When you’re working on being promoted to a leadership position within your firm or elsewhere, you are probably focused on revamping your resume, networking up a storm, and getting any additional qualifications you may need to be in the running for the role.

However, it’s important to remember that being a great leader isn’t just about the experience you have or the piece of paper you received from an institution. It’s also about your personal skills which help you to interact well with others, get across your desires, deal with conflict, and much more.

Recruiters and business owners know this, and will be looking to get an idea of your suitability when they meet with you to discuss a new role.

Read on for some of the key personal traits you should develop in yourself if you want to be promoted to a leadership position sooner rather than later.

Be Open and Have a Passion for Learning

First up, if you want to be an excellent leader you must be open to new experiences and the opinions of others, and have a passion for learning. When you have a growth mindset like this, it enables you to keep developing your skills and knowledge to learn from your mistakes and those made by others.

It also means you will value the suggestions, ideas and feedback you receive from other people, and that you will stay open to any new opportunities which may present themselves.

When it comes to learning, remember that there isn’t one set way to broaden your repertoire. Instead, find what suits you, and try out a whole lot of new things. For instance, to be a top leader it often pays to enroll in a degree such as an MBA online, where you can be taught a variety of management techniques and general business strategies and processes.

For something less structured, look to talks, workshops, short courses, seminars, forums, and various other event types, or join one or more business clubs and associations where you can learn from, and often be mentored by those who have “been there and done that” already.

You will also pick up a lot of helpful information and ideas when you read reports, books, magazines, blogs, white papers, and the like.

Have Strong Communication Skills and Be Able to Inspire Others

Take a look at some of the current and historical leaders around the world and you’ll discover that they typically all have one main thing in common: they are/were all excellent communicators. To join their ranks, you must have strong communication skills yourself.

These will enable you to inspire and motivate others; negotiate better deals and terms; deal with conflict effectively; get your desires and the organization’s mission and vision across; and sell people on your firm’s products, services, brand, and/or ideas.

Solid communication skills (using not just words but also body language and other non-verbal cues) are necessary when you need to recruit, train, and manage employees, create a positive corporate culture, and inspire people to greatness.

Through communicating effectively, you can also entice the best team to join your ranks; get investors and lenders to invest in the business; generate interest from journalists; and get customers engaged with the company’s brand and keen to not just buy once, but again and again.

Be Persistent and Resilient

No matter how good of a leader you are or what industry you work in, unfortunately there will always be some tough times to handle when you’re in the position of having many responsibilities to juggle, and a team to lead. As such, two other key characteristics required if you want to be a top manager are persistence and resilience.

In order to handle setbacks that occur along the way, and to not give up or take no for an answer, you must have strength of will and the ability to bounce back.

While it’s certainly no fun having to face failures (or really what are times of a “lack of success”), as the leader of a department, office or company, the onus is on you to keep calm, help others stay positive, and find a way forward.

Being persistent and resilient will enable you to learn from mistakes and motivate others to power on, even if a situation might seem dire.

Be Focused

Lastly, another common trait found in successful leaders is a laser-like focus. After all, if you want to achieve amazing things and spur your team on to greatness, you must be able to stay on track at all times and avoid being distracted.

When you’re a focused leader, you will be better able to ensure goals are worked towards continually, and to see potential threats, opportunities, risks, and trends quickly. By being focused you will also become productive, organised and knowledgeable, and find ways to keep becoming more of an expert in your field.