leadership skills

What are the top leadership skills that make a great leader?

In any workplace, be it a local firm or a world-famous organization, having a great leader is very important.

In any workplace, be it a local firm or a world-famous organization, having a great leader is very important. However, no one is a born leader. With proper training, experience, and development, people can gather skills to shape organizations and committees. Hence, leadership development is significant for shaping the leaders of the future.

Top Skills That Constitute a Leader

Some of the primary skills that are required for leadership are given below.

Integrity

Integrity entails having strong morals and ethical principles. If a leader doesn’t have integrity, he or she won’t be able to lead others. The reason is simple, it is a significant factor when making important decisions that influence the future of the organization. With integrity, taking proper decisions become relatively easy.

Delegation Ability

A good leader should also be able to delegate appropriately. With proper delegation, reports can be approved, teamwork can be facilitated, and autonomy can be initiated. This will directly help in growing the reports. The leader should have trust in the team for delegation.

Communication Ability

In any leadership development camp, extra emphasis is given to communication. A leader can go nowhere if the communication between him and the rest of the team is restrictive. A leader should be able to communicate to express his thoughts correctly freely. At the same time, he should be able to understand exactly what his teammates are conveying.

Self-Awareness

A leader who isn’t self-aware can never be a good leader. Without evaluating yourself, you cannot strengthen your weaknesses and polish your strengths. To be more effective, a leader needs to understand himself first.

Showing Gratitude

Showing gratitude is one of the primary traits that any good leader should have. You can be extremely strict about making sure your employees are working as they should. However, it is also your job as a leader to thank them for their hard work. This will make the employees want to work, as their efforts are recognized.

Agility in Learning

Even a good leader may not know what to do in some unforeseen situations. What makes good leaders stand out from other leaders is how quickly they will learn what to do. Anyone who can manage unfamiliar situations simply after quick learning or will be a great leader.

Having Influence

Great leaders should also have their influence. This doesn’t necessarily mean manipulation. However, a leader should convince others of a theory or idea with emotional and logical appeals backed with facts. With intelligence, leaders can create an influence that the rest of the team can feel and trust.

Having Empathy

To be a great leader, showing empathy based on the results and performances is a must. The workplace condition improves by a lot, and team members can get the emotional support they need. By showing empathy correctly, the entire performance of the team can be increased by leaps and bounds.

Courageous

Another must-have skill that is a part of leadership development includes having courage. A good leader should never be afraid of trying something new, taking problems head-on, reporting problems, or discussing sensitive issues with the team members. If a leader cannot show courage, the rest will not have any actual progress anywhere.

Showing Respect

Finally, a great leader should always respect his teammates and co-workers, irrespective of the situation. Even on negative performances, disrespecting a person should never be the option. This can keep tensions apart in the workplace and gather trust and positive energy for working.

Final Words

A person who isn’t a good leader now can become a great leader in the future. It all comes down to having these skills to be able to lead others. With practice, endurance, dedication, and training, it is possible to form good leaders who can shape the future, no matter where they work.

When your boss gets afraid of your leadership skills, hone them more

It is unfortunate when you end up with such a boss.

There are tell-tale signs when your boss is afraid of you. He frequently ignores you or often fails to respond. He shoots down most of your ideas or steals them as his own. He restricts your interaction with others by giving you low-level impact jobs and prevents you from communicating with other units.

It is unfortunate when you end up with such a boss. Don’t engage in any head-on conflict with the boss. Instead, continue doing your job well, hone your soft skills, and continue leading from your confines.

Leadership Skills Can Be Learned

Like other soft skills, Leadership Skills can be learned and developed.

The main difference between hard and soft skills is the ease of measuring the skill level. You can measure the typing speed in words per minute, but it is more difficult to quantify his commitment and motivation.

A massive list of soft skills will help you determine which you may want to hone and develop. The common types needed in the workplace include collaboration, communication, problem-solving, time management, and leadership skills. The abundance of soft skill coaches and their proliferation in the web attest to their learnability.

The soft skills for leadership would include the following:

• Motivation – inspiring and influencing others
• Trustworthiness – truthfulness and doing what they promised
• Goal-setting – developing and achieving goals
• Commitment – dedication and focus to goals and objectives

In as much as soft skills are also called interpersonal skills or relationship skills, learning and developing them is best done working with others.

