Leaders!

People don't leave leaders, they leave companies.

Sometimes even poor performing companies have good leaders. These folks often hang around unafraid of the poor performance believing they can change the future. They are usually surrounded by real talent but sometimes the cultural inertia, product failures, or poor support are too great and the leader and her team move on. A failure of the collective company to change or adjust to having driven the leader and team to find new challenges. The leader has left the company.

At other times good people following great leaders break out on their own to take on new challenges and further develop their own leadership skills. I did this after I left Albridge Solutions, a company I had helped to build and sell to PNC Bank. In one move I had left a company and the best and most influential leader I had ever worked for. The good news here is with this move I left the company but not the leader. Great leaders maintain strong ties to their followers and while they are not leading them in the company anymore they do lead them through the role changes to one or a combination of friend, mentor or coach. The transition is unique but necessary for future leaders to be developed and have a chance to thrive. In my case, I moved on to become a C - level executive at a unit of State Street Bank. I had left a direct reporting relationship with my leader but had assumed a bigger role in a bigger company and a new opportunity.

Here are my top five attributes to look for in a leader you can feel good about following:

Honesty - make sure your leader is brutally honest. In addition to telling you all the things you do so well it is more important that he coach you on the things you don't do well, need to improve on or flat out suck at.

Great Listener - keen listening skills are such a differentiator for effective leaders. The good ones are right there in the boat with you as you navigate through your challenges and opportunities. If you are going to seek advice or follow them make sure the leader is hearing and understanding what you are saying. Effective leaders have a doctors ear for listening.

Experience - I worked for a leader with an engineering education and a chemicals background who came into financial technology via the paper industry. The broad base of success and experience allowes him to provide both broad and targeted advice. Give me a 25 year veteran of the company you are in and I will tell you she is likely best at knowing how to keep a job and afraid to challenge the status quo. Success takes risk and failures. I can honestly say that I have failed so many times I can't count them anymore but I would never have had success if it wasn't for the collective experience from the things I tried that didn't work out.

Excited - great leaders love what they do and show their emotion freely. I remember in the early days of a tech start up being lead by a leader who walked through the office clapping his hands saying "don't worry, we will try it again tomorrow" as the day ended...at the time we were technically insolvent.

Communication - Great leaders are clear and concise in their message delivery. Think John F. Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher  or Ronald Reagan. Want to be more realistic then find someone who communicates with you in a way that you understand and feel comfortable responding to. We all spend way to much time running after things that were never in the original plan because it wasn't explained simply.

Finding a good leader is like making sausage while you read the recipe in the murky haze of pea soup. The good news here is leaders are always looking for good talent so perhaps you will be found. Just work hard, have a good attitude and show up with some new ideas. There are other skills and qualities you can add into the mix but finding someone with these qualities are at the top of the list for me.

My Best,