Discover the leadership qualities that make a great leader. Learn research-backed characteristics from integrity to emotional intelligence that drive leadership success.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Wed 31st December 2025
The leadership qualities that make a great leader include integrity, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, vision, resilience, and the ability to inspire trust—characteristics that research consistently links to leadership effectiveness, team performance, and organisational success. In a survey by consulting firm Robert Half, 75 percent of employees ranked integrity as the most important attribute of a leader, whilst Gallup research confirms that followers crave trust, compassion, stability, and hope from those who lead them.
Yet here's the compelling finding that should inform your development: studies on twins found that only one-third of the variance in leadership qualities is associated with heredity. Leaders are made, not born. The Center for Creative Leadership, with nearly six decades of research, confirms that leadership is a skill that can be developed. Good leaders are moulded through experience, continued study, intentional effort, and adaptation.
This means the qualities explored in this guide aren't fixed traits you either possess or lack—they're capabilities you can cultivate through deliberate practice.
Leadership qualities are the characteristics and behaviours that enable individuals to guide, influence, and inspire others toward achieving shared objectives.
The Core Concept
Leadership qualities differ from leadership skills in subtle but important ways. Qualities often reflect character and disposition—integrity, courage, humility—whilst skills typically describe capabilities that can be trained more directly—communication, decision-making, delegation.
The Distinction
| Aspect | Qualities | Skills |
|---|---|---|
| Nature | Character-based | Competency-based |
| Development | Often deeper, slower | Often more trainable |
| Examples | Integrity, resilience, empathy | Communication, delegation, analysis |
| Visibility | Revealed over time | Demonstrated in actions |
| Foundation | Who you are | What you can do |
Effective leaders integrate both—character qualities providing the foundation, skills enabling execution.
What Studies Reveal
A study of more than 300,000 business leaders by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman identified the competencies leaders need to succeed. Their research, combined with decades of work from the Center for Creative Leadership and Gallup, reveals consistent patterns in what distinguishes great leaders.
A good leader should have integrity, self-awareness, courage, respect, compassion, and resilience. They should be learning agile and flex their influence while communicating the vision, showing gratitude, and collaborating effectively.
Integrity consistently emerges as the quality followers value most.
The Research Evidence
In a survey by consulting firm Robert Half, 75 percent of employees ranked integrity as the most important attribute of a leader. In a separate survey by Sunnie Giles, 67 percent of respondents ranked high moral standards as the most important leadership competency.
What Integrity Means
Integrity in leadership encompasses:
The Trust Connection
Research by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner suggests that credibility, or the ability to be trusted, is one of the most important characteristics of a good leader. Leaders gain credibility and team members' trust by doing what they say they will do, holding themselves accountable for their words and actions, and putting the needs of the team before their own.
The Consequences
Gallup reports that employees who don't trust their leaders are more likely to leave the organisation. Integrity isn't merely an ethical ideal—it directly affects retention, engagement, and performance.
| Action | Demonstration |
|---|---|
| Keeping commitments | Following through on every promise, large or small |
| Admitting mistakes | Acknowledging errors promptly and taking responsibility |
| Sharing credit | Recognising others' contributions generously |
| Maintaining consistency | Behaving the same regardless of audience |
| Making ethical choices | Choosing right over expedient, even when costly |
Emotional intelligence distinguishes exceptional leaders from technically competent managers.
Core Components
Effective leaders focus on developing their emotional intelligence. This encompasses:
Practical Impact
Leaders that work to refine emotional intelligence are more adaptive, resilient, and accepting of feedback from others. They also practice active listening, are open to change, and are capable of effective communication.
Research Support
Empathy has been ranked the top leadership skill needed for success. The better you understand employees' experiences, the more heard and valued they feel. This connection between emotional intelligence and employee experience directly affects engagement and performance.
Practical Strategies
Vision provides direction and meaning that distinguishes leaders from administrators.
The Concept
Great leaders create a vision of the future that is vivid and compelling, and that motivates employees to want to achieve it. Everyone wants to work for a company that makes a difference in the world.