There is a Talent Gap for Leadership Skills

Leadership skills are needed in the workplace but can also be used in life outside work. Leadership is practiced at all levels of an organization and in all social units.

Deloitte University is part of a global company that focuses on trends in human capital and leadership. A study conducted by Adam Canwell for Deloitte points to the lack of leaders as the primary talent gap worldwide.

Eighty-six percent (86%) of the respondent organizations rates this issue as urgent or important. Only 13% answered that their organization is doing an excellent job in leadership development.

Start Leading From the Inside

It is time for employees to build upon their leadership skills, even if their current bosses get afraid of them. Most organizations, including the military, spend a lot to develop leaders from among their team members. Some trainees and some of the top echelon of the organization may not be fit to be in their position. The boss who is afraid of you may be one of them.

Many resources are available for aspiring employees with leadership potential to further their careers. Even if the boss has restricted your working space and peer circle, no one works alone. Within your limited circle, you can still sharpen your leadership and other interpersonal skills.

Outside of work, we are also part of the community, a church group, or a civic club. We always have other people around us to practice and enhance our leadership skills.

Top 8 characteristics required to become a great leader

Great leaders like Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, Barrack Obama etc possessed these traits which set them apart from the rest.

Leadership constitutes to a major and very important part of entrepreneurship. What sets entrepreneurs apart from normal office going people is their ability to lead a team and still innovate.

However, the common myth is that leaders are born, but a common person can actually become a leader with a certain skill set and qualities. Great leaders like Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, Barrack Obama etc possessed these traits which set them apart from the rest.

Qualities required to become a successful leader are:

1. Master the art of delegation

A leader knows that he can’t be good at everything and because he can’t be omnipresent all the time, he needs to learn to delegate tasks to his team. Delegating tasks that one cannot undertake to the right people is a skill because in a way an entrepreneur trusts the person with his visionary of the company. It is very understand to understand one’s potential to able to delegate tasks to the team.

2. Communication

A leader’s forte should be his/her communication skills. S/he needs to communicate extensively with the team to make sure everyone’s on the same page. Hindrances in the communication process can lead to miscommunicated information and internal disputes amongst the employees.

It is always an added benefit if the leader is a motivational speaker and a fluent orator. Mahatma Gandhi was a great leader because through his speeches he could impress the audience and win their confidence.

Related post: 6 ways to become a mentally strong person

3. Confidence

A leader should always be confident about the risks and decisions he takes because if he isn’t sure about them, he can’t convince his team to work towards a single goal. Great leaders are successful because they set their end goal and stick to it no matter what. Also, leaders are self-reliant and look at the distant possibilities and long term goals instead of focusing on short-term fixes.

4. Motivating

It is also very important for an entrepreneur to be motivating because while the team works relentlessly on something, they need constant words of encouragement to keep them going. If someone has done a good job, an entrepreneur needs to praise the employee and if someone hasn’t performed very well, one needs to refrain from venting out anger on the employee and try and motivate him to do better the next time.

5. Empathetic

Great leaders are aware of the fact that at the end of the day, all employees are humans. So, the tendency to make mistakes by humans also holds true. An entrepreneur needs to be empathetic so that there is free flow of communication between the employer and the employees. Being aware of the employees’ problems is important for the growth of the venture as an employee’s personal life could be affecting his work. That is why leaders employee human resource people to take care of the employees.

6. Problem solving skills

Every problem faces in a business scenario doesn’t have a ready-made solution. The entrepreneur needs to have quick thinking and problem solving abilities. The boss is the one everyone approaches in a crisis; if s/he has no answer or gives up, the employees accept fate. Leaders should simply make use of their business acumen and knowledge of the industry to find quick and fitting solutions.

7. Trend setter

The leader should aspire to be a trend setter for the rest of them team. By being honest and transparent, one can easily gain the trust of the employees and through motivating speeches and words, encourage them to do better. Also, a leader should try and incorporate good habits like punctuality, healthy office lifestyle and hard work to inspire the team to do the same. If the boss is someone who is extremely relaxed, the employees tend to slack off too.

8. Brilliant organisers

It should come as no surprise that entrepreneurs are brilliant organisers because the managerial skills need to be strong to run a business and make quick yet efficient decisions. Most leaders have an eye for detail and an impressive memory which helps them succeed. Also, the organise a whole team and business down to the lowest level which shows their efficiency as an organiser.

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