Top 5 Leadership Traits in 2023

Characteristics Every Leader Should Strive to Have Today

During our leadership development programs, engagement initiatives, and 1:1 executive coaching sessions, we’re often asked which leadership skills are most critical for emerging leaders to learn for maximized workplace success. 

What are the top five leadership characteristics for 2023? 

PivotN finds these five characteristics to be the most highly-sought after leadership traits: 

• Adaptability

• Approachability

• Courage 

• Curiosity

• Resilience 

These particular leadership traits are greatly needed in the 2023 economic and cultural environment. While these are sometimes seen as natural traits or “qualities” of specific individuals, we find they are also teachable skills. These five characteristics help emerging professionals, seasoned leaders, and military veterans innovate and find success working with others. Let’s look at each one in order of priority: 

1. Resilience: Understanding resilience as a leadership characteristic

Resilience is the capacity to withstand and quickly recover from challenges. It's marked by the ability to not only overcome difficulties and tough times, but to spring back into shape.

In our world today, resilience is proving to be one of the absolute must-haves in order to achieve and retain success. Inevitably, we face obstacles in life and business. Resilience is a necessary skill to cope with whatever arises.

At the company or organizational level, Professor David Denyer at Cranfield University has described resilience as, “the ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, respond and adapt to incremental change and sudden disruptions in order to survive and prosper.”

Examples include natural disasters, cyber breaches, financial meltdowns, and general uncertainties in a market. Research is showing that disruptions are occurring more frequently and with greater severity – making resilience a more important leadership trait than any other.

2. Curiosity: Why the best leaders develop a keen sense of curiosity

At the most basic level, curiosity is a strong desire to know or learn something. When standards, systems, and procedures take precedent over innovation and growth, unfortunately, we may fall into patterns and ruts.  

Curious leaders can spur others to become more curious. When we stay present in a desire to learn, we can better embrace new ideas, take on the right kinds of risks, and challenge the status quo. 

Staying curious helps us with continual process improvements as well as big-picture success. By asking “What if…?” we make one another’s ideas stronger.

Fully engaged employees ask questions, listen well, learn new approaches, and analyze situations. They are interested partners in company well-being. While old hierarchical leadership styles may have felt threatened in the face of questions, today’s leaders embrace curiosity and make decisions by listening to everyone around them, factoring in “weighted believability” based on experience and subject matter expertise. 

3. Adaptability: How making frequent adjustments matters

Adaptability is how well someone adjusts to new conditions.

The rate of change is ever-increasing, so we need to remain flexible and adaptable at work. This is particularly true of, say, staffing considerations. We’re always thinking about marketplace trends and the future of work itself.  

Companies that remain adaptable survive. Those that can’t adapt, simply die. 

Apple, DuPont, and Hewlett-Packard are three examples of companies that have adapted well over time. Despite their age and size, they remain nimble and embrace new conditions by quickly accepting the changing milieu.

4. Approachability: Why nice leaders don’t finish last

Being amicable and easy to speak with hasn’t been at the top of leadership lists for long. In fact, not being approachable is often a manager’s biggest blind spot. 

However, today’s managers must be approachable – now more than ever, employees won’t put up with bosses that don’t understand their position. 

Encouraging a culture of approachability can be an uphill climb for some people, but it’s a necessity today. Work styles change and evolve over time. This one acknowledges the need for emotional intelligence at work.

A lack of approachability by management is exactly how “quiet quitting” happens and often why talent shortages exist. Fortunately, these challenges can be addressed with training and a willingness to change.

5. Courage: Leading bravely requires leading from the heart

Forging ahead, even in the face of fear, pain, or grief, is an act of courage. 

Nearly every leader can learn to lead with greater courageousness – in the sense of acting with not only bravery, but heart. This is because our natural human negativity bias directs us to pay more attention to fear than anything else.  

Courageous leaders are those who display openness and humility – not just a brave face. There are many factors involved in how a leader is perceived, and many specific skills that can help develop this trait. 

We often think of leaders like Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi, or Mother Teresa when we think of courage… but business leaders can act with courage and bravery, too. Think of leaders in crisis response or early advocates of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Tough times call for leaders with true courage. 

Do you have all five of the leadership traits? 

These five leadership traits – adaptability, approachability, courage, curiosity, and resilience – will continue to be important well beyond this year. 

Current and past leaders who embody all five of these top leadership traits include:  

• Albert Einstein, Theoretical Physicist and Nobel Prize Winner

• Cynthia Marshall, CEO of Dallas Mavericks 

• Christine Lagarde, President of European Central Bank

• Martin Luther King, Jr., Minister, Social Activist and Civil Rights Leader

• Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States

So, it’s certainly possible to embody all five of these traits at once. People leading with the skills that create these characteristics make a huge impact on their teams. The combination of traits is clearly a winning formula, and will become increasingly valuable over time. 

Work with Us

Pivotn offers assessments to identify personal values, temperament, and management styles and training to help build the skills needed to succeed at work and in life. Clients also engage with us for keynote speaking events, facilitation of team-building workshops, and as individual coaches. 

If you’d like to build these five characteristics at your workplace, please get in touch to check schedule availability and discuss your needs.