Necessary and Sufficient

Here's my top 10 for a good architect / team leader (in no particular order):

1. Has superb technical and communication skills that make him/her equally adept at communicating to business stakeholders and technical personnel.
2. Owns the day-to-day execution of a team by comitting to objectives, driving decision-making, and removing obstacles.
3. Understands the current and likely future requirements of the business and designs a solution that will allow low-cost changes along anticipated change vectors.
4. Finds simple solutions to complex problems but, if need be, employs complex solutions such that the complexity is abstracted away from developers.
5. Ensures key infrastructure pieces have strategic closure so that team members don't need to ingest large doses of non-business-related code.
6. Cares about not only the technical and algorithmic aspects of technical solutions, but how these impact other team members in terms of productivity and frustration (aka inertia reduction).
7. Listens to feedback from others and cultivates a collaborative, innovative culture because he/she understands that good ideas can come from anywhere.
8. Holds the vision that the team is following, and can espouse that vision to others.
9. Insulates the team from external influences when necessary.
10. Is capable of attracting and retaining phenomenal developers because of the value they see in working with said architect/team lead.