Ten years of research and 500 face-to-face-interviews led Richard St. John to a collection of eight common traits in successful leaders around the world.
1. Passion — love what you do.
2. Work — work hard.
3. Focus — focus on one thing in your work, not everything. (Key: focus on what you are doing, not on becoming successful.)
4. Push — keep pushing yourself.
5. Ideas — make sure your ideas are good.
6. Improve — constantly view yourself as a project to be improved upon.
7. Serve — create value for others and serve them.
8. Persist — there is no overnight success, so keep persisting, especially through adversity.
Source: TED-Ed YouTube channel.