Eight qualities that leaders adhere by which help them succeed

 Every per son's path to success may be unique but there are a few at tributes that are common. For his book The 8 Traits Successful People Have in Common, author Richard St John conducted interviews with more than 500 highly successful people, from the likes of Bill Gates and Richard Branson to Martha Stewart.He entered transcriptions of every interview into a database in order to analyse more than 300 possible success factors and found they all shared eight traits. Read on to find out his pointers.

Passion is essential
There are two types of people: strivers and seekers. Strivers know what they want to do early on and work towards their goal from a young age. On the other hand, seekers have to discover what they love. If you want to determine if you've found your passion, ask yourself if you would do that particular work for free. If the answer is yes, then you've likely found it.

Work while having fun
Every successful person interviewed in the book works long hours. Some of them take an unconventional approach where instead of the 9 am to 5 pm shift, they look at each workday as a 5 am to 9 pm shift.But it's important to avoid burning out. Successful people aren't workaholics, they're workafrolics because they enjoy their work.

Specific focus
Focus is the key and to achieve your aim, it's important to specialise in a certain area and then build your expertise. But you should start with wider options and then narrow it down into one specific field.

Leave comfort zone
Pushing yourself starts with getting out of your comfort zone and working through being shy, facing fear and doubts. Find a goal, challenge yourself, set a deadline, maintain self-discipline, ask others to push you, look at the competition, and find a mentor.

Generate new ideas
Have a problem, because big ideas come from everyday problems, be observant, listen, ask questions, borrow an idea and build it into a new idea, make connections, make mistakes and write your ideas down.

Constantly get better
Someone who achieves great success is always improving whether it's their career, project, product, or service. Continuous improvement means getting good at something, then getting better, and then aiming for the best. It's also important to focus on your strengths rather than your weaknesses.

Provide value to others
Ask yourself who you serve, because most people only care about how you can fix their problems. Next, you need to figure out what unique value you can offer. This way, you set yourself up for financial success. Do what you love.Serve others what they love. Get money in return.

Persistent through failure
There is no true overnight success.It typically takes 10 years of working toward your goal to achieve success.And it's important to keep in mind that failure is inevitable and how you deal with it can be the deciding factor.The right choice, of course, is using failure as a stepping-stone and building off it.