Leadership has become a buzz word these days.

Hundreds of articles on leadership are published every week. Some of the highest paid coaches and mentors are those who help us develop leadership skills. The world’s leading business magazines present annual leaders’ top rankings, a pleasant appraisal of one’s experience and skills in itself. And bookstore shelves are filled with all kinds of books devoted to the subject of leadership (with some of them being true jewels, like Lolly Daskal’s recent book The Leadership Gap).

Although we do recognise that leadership is more about vision and, as Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever says, about the ability to unleash other people’s energy (and less about management), we still cannot agree about the characteristic traits all leaders tend to display. Or actions they usually take that clearly distinguish them from managers.

However, each of us remembers their boss who has helped us become professionals that we are today by doing some things that “bossy” bosses fail to do. Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce, has succinctly outlined the major steps great bosses have taken to help us grow, both personally and professionally. Here are the steps:

The bosses we remember:
1 provided safe space to grow
2 opened career doors
3 defended us when we needed it
4 recognized and rewarded us
5 developed us as leaders
6 inspired us to stretch higher
7 led by example
8 told us our worked mattered
9 forgave us when mistakes were made

What can I say? You are lucky if you have met a boss like this. Be thankful for it because, as life shows, it is a rare treasure.

I am lucky.

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