.

For more about leadership, watch

• Let go and lead 
• Lessons from top leaders  (MDRT members only)
• The mind of a winner