One of the most critical decisions you can make is to take on the role as leader. If you aspire to this role, have you considered the intricacies of being a leader? There are three essential fundamentals that will help you become an exemplary leader: high emotional intelligence, inner agility and emotional bonding with your team.

 Emotional Intelligence

If you desire to rise to the top, I have found that it requires an in-depth look at yourself and a practice of self-awareness on all levels, personally and professionally. This is the starting point of emotional intelligence. It is like taking one morsel of yourself and putting in under the microscope.

How do you begin this process of increasing emotional intelligence? I recommend starting with an emotional intelligence assessment and working with an executive coach who specializes in this field. Looking into how you rate on a range of competencies begins the journey of self-awareness. From the assessment, you learn what areas you need to strengthen, which strengthens all other competencies.

For example, I had a client who was low on self-confidence, decision making competency and tolerance for stress. During our work together, we focused on increasing his self-confidence. Once that improved, he had more confidence in his decision making and his stress tolerance improved. Embedded in self-awareness is learning how your perceptions shape how you navigate and make decisions. Within months of these positive changes, he moved into the C-suite level within his organization: a position he thought was out of reach until we worked together.

Inner Agility

One of the areas measured by an emotional intelligence assessment is flexibility — a component of agility that is a crucial ability for great leaders and organizational health. A leader needs to develop an organization that is agile, which is a combination of stability and the ability to change quickly in a rapidly changing world — a formula for success.

One of the top qualities of an agile company is role clarity, and this begins with a leader’s ability to be clear about their own role and position. In addition to the mission statement and vision of the company, you need to be clear on what your personal vision is, as well as your own mission statement. In the words of Simon Sinek, know your why.