20 Key Elements for Leadership Skills
20 Key Elements for Leadership Skills
Goals and self-confidence.
All leaders are leaders because they share leadership qualities.
If you have not developed leadership qualities then you cannot, by definition, become a leader.
On the other hand, if you do develop your leadership qualities, then, to that degree, you qualify as a potential leader.
So the two important questions are: "What are the leadership qualities" and "How can I develop leadership qualities in myself?"
Here there follows a list of 20 leadership qualities. Your task is to read them, memorise them and practice them. Pay careful attention to the qualities listed below, that you currently do not possess in great abundance. Train yourself in these areas and you will improve your leadership potential.
Here is the list of 20 Leadership skills.
The ability to:
- Set ambitious goals and commit to them.
- Development of Self-confidence.
- Accurate language.
- Listening skills.
- Accurate assessment of information.
- Willingness to make a decision.
- Influencing skills.
- Negotiation skills.
- Accelerated learning.
- Planning ahead.
- Prioritisation.
- Problem solving.
- Conflict management.
- Handling difficult people.
- Handling performance issues.
- A high degree of energy.
- Freedom from excessive worry and fear.
- Personal initiative.
- The ability to bounce back from defeat.
- The ability to inspire positive emotions in others.
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Let us start at the beginning and discuss:
The ability to set an ambitious goal and commit to it.
All leaders are Goal focused. How can you lead if you are not goal focused? If you were not focused on achieving a goal, then you would have no place to lead others. You would have no right, to lead others if you had no goal.
And the goal should be an ambitious goal: Leaders think big. They think that they might be the first one to go to Mars. They think that they might make it to be number one. They might build the best one there has ever been. Leaders intend that they will become stronger, faster and better than anyone could possibly imagine. Leaders think they might enter the competition and win the top prize.
Leaders think they can win.
This is the goal focused mentality. And all great leaders have this goal focused mentality.
Why don't all people develop this mentality? Answer: they don't have the courage.
It takes courage to set an ambitious goal and commit yourself publically to its attainment.
This is why many people are afraid to commit to a long range ambitious goal.
Question: Why don't many people commit themselves to a long range ambitious goal?
There are three answers to that question:
- They have never given the issue of "mental goal focus" any thought whatsoever.
- Even if they have thought about setting ambitious goals for themselves, they lack self-confidence and therefore they don't think they are good enough to even enter the race. So, they don't train and prepare themselves for the event: they never throw their hat into the ring.
- They are afraid that, if they don't win the first prize, then they would have "failed" and they won't look good to their friends. They think that if they fail, they will disappoint their family, and people will think they are a loser. Many people figure that if you don't win, then you lose, and if you don't enter, you can't lose.
They are afraid of failure. So again, they don't even enter.
So they sit and they watch. They become idle spectators, watching their life pass them by. They spend their days on the couch, watching TV, instead of "on the case", building their own careers.
Leaders don't suffer from these diseases. No leader suffers from a passive attitude to their goals, nor to a lack of self-belief and self-confidence, nor to the feeling that if they don't get gold, then then everyone will laugh at them.
All leaders have the opposite policy.
All leaders:
- Are serious about their goals.
- They are confident that their goals are achievable.
- They are interested in becoming number one, but the attempt and the disciplines and the experience of the journey is also attractive in its own right. They regard the training, the effort and the planning and the action and the excitement of the attempt, as being worthy, in, and of itself.
You don't have to win to be a winner
Example: Apollo 13 did not get to the moon. The ship suffered an explosion and the mission was aborted. But Apollo 13 is the most famous of the Apollo missions. Apollo 13 is more meaningful to most people than the later Apollo 14 mission that was successful but that nobody now remembers.
"Failure is not an option"
"Huston, we have a problem", and "Failure is not an option" are both phrases that are universally known, and they both come from the "failed" Apollo 13 mission.
Apollo 13 was a failed mission. But Apollo 13 is now regarded as NASAs finest hour.
Why? Because it took all the factors of leadership simply to bring the three astronauts home and avoid disaster.
Even if you don't win, the act of developing leadership is still a worthy ideal.
Therefore Goal focus is the most important skill to learn.
What does it mean to be goal focused?
In means: Identify the target: know what you want to achieve. If you know what you want then you can start to plan how you might achieve it.
Most people have no:
- Long range ambitious goal.
- No detailed plan.
- They have insufficient self-belief.
- They have an ambivalent attitude towards the issue of their own personal progression.
As a result they exclude themselves from the possibility of leading themselves and their families towards better times.
If you want to be a leader: step one is to set a clear, distinct, ambitious, long range goal. And then commit yourself 100% to its attainment.
I will achieve my goals: I will do whatever it takes. For as long as it takes. For failure is not an option.
This is the goal focused mentality.
Make it your mentality
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About the Author: Chris Farmer
Chris Farmer is the founder of the Corporate Coach Group and has many years’ experience in training leaders and managers, in both the public and private sectors, to achieve their organisational goals, especially during tough economic times. He is also well aware of the disciplines and problems associated with running a business.
Over the years, Chris has designed and delivered thousands of training programmes and has coached and motivated many management teams, groups and individuals. His training programmes are both structured and clear, designed to help delegates organise their thinking and, wherever necessary, to improve their techniques and skills.
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