I’m a fan of The Great British Baking Show. On each show, amateur bakers are given three challenges and compete to be named “Star Baker.” One of the three challenges, the “Technical Challenge,” requires the bakers, using their experience and talents, along with a minimalist recipe, to prepare a complex cake, pie or other baked good. Sometimes they succeed, and other times…not so much!

Leadership is like this. Every leader has a set of personality and character traits they bring to their role. These, combined with a set of core competencies (think of these as the “recipe”), are the tools we bring to the leadership challenges we confront.

In a previous blog, I shared The Bailey Group’s point of view regarding the personality traits and characteristics of healthy, effective and successful leaders. Here are the core competencies we support clients in developing, which, when combined with healthy personality and character traits, help them to achieve the results they seek:

• Leading with purpose (being purpose driven): Understanding the why that drives them and their organizations
• Strategic thinking: Basing their leadership on a vision for the future and a core set of values and principles through which they align and inspire their organization and differentiate their product and services from competitors
• Accountability for results: A willingness to set challenging, measurable goals for themselves and their organization and a commitment to do what it takes to accomplish the goals
• Leading change: The courage and resilience to challenge the status quo, lean into resistance, and persevere in the face of uncertainty
• The ability to inspire: Helping followers to connect their daily work to core human values that provide meaning and purpose to the work of the organization
• Driving innovation: Curiosity and a drive for continuous learning that enables open-mindedness, experimentation and tolerance for failure in service of learning
• Creating and leading high-performance teams: Aligning people around a common purpose, set of goals, and caring for each other and being accountable for achieving results

Leadership, like baking, combines science, skill, intuition and experience. Mastering the core competencies described above improves the likelihood of achieving the results you seek. How would you add to or modify my list? I look forward to your comments on LinkedIn or your emails at [email protected].