Vision Characteristics
Effective leadership vision is:
How Leaders Use Vision
| Leadership Function | Vision Application |
|---|---|
| Direction setting | Providing clarity on where we're going |
| Decision guidance | Evaluating choices against long-term direction |
| Motivation | Connecting daily work to larger purpose |
| Alignment | Unifying diverse efforts toward common goals |
| Resilience | Maintaining focus through challenges |
The ability to navigate adversity whilst maintaining effectiveness separates great leaders.
The Core Concept
Resilience is one of the most essential leadership qualities for those who aim to navigate challenges successfully. A resilient leader stays determined and optimistic in the face of setbacks, adapting to changes and leading their team through difficult times.
What Resilience Looks Like
Demonstrating resilience, a leader shows their team that challenges are opportunities for growth. This attitude helps to maintain team morale and keeps everyone focused on long-term goals.
The Changing Landscape
Adaptability is one of the most important leadership skills. Leaders need to contend with a hyper-competitive business environment, geo-politics, technological disruption, and constant change—all requiring the ability to adapt and develop agility.
Research Finding
Agile leaders—those who embrace experimentation, adaptability, and rapid feedback—are six times more likely to lead successful organisational transformations.
Practical Development
| Strategy | Application |
|---|---|
| Reframe challenges | View setbacks as learning opportunities |
| Build support networks | Develop relationships that provide perspective |
| Maintain perspective | Connect current challenges to larger context |
| Practice self-care | Sustain physical and mental resources |
| Embrace experimentation | Treat uncertainty as opportunity to learn |
| Develop flexibility | Build capacity to shift approaches when needed |
Humility counterbalances confidence and enables continued growth.
The Research Base
From a research perspective, humility in leaders has been shown to have positive effects. Studies on humble leadership—often defined by the leader's willingness to admit mistakes, spotlight follower strengths, and be teachable—find that it correlates with higher team learning.
What Humility Means
Leadership humility involves:
The Distinction
| Humility | Weakness |
|---|---|
| Confident acknowledgment of limitations | Lack of confidence or self-belief |
| Openness to learning | Inability to take positions |
| Recognition of others | Deference to everyone's opinions |
| Grounded self-assessment | Undervaluation of own contributions |
| Strategic vulnerability | Uncontrolled vulnerability |
Perhaps the most important characteristic of good leaders is that they're continuous learners. They put their education first, whether through formal learning or through day-to-day attention to other departments and roles. A good leader always wants to know more.
Development Approaches
Trust serves as the currency of leadership effectiveness.
What Followers Need
Gallup has studied which leadership qualities are the most important to a follower. What followers crave the most are trust, compassion, stability, and hope. These four qualities form the foundation of the leader-follower relationship.
The Consequences of Low Trust
Without trust, teams:
Consistent Actions
| Behaviour | Trust Impact |
|---|---|
| Keeping promises | Demonstrates reliability |
| Admitting uncertainty | Shows authenticity |
| Sharing information | Indicates respect and inclusion |
| Supporting during failure | Creates psychological safety |
| Defending team members | Builds loyalty and security |
| Acting consistently | Establishes predictability |
When trust breaks:
Courage enables leaders to act on their convictions despite risk.
Types of Courage
Leadership courage manifests in multiple forms:
The Leadership Imperative
Leaders face constant pressure to take the easy path—avoiding conflict, deferring decisions, maintaining consensus. Courage enables leaders to:
| Strategy | Application |
|---|---|
| Clarify values | Know what you stand for |
| Practice in low-stakes situations | Build courage incrementally |
| Accept discomfort | Expect courage to feel uncomfortable |
| Prepare for consequences | Consider outcomes and accept them |
| Build support | Develop allies who share your values |
Leadership qualities, whilst sometimes appearing innate, can be cultivated deliberately.
Research Evidence
Two research studies—one study with male twins and another with female twins—found that only one-third of the variance in leadership qualities is associated with heredity. In other words, many key leadership qualities can be learned and improved upon over time.
