The Skills of Leadership

The Skills of Leadership

Do you hold a position that requires you show leadership skills? If so, have you ever studied leadership skills?

What exactly is leadership and how could I improve my performance as a leader?

Good leadership requires more than superior levels of technical knowledge of your product or service. You could be an expert in all the details of your organisations products but that alone would not make you a great leader. Leadership is a unique set of skills that is distinct from the technical knowledge of your organisation. If you want to be a better leader, then you need to learn how to improve your leadership skills.

Leadership skills are many, but not all of them are equal. Some leadership skills are essential leadership skills.

What are the essential leadership skills?

1. The ability to set an ambitious goal and believe that it is possible to achieve it.
2. The ability to communicate the goal to others; and make others believe in it; and work willingly towards it.
3. The ability to formulate a plan capable of achieving the goal.
4. The ability to harmonise the various personalities in the team, so that the team operates as a cooperative union, rather than waste energy fighting each other.
5. The ability to maintain confidence and forward momentum, even after suffering setbacks and defeats.

Let us look at each one in turn.

1. The ability to set an ambitious goal and believe that it is possible to achieve it

If you want to be a leader, then you need to know your final destination. Where do you wish to lead your followers, to what end and for what point?

All leaders are leaders because they have a clear vision of what they what to achieve. If you have no forward vision; if you don't have a destination in mind, then how could you act as a leader?

But if you do have a clear vision of how the future can be made better, and if you can believe that vision is true, then you can lead others towards it.

"Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve". [Napoleon Hill]

All great leaders conceive, believe and achieve.

2. The ability to communicate the goal to others; and make others believe in it; and work willingly towards it

Now you have a goal you need to be able to attract other people to want to achieve the same goal. To do that, you need to be a good communicator. You need to be able to explain your goal to the others, in such a way that they will feel your enthusiasm and they will want to get involved too.

It is no coincidence that great leaders are also great communicators. They need to have a good grasp of language.

So if you want to be a good leader, you may need to improve your ability to express yourself with words, both in the spoken and written form.

Study communication: Study language: Study grammar: Study the language of rhetoric and study the language of logic.

No ineffective communicator ever became a great leader. Great leaders are also usually great communicators. So if you want to be a great leader, improve your communication skills.

3. The ability to formulate a plan capable of achieving the goal

The next part of your development as a leader is to develop your capacity to build practical plans. An inspirational goal is useless unless it is allied to a practical plan.

Some people have great goals, but have absolutely no idea how they will achieve it. This is not very inspiring situation for the team if they see the plan is missing, or is inadequate.

The third skill you need to perfect, if your goal is to be a great leader, is the capacity to formulate detailed, practical plans of action, based upon a logical analysis of all the available evidence. This skill is essential. And it requires a willingness to think long and hard about the means whereby you will achieve your goal.

Planning, prioritisation, analysis, proper ordering and logical sequencing; these are the mental skills you need to develop if you are to be a good planner and a good leader.

4. The ability to harmonise the various personalities in the team

The leader's role is to harmonise the different personalities in the team and to make their differences a source of strength rather than one of weakness. This means that although a cautious person won't like working with a naturally adventurous person, both types of personality are needed in the team.

• If the team were made up of only cautious people, the team would never advance and would fail.
• If the team were made up of only adventurous people, the team would overextend itself and would fail.

The leader's role is to balance the relative strengths and weaknesses in the team, to achieve the best team performance, by drawing on all the various abilities at the right time for the right jobs.

The role of the leader is to create one unified team from the multitude of its parts. The leader's role is to find the ONE in the MANY.

5. The ability to maintain confidence and forward momentum, even after suffering setbacks and defeats

As time progresses, there will be defeats and setbacks. Some of the team will lose their spirits, they will begin to doubt the plan, they will begin to doubt themselves, and they may even begin to doubt the leader. Now is the time the leader needs to draw upon an internal strength and work hard to motivate the team through the inevitable difficulties.

The leader must be able to inspire positive attitude in the team. The team leader must be able to create and sustain the right team atmosphere.

There needs to be a positive attitude in the team, since the team's attitude will tend to affect the productivity of the team.

• If the attitude and atmosphere is negative, then the team won't produce well.
• If the attitude and atmosphere is positive then the team will produce more.

The leader needs to ensure the team spirit is right.

What are the leadership skills?

1. The ability to set an ambitious goal and believe it is possible to achieve it.
2. The ability to properly communicate the goal to others.
3. The ability to formulate a plan capable of achieving the goal.
4. The ability to harmonise the various personalities in the team.
5. The ability to maintain the team's confidence even after suffering setbacks and defeats.

If you want to develop these skills in the workplace, please check out our two-day Leadership and Management training course.

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