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

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!

Smile Can Change a Personality

Just take smile as an element of personality and analyze what it does. It makes for a pleasant atmosphere, and will usually secure a smile in return. It loosens the facial muscles and makes for relaxation, which is so essential to human relations. One who does not smile easily can and should acquire this specific. It may be necessary to get in front of a mirror and see what happens to yourself when you smile. The muscles of your face can be put under control and trained through practice to do your bidding. Try it and see!

Results of Good Personality

One of the outstanding results of a good personality is the ability to get along well and satisfactorily with your fellow workers, with your supervisors and executives, and most importantly with your customers! Stop right now and think it over -- isn't it a fact that the highest incomes and the most satisfactory jobs go to the individuals with the most favorable personalities? When have you seen a man or woman with an unpleasant, disagreeable personality in a position of importance?

Certain elements of personality may be more important than others. For example, consider this statement by Dr. J. Frank Dame, Head of Business Education, Florida State University. Tallahassee:

  Personality can and should be made a matter of attention for the individual. Personality is improved like most things -- through practice. It is something which evades specific definitions, but it is made up of many elements which include the way one talks, the way one looks, the way one walks, the way one smiles, and the very words one uses as well as mannerisms.

Louis G. LaMair Statement About Personality

Louis G. LaMair, President, American Music Conference, with the Penny-Owsley Music Company, Los Angeles.

 "Personality is the product of our native being, as it is molded and developed by the experiences and the influences we meet through life. When we are shunned by playmates after a fit of temper, we learn that temper doesn't pay. When generosity is repaid with the warm thanks of someone we like, we learn that it pays to be generous. 

But the wise person seeks for more than just the accidental and casual experiences that mold personality. He goes out of his way to find those things that mold a good personality...that leave one a bit stronger, a bit more capable of copping with the events of life.

Of all the personality-molders, music has always been one of the best. It brings to us the best thinking and feelings of history's most creative minds. It enables us to feel and to think the great noble thoughts these men had. Just by listening or by playing their notes for ourselves, we can enable our minds and our personalities to grow to their highest level - and to retain some of that growth.

 

Music can be one of the most uplifting of all forces for molding personality. It is like a great bird that soars over a mountain top. It is free, and not limited by our everyday horizons. It becomes the spirit within us that fights the commonplace and the dull. It sings in our souls - and caresses our hearts. Sometimes it cries out within us with an ecstasy of joy and sometimes it is dark with sorrow. It is all of life as we live it or as we want it. And though it leaves us when we stop listening or playing, it is ever with us, for the whole thread of human experience runs through it!"