The Center for Creative Leadership believes that leaders are made, not born. Leadership is a skill that can be developed. Good leaders are moulded through experience, continued study, intentional effort, and adaptation.
The Quality Development Process
| Quality | Development Activities |
|---|---|
| Integrity | Committing to full honesty for specific periods; reviewing decisions against values |
| Emotional intelligence | Journaling emotional responses; seeking feedback on interpersonal impact |
| Vision | Practising future-oriented thinking; articulating possibilities regularly |
| Resilience | Reframing setbacks; building recovery practices |
| Humility | Actively seeking disconfirming information; celebrating others' contributions |
| Courage | Taking progressively larger principled stands; embracing uncomfortable conversations |
Research consistently identifies integrity, emotional intelligence, vision, resilience, humility, and trust-building as the most important leadership qualities. In surveys, 75% of employees rank integrity as the top attribute they value in leaders. Gallup finds followers crave trust, compassion, stability, and hope from those who lead them.
Yes—research on twins found only one-third of leadership quality variance relates to heredity. The Center for Creative Leadership confirms that leaders are made, not born, through experience, study, intentional effort, and adaptation. While some qualities may come more naturally to certain individuals, all can be developed through deliberate practice and feedback.
Great leaders combine competence with character—technical capability with integrity, intelligence with emotional intelligence, confidence with humility. They build trust consistently, demonstrate courage when needed, and maintain vision during challenges. Research shows they're continuous learners who remain curious and teachable regardless of their success.
Integrity directly affects trust, which research by Kouzes and Posner identifies as foundational to leadership. Leaders who demonstrate consistency between words and actions, admit mistakes, and maintain ethical standards build credibility that enables influence. Gallup reports that employees who don't trust their leaders are more likely to leave.
Emotional intelligence enables leaders to understand and manage their own emotions whilst accurately reading others. This affects team morale, conflict prevention, communication effectiveness, and relationship quality. Research ranks empathy as the top leadership skill needed for success, and emotionally intelligent leaders demonstrate greater adaptability and resilience.
Humility correlates with higher team learning in research studies. Humble leaders admit mistakes, spotlight others' strengths, and remain teachable—qualities that create psychological safety and encourage innovation. The best leaders combine confidence with humility, maintaining conviction whilst remaining open to feedback and new information.
Resilient leaders reframe challenges as learning opportunities, maintain optimism whilst acknowledging difficulty, and focus teams on long-term goals despite short-term obstacles. Research shows they're six times more likely to lead successful transformations. They build resilience through support networks, perspective-taking, self-care, and treating uncertainty as opportunity.
The leadership qualities examined in this guide—integrity, emotional intelligence, vision, resilience, humility, courage, and trust-building—aren't reserved for a fortunate few. They're capabilities available to anyone willing to pursue development with intention and persistence.
The research is clear: only one-third of leadership variance relates to heredity. The remaining two-thirds? That's within your control. It develops through experience embraced as learning opportunity, through feedback sought and applied, through reflection that extracts wisdom from every situation.
Consider the leaders who have influenced your own journey. Did they inspire through position alone, or through qualities that commanded respect regardless of title? The leaders we remember—the ones who shaped our thinking, challenged our limits, and supported our growth—embodied qualities that transcended their roles.
You face daily opportunities to develop these same qualities. Every interaction offers chance to demonstrate integrity. Every challenge presents occasion to build resilience. Every success provides moment to practise humility. Every relationship allows space for emotional intelligence.
The question isn't whether you can become a great leader—research confirms you can. The question is whether you'll commit to the development journey that makes it possible. Will you seek feedback honestly? Will you embrace discomfort as growth opportunity? Will you remain curious and teachable regardless of your current success?
Sir Ernest Shackleton, whose Antarctic expedition became a legendary story of leadership under extreme conditions, once noted that difficulties are just things to overcome. His leadership through impossible circumstances demonstrated that qualities—not circumstances—determine outcomes.
Your leadership circumstances may differ from Shackleton's, but the principle holds: the qualities you develop determine the leader you become. The development awaits. The choice is yours.
What quality will you begin developing today?