JJ DID TIE BUCKLE

14 Leadership Traits

The Marine Corps taught me that there are 14 leadership traits and the way you remember them is JJ DID TIE BUCKLE:

Judgement, Justice, Decisiveness, Integrity, Dependability, Tact, Initiative, Endurance, Bearing, Understanding, Courage, Knowledge, Leadership, Enthusiasm.

I will do a series digging into each of them but for now here is some context.

These are the ideal traits that all leaders should embody or strive for (so sayeth the Marine Corps). I routinely think about this and reflect on where I do well, what I do poorly, and what I need to work on to develop better as a leader.

Another way I use this is to assess those who work for me or one of my businesses. Everyone I hire is a potential leader. I use this to identify growing leaders and put them in positions to utilize their strengths or help train their weaknesses.

I have an employee who has a high level of Understanding and Endurance. I noticed this early on and made sure he was part of new employees onboard training. He was fantastic in an area where he naturally had strengths. He is now in a full time role where a large part of his responsibility is new hire training. This same employee lacks some in the Knowledge (in terms of a specific business segment) and Decisiveness department. His new role also puts him in a position where he has to learn a new skill or segment, but also make decisions in a timely manner or fail. We put him in this position but also coach him through steps on how to improve on this. A mistake ‘leaders’ make often is to put people in positions that only rely on their strengths. That’s great, that person will do a fine job, but they won’t evolve or develop. That’s bad for the future. Another mistake a ‘leader’ will make is to put them into a position where they are weak and not have a plan to coach them through.