5 key traits of a community leader

By Amy Marshment      Mon, Sep 21, 2020       3-minute read

It’s actually super simple, check out our top 5 traits of community leaders.

A community doesn’t have to be 100’s of people, in fact, a community can be as small as a handful of people. As long as you’re working towards a shared vision and you, as a community leader are helping to pave the way to achieve your goals together, then expect a bright future!

We’ve outlined just 5 simple key traits of a community leader!

You recognise not only your strengths but your weaknesses

1. Being self-aware is super important for understanding not only what type of community leader you are, but how you’re going to drive your community forward with the skills you possess. The great thing about being a community leader means that you’re a people person and dislike hierarchy. By becoming a community leader, you hope to inspire action and empowered decision making, all you need to do is lay the foundations for what people should expect. It’s then all about teamwork. The skills that you may need to work on are most likely the strengths of others in your community!

With these skills, you’ll be able to drive ideas forward, make suggestions, and assess the best way forward together. Inspire action and drive change.

You’ll remain curious and be open to know more & more

2. You’re passionate about a topic and know that there’s always more to learn. By leading your community, you’re opening up a whole world of knowledge, perception, and opinion. Self-growth is important to you and you’ll be open to change.

This curiosity leads to new ideas and innovation. By broadening your knowledge and experiences, you’ll be able to better…

Empathise, empathise, empathise

3. Empathy is a key trait of a successful community leader. With greater empathy comes greater understanding and connection. By being empathetic, you’ll inspire trust in those around you and grow closer as a community. This understanding will allow you to move past your own pre-conceived ideas and experiences.

This is essential to growing your knowledge and relationships.

You’re already on a mission

4. You can see the end goal, but how do you get there? You know what you stand for, but working as a community, you’re all able to reach your goals even faster. The more you inspire your community that anything is possible by continuing to share ideas, debate, and discuss, the more you’ll all gain individually and as a collective. You’ll offer a safe space for everyone to freely throw ideas out there and acknowledge that your ideas might not always be the most productive!

This is perfect for self-reflection and knowledge building.

You hold yourself accountable

5. Has something gone right? Fantastic. Hold onto that success and celebrate it. However, if something has gone wrong, take a pause to understand what lead to that outcome. If the outcome didn’t go as planned, there is always something to learn from this. Mistakes or unpredicted outcomes can provide unbelievable insight and help you to better your approach in the future. A successful community leader will have a patient approach and handle mistakes with self-care but responsibility. Admitting you got something wrong is powerful, vulnerable, and allows those around you to not fear failure.

In turn, you’ll go head first into anything and accept your successes and less successful moments as a community.

Check out how you can then go onto creating a successful culture of community.