Companies are defined by the products and services they offer, the culture they foster and the leadership that steer it. The core responsibility of leaders is to create visionary goals that’ll propel their company to sustainability, growth and ultimately greatness. But all that can’t be achieved without the support of dedicated and talented individuals who look up to their leadership. Having ambition and passion alone can’t help leaders fulfill their dreams. Which is why leaders should strive for more than just this. They should also be striving to align their team towards these goals and the overall vision.

So how do leaders make this happen? Here are three things that every company’s leaders should strive for.

1. Respect

Often leaders put in a lot of effort to be liked by their team, anticipating that it’ll lead to increased loyalty and dedication. But ‘being liked’ isn’t what leaders should strive for. Instead, you should be aiming to be respected. And for that you’ll need to stay focused on the vision and strategies you’ve designed, influence people’s behavior and be innovative. Of course, to earn respect from your team you’ll need to respect them, create opportunities and trust them. Based on these you’ll be able to attain results and successes to earn you the respect of your team and others around you. With the respect you’ve earned, as leaders, you’ll automatically be attracting talent towards yourself, ultimately setting yourself up to enjoy further success.

2. Diversity

The mark of a successful leader is directly linked to the strength of their team. That’s why most leaders spend months and years attracting and developing talent to build strong teams that can achieve goals. A common mistake leaders make is to have a narrowed approach in designing their team. What they tend to do is employ talent that’s similar or, to some extent, ‘clones’ of themselves. This is a trap you should avoid because diversity is the key to having a balanced team with a competitive environment. You need a mix of gender, qualifications, skills and experience in your team. As a leader if you’re able to develop a balanced and diverse team and can successfully lead them, your leadership brand will soar. A true test of your leadership abilities is how well you lead a diverse team of individuals and influence their behavior to produce results.

3. Humility

Probably the strongest ideology that a company can hold at its core and build its culture upon is humility. While the leadership is viewed as strong, confident and bold, an element of humility should also exist, be visible and frequently practiced. It allows the leadership to be more relatable, approachable and appear ‘more human’, giving employees a role model that they can aspire to emulate. What it also helps facilitate is collaboration as people generally are humble enough to admit their limitations and seek help. Plus a company with humility at its core tends to provide higher standards of customer experience because it’s delivered by employees who generally have a more positive outlook.

How successful a company is or can be depends on the quality of its leadership and how committed they are to excellence. And it’s not just operational excellence I’m talking about. It’s more than that. It’s commitment to self-excellence and pushing your boundaries to be even better. When you think about it, self-excellence is the overarching goal that all leaders should strive for.

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