To be truly successful in your life, your career, your community or in any area, you need to develop the qualities of a leader. First and foremost, you will need to be able lead yourself to success. Furthermore, true success often requires you to lead other people as well. Here are 7 personal development tips - the qualities of successful leaders.

There are 7 important qualities of a leader that you should know about, assimilate and practice every day in your life. You may already recognise some of them in your self - that's a good start. Be assured, we all have the makings of a leader in us. You just need to build on that base to incorporate more of the qualities of a leader a bit at a time.

As you get closer to the qualities of a true leader you will find that you begin to act like a leader and people behave as if you are leader. Leaders are the people who have the greatest rewards in all walks of life. Whether in business, or in society or in the community.

Seven qualities of a leader

Integrity. Integrity means that you are true to yourself and your ideas. You are someone you can trust and someone other people can trust. This is possibly the most important quality. You should always strive to do things that you are proud to explain to anyone.

Understand the area you want to be a leader in. You simply won't have a thorough grasp of the area you are trying to be a leader in. This applies to any walk of life - business, community, spiritual… All leaders have a good grasp of the basics and the key details.

This is not to say that you have to know everything there is to know - that is the job of the specialist, but you need to be able to talk to specialists and contribute some guidance to their work.

Consistency. When you are trying to lead people, you will rapidly loose the trust of your followers if you constantly change your mind and your direction. They will feel uncertain about their future and eventually you will loose them. This applies to yourself as well. If you are constantly changing direction, you will end up running round in circles and going nowhere.

Ability to admit your mistakes. One of the greatest cause of failure is not being willing to admit your mistakes. If you lie to yourself, you are fooling no one but yourself. You must be able to face up to your mistakes otherwise you will miss tremendous opportunities to learn from your mistakes and accelerate your success.

Willingness to listen. You can never know all the answers, you must be able to deal with contradictions and leverage the vast pool of knowledge that is around you.

Decisiveness. Great leaders make decisions and they make them quickly. Even if they are wrong, you'll learn more by taking action than by not taking the decision. You can always make another decision based on your learning.

Self Belief. If you don't believe in your self… no one will! You will face a lot of setbacks and obstacles. You need to believe in yourself and your ability to solve the problems and achieve your dreams. If you believe in yourself you will display an burning passion for your idea that will motivate others to follow you.

We have discussed 7 personal development tips for better leadership. As you read through the list, do you recognise any of these qualities in yourself. Some of them are there, some are probably well developed, others may need more work. Sit down a write out a list of the areas you need to work on. Brainstorm some ideas for further personal development and be a leader, take decisive action!!