Building an effective leadership team: what makes a good leader?

In any organisation, strategy only becomes real through people and what they do each day. And people take most of their cues from their leadership team. Because of this, when leaders are clear and aligned on the culture they need in order to support delivery of strategy, and when they act with self-awareness and intention, they create the culture they want. When they are fragmented or reactive, even the strongest plans struggle.  

This is because culture is the result of the patterns of behaviour that are encouraged, discouraged, and tolerated by people and systems, over time. 

The question “What are the qualities that make a good leader?” therefore has huge organisational significance. Effective leadership role-models behaviour that drives performance, engagement, and trust more directly than any other factor. 

What is effective leadership? 

Effective leadership is about providing clarity, building trust, and guiding people towards meaningful outcomes while remaining conscious of the impact of your behaviour as a leader on people and culture. In our work, we often describe leadership effectiveness through the balance of three interlinked domains, ‘I’, ‘We’, and ‘It’. 

The ‘I’ domain relates to the internal, personal dimension of leadership: self-awareness, emotional regulation, and the ability to stay ‘above the line’ and accountable. Leaders who can pause, reflect, and take responsibility for their impact and proactivity create stability, trust, and deliver results. The ‘We’ domain reflects relational leadership: the capacity to build psychological safety, encourage open dialogue, and hold healthy challenge within the team. Finally, the ‘It’ is about tangibles and delivery: establishing clear expectations, making disciplined decisions, and ensuring culture supports strategy. 

The I, We, It Model: The best leaders and organisations make a conscious effort to make decisions with all three dimensions in mind to generate exceptional, sustainable results.

When a leader and leadership team learns to balance all three domains, their leadership becomes consistent and effective. Relationships and collaboration flourish, integrity and accountability thrive, leaders care for themselves and others, and performance levels rise sustainably.

What are the qualities that make a good leader? 

 As well as balancing I, We, and It, the very best leaders tend to demonstrate a set of personal qualities consistently and to a high level. They are reflective and honest about their strengths and limitations, and able to stay open rather than move quickly into defensiveness or blame. They bring emotional steadiness and communicate clearly, providing calm and clarity even in moments of pressure, without seeming detached or inauthentic. Their behaviour matches their values, making them able to ‘walk their talk’ - they understand that people are influenced far more by leadership behaviour than by leadership rhetoric. 

They also take relationships seriously. They cultivate environments where people can speak openly, disagree productively, and contribute their best ideas. Their decision-making blends inclusion with clarity, ensuring that multiple perspectives are considered without slowing momentum. They are conscious of what they encourage, discourage, and tolerate, and are deliberate about sending signals intentionally, so that they reinforce the culture they want to create. 

These qualities are more about who the leader is and how they carry themselves, more than skills or knowledge. Learning to cultivate these qualities is a key differentiator of the very best leaders. 

Leadership role-modelling 

 As an effective leader, it pays to remember a small mantra – “you’re always leading, because people are always watching”.

Whether you know it or not, every action you take and every decision you make sends a signal about what you really care about and value. If you will tolerate poor performance, beware. People will learn they will not be held to account. If you are unable to accept criticism, don’t expect others to risk giving feedback. If the leadership team can’t have tough conversations without them becoming arguments, don’t expect people to handle disagreement well in your organisation. 

Leadership role modelling is one of the strongest cultural forces in any organisation. Leaders communicate continuously through their behaviour, often without realising it. How they listen, how they handle disagreement, how they react when things go wrong, what they praise and what they ignore, each action subtly defines what “good” looks like. 

The behaviours you display will tell people about your culture way more clearly than the values on the wall or the statements on your website. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said,

“Your actions speak so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.” 

Benefits of effective leadership for an organisation 

 The benefits of effective leadership for an organisation are both cultural and commercial. When leaders are aligned and self-aware, clarity improves across the business. People know where they’re heading and how decisions are made. Psychological safety strengthens enabling innovation, challenge, and better problem-solving. Teams move more quickly because there’s less friction and ambiguity. 

Effective leadership also boosts talent attraction and retention. People choose environments where expectations are clear, leaders behave consistently, and culture feels healthy. Where performance matters, but so do people. Over time, these benefits compound, contributing to stronger execution, higher engagement, and more resilient organisational performance. 

Examples of effective leadership 

 We regularly see the impact of leaders and their teams introducing simple practices that help them become more intentional about their impact and more cohesive, often through very simple practices. 

In one organisation, a leadership team struggling with an overextended focus on high performance 'at any cost’ and siloed working shifted to a more collaborative, healthy model, simply by learning to test and balance their decisions and actions using the I, We, It framework. By paying attention to how they related to each other and ensuring that all three lenses were considered, they found that they accelerated progress and reduced friction across the business. They achieved better results by doing this than by focusing relentlessly on ‘performance’ alone. 

Another leadership team introduced a simple weekly practice: reflecting together on where and how they had been operating ‘above or below the line’ (high or low accountability), individually and as a team. This quickly changed the tone of their conversations – they became less defensive, more able to acknowledge where they struggled, and more able to quickly move from contesting where the blame for their problems lay, to finding solutions together. 

In a third case, leaders rewrote their behavioural expectations using the lens of what they committed to “encourage, discourage, and tolerate.” By becoming more deliberate in their day-to-day habits, they reshaped the culture around them in a way that directly supported their strategy. 

These examples show that effective leadership is visible and behavioural. It is something you can strengthen with intention and practice. 

Unlock your leadership team’s potential 

 If your organisation is ready to take the calibre of leadership to the next level and learn how to build and lead a culture that intentionally drives your strategy, our Leadership Team Unlocking Programme can help. Talk to us to share your aspirations and to find out how we could support them. 

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