1. honesty 2. forward-thinking

An article in Harvard Review reminded me to add something to my new year's resolution list I'm compiling: personal advances; getting away from everyone and everything for 48 hours to both reflect and plan for the future.

In a research project, the article confirms that forward-looking and enlisting others in a shared view of the future is the attribute that distinguishes leaders from nonleaders.

They asked followers the following questions:

“What do you look for and admire in a leader (defined as someone whose direction you would willingly follow)?”

Then they asked,

“What do you look for and admire in a colleague (defined as someone you’d like to have on your team)?”

Numero uno on the list? Honesty, which also happened to be the highest rated attribute of a good colleague. However, and this is where it gets interesting, the second-highest rating for a leader, that he/she be forward-looking, applied only to the leader role. Statistically, 27% of respondents looked for that in a colleague, whereas 72% wanted this in a leader.

What does this suggest? That this raises a tremendous challenge for any rising leader, because the trait that most separates the leaders from individual contributors is something that they haven't had to demonstrate in prior, nonleadership roles. This makes arguable sense given the low percentage of leaders who seem to have made a habit out of looking ahead.

Here's the stat that scares me into putting this on my new year's list if I hadn't before: only 3% of a typical leader's time is spent envisioning and enlisting. Leaders on the front line must anticipate merely what comes after current projects wrap up. People at the next level of leadership should be looking several years into the future.