How to Develop an Executive Personality

The ability to develop a good executive personality and outstanding leadership derives from a number of qualifications that a man builds up over the years. He "grows into" them from long training and experience.

Here are some signs by which top management can predict, with reasonable safety, that a man with a given opportunity will rise to those characteristics which distinguish a good executive:

Sixteen Qualities of Executive Leadership

• Good personality
• Above-par intelligence
• Wide experience
• Good judgement
• Originality
• Keen mental attitude
• Receptiveness
• Stimulativeness
• Administrative ability
• Delegating ability
• Teaching ability
• Skillful human relations
• Courage of convictions
• Tenacity and perseverance
• Long-range vision
• Applied psychology

Early Start in Life

At seven when most children are still fascinated by dolls and toy guns, Gwendolyn Brooks was already stringing verses. She scored her first triumph at 13 by selling a poem to  the American Childhood Magazine. But that was just her first step on the ladder of success. She had to slave for 19 years more before winning the most sought-after award among men of letters.

Which shows to prove that the younger one starts in life, the earlier one reaches his goal.

There is no such thing as genius without anything behind it. The greatest genius are the hardest workers. For life is a little growing. One must pass the different stages of life. Most of us must start from a small beginning and grow steadily on. It is only in digging a well that one has to dig from the top and work towards the bottom.

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Developing Your Friendliness

Friendship, a photo by jakerom

The man or woman with a friendly personality always has an advantage over the person with a dead-pan poker face and an indifferent attitude. In social life, in public life, or in modern business, it is significant that friendliness pays the biggest dividends. No matter what service you need, no matter what your goal in life, isn't it true that you always lean toward the individual with the smiling, friendly personality?

Friendliness leads to friendship, and friendship is the number one success factor in life. How many real friends have you? Can you count them on the fingers of one hand, or both hands? If you can equal that number, or go beyond it, you are fortunate indeed. Many people mistake acquaintances for real friends. While acquaintances are picked up here and true friendships are developed over the years.

Getting Along

In business, for example, you should certainly go out of your way to get along with the people who work with you or for you. No matter what echelon you rate, the workers below you are entitled to your constant thoughtfulness and consideration. You never know when someone in your department or elsewhere will come up with ideas or suggestions that may be extremely valuable to you. But only if you make him feel that he may talk to you freely. That is where a good personality enters the enters the picture and frequently decides the difference between good and bad human relations.

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When you talk to a man, give him your full attention and consideration. When you listen to his ideas, put some smiling pleasantness and interest in your manner. When you shake hands with a man, put some warmth, cordiality, and grip into the operation. Hardly anything so promptly lights the quick-burning fuse of a man's resentment as to receive a hand clasp that has the vigor of an invalided kitten, the geniality of a drippy fog and the spirit of a cold buckwheat cake. Make your handshake human and you will make a human being out of yourself in the process.

Finally, when an employee comes to you with a complaint don't listen with an attitude of bored resignation; put some human sympathy and understanding into your manner and let your kindly, genial, warm personality take over. Remember that, as the manager of the department or the top executive of the business, it is your outstanding personality that has helped you to build up your reputation for fair dealing and sympathetic understanding.

If managers would only learn to listen more feelingly and sympathetically to their workers and associates, we would see much less concern over human relations and labor relations, in business today!

Be Unique; Be Cool!

You can get along with everyone. Wherever you go and whatever you do, people are just about the same. They are no more difficult to get along with in one business or in one place than another. Every individual has his own problems, his own worries, his own interests and desires. All you need to remember is that the art of getting along with people imposes some personal obligations on you. You cannot afford to lose your temper; you cannot be a gossiper or rumor-monger; you cannot pass the buck to others and evade your own responsibilities; you cannot overlook the little courtesies and kindnesses that lubricate your many daily contact with human beings.

If you will, you can make a friend of everyone. Even your enemy can be converted. He in particular must be converted, for an enemy can do more harm you than half dozen friends can do to help you. A wise man once said, "The only safe and sure way to destroy an enemy is to make him your friend." And in the process of trying to convert him, you will see many of your own faults, too, thereby making it easier for you to make him like you.