Richard Bran­son

Q: What is your ad­vice if you want to stand out as a leader, even if you're hop­ing to lead stu­dents in­stead of work­ers? - Corentin

Q: What is the best part of be­ing suc­cess­ful? - Lo­la

While those two ques­tions don't ap­pear to be re­lat­ed at first glance, the an­swers are al­most one and the same.

It's of­ten easy to spot an in­ex­pe­ri­enced leader. If you see some­one rais­ing his voice at em­ploy­ees, stut­ter­ing ner­vous­ly in front of a group or avoid­ing ad­mit­ting when he's wrong, that's a per­son who is just start­ing out.

Corentin, if you want to stand out as a leader, a good place to be­gin is by lis­ten­ing. Any or­gan­i­sa­tion's best as­sets are its peo­ple, and if you are ready to help the team to achieve its goals, you can start gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion on how to move things along just by pay­ing at­ten­tion to what em­ploy­ees are say­ing.

This skill will help you through­out your ca­reer. Lead­ers who are great lis­ten­ers are of­ten ter­rif­ic at un­cov­er­ing and putting in place strate­gies and plans that have a big im­pact. (A term one of my ed­i­tors sug­gest­ed is "force mul­ti­pli­ers.")