Top 10 Leadership Skills

Leadership Skills

Leadership skills refer to the skills that leaders need for effective leading role. Leaders lead individuals, organisations, and nations at large. They need power, intellect, and influence to drive subordinates towards goals attainment.

There is always discussion of ‘the leaders are born, or made’. God, might be gifted someone with good leadership skills, that is true. But, on the other hand those skills like other skills can be developed.

According to John C. Maxwell, leadership can be taught. It is not the exclusive club for those who were born with it. The leadership traits can be acquired.

The leadership competencies for effective leaders can be learned with conscious effort. These skills are no more secret to us. Anyone can be a leader by properly practising them.

Effective leaders require leadership qualities to maximise efficiency, form strategies, and achieve goals and objectives.

At this point it is important to mention that, leaders have to lead the followers or subordinates and leading the individuals is not an easy task. It needs skills. Therefore, it is of high importance to embedded leadership qualities.

Effective Leadership Skills

In this section, I shared the leadership skills that are essential for becoming an exceptional leader. These competencies can be adopted by anyone if wants to become an extraordinary and successful leader.

1. Self-Control

Self-control refers ‘to grip’ or ‘take hold of’. It describes people who are willing to get a grip and take control of the areas of their lives that will bring them success or failure. The number one responsibility of a leader is discipline and personal growth.

If leaders could not lead themselves, they could not lead others. To be effective leader you must priorities your goals and take responsibility to achieve them.

Napoleon Hill says, the man who can’t control himself, can never control others. Leadership starts from oneself. This is the ability to control oneself, particularly his/her emotions and desires in difficult times.

Strong self-control is the sign of strong leader. Consider the situation if a leader doesn’t has control over emotions how it is possible to inspire others.

Managing and controlling emotions and behaviours effectively, can help to become an effective leader.

2. Motivation and Inspiration

Motivation is a core factor of leadership skills. Leaders motivate followers. Motivation creates enthusiasm in the subordinates to accomplish the tasks and achieve desired objectives.

Motivation is a key skill a leader must learn. S/he must know the different ways to motivate followers.

In the same way, leaders must inspire the followers. Leadership is about inspiring others. Who inspires the most; get the most of the followers.

It is a difficult job to for a leader to persuade others. It is possible when you inspire your followers by setting example.

If you inspire your subordinates successfully, you can overcome all the challenges easily. It becomes easy to convince the followers.

For an inspirational leadership it is easy to keep the followers motivated and focused. When the leader is inspiring the followers feel good and confident.

3. Decision Making Capabilities

A leader must be capable of making decisions. Not only making decision, but to make good decisions. When leadership make any decision, it has a huge impact on masses or stakeholders. Therefore it comes with a big responsibility.

The effective leaders have to make decisions quickly and timely on the basis of information they have.

It is a valuable skill it helps in giving a direction that improves and faster the efficiency. When a leader takes decision it leaves long lasting impacts. Therefore, the good leaders must understand this reality.

The leaders must communicate with all stakeholders before making any decision. The reason is, these are the people who will benefit or suffer from the decisions.

4. Empathy

Empathy is one of the important life or soft skills. This is a skill very much needed by the leaders. The leaders must master it in order to deal with people or followers effectively.

Empathy refers, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. In other words it means putting yourself in the shoes of other person to understand the emotions and feelings of others in a better way.

An empathetic leader easily convince and influence the subordinates. This kind of leadership extends support and guide to the people which creates an environment of compassion and sensitivity.

Developing empathy skill can help leaders to understand and lead the followers effectively and that increases the trust level between leader and subordinates.

5. Communication Skills

In this context, the importance of effective communication can’t be ignored. In general, everyone needs communication skills, because we communicate somewhere with someone in everyday life.

But in particular, the leaders need this skill the most. The reason is they have to communicate with people, individuals, groups, supporters, or followers.

They must master this skill not only to speak but to listen as well. Perhaps, listening is more important than speaking. Large part of effective communication involves listening.

They need to be good listeners. They must able to listen actively. When leaders listen to the followers they feel good and it creates a good relationship between them.

Effective leaders should develop effective communication competencies in a manner that is understandable to the followers.

Without effective communication it is not possible to inspire and motivate subordinates. Leaders need to communicate to get feedback from followers or team members.

6. People Management

John C. Maxwell stated, ‘ people skills are essential for success’. Further mentioned, the chief executives of major companies referred a single skill that is most needed by leadership position is, ‘ the ability to work with people’.

I think, this is an essential skill that must be learnt by the leaders. How to manage people is the most important and difficult part of leadership.

They have to deal with different kinds of people. The leaders without followers will not be leaders. They need skills to manage, motivate, inspire and direct them.

The leaders must also master how to delegate authority to individuals. This is not an easy task, because delegation of authority comes with responsibility and accountability. A leader must know people management skills, to whom the authority  should be delegated. The reason is, in case of any failure the responsibility falls on the shoulder of leadership.

Among the followers there might be people with different behaviour, mentality and attitudes and the leaders need people management skill to deal with all kinds of people in an effective way.

7. Problem Solving

The effective leaders must be competent to resolve the complex problems. Problem solving is a skill and that helps to find a better solution for issues particularly in bad situations and crisis.

The leadership should master the abilities to solve all problems in an efficient and effective manner without difficulty.

A leader must develop the ability to recognise the problem at early stages. When a problem has been identified at earlier stage, it becomes quite easy to find a solution. As truly mentioned by John C. Maxwell, ‘ a test of a leader is the ability to recognise a problem before it becomes an emergency’.

Great leaders recognise a problem in the following sequence:

Intuition; they sense a problem, before they see it

Curiosity; they start looking for it and ask questions

Processing; they gather information (data)

Communication; they communicate their feelings and findings to the team or few trusted colleagues

Writing; they define the problem

Evaluation; they check their resources

Leading; finally, they make a decision to solve the problem

But, remember there is difference between solving task-problems and people problems. The later is highly complex and difficult.

8. Creativity

A leader must be creative and also encourage creativity. This skill of leadership helps to find out of box solution for the problems.

Creative thinking helps the leadership to deal with the fast changing circumstances effectively.

When a conventional way of solving a problem doesn’t work, then it comes the creative approach to deal with difficult and complex issues.

The leaders must learn and master nontraditional solutions or ways to the unsolvable problems.

They also must encourage an environment of creativity by providing opportunities to the followers to think creative and come with nontraditional solutions for the problems.

9. Team and Relationship Building

Team building is an essential skill for leaders. They have to develop team to achieve the goals and objectives. Leadership without followers is not a leadership. It is built on the people around.

They must know how to make team consist of different people. And they have to master to manage that team in an effective way.

Strong teams can help to foster innovation, and achieve end goals and objectives. They must recruit the right team that makes a huge difference.

Effective leaders create lasting relationships with followers and other stakeholders. They understand the value effective networking.

For a leader I think it will not be an easy task to establish a positive and long lasting relationship. Because, the people have different thinking patterns, attitudes, and behaviours which makes it a complex phenomenon.

10. Emotional Intelligence

In the recent years emotional intelligence (EI) is getting a lot of intention. It refers, ‘ the ability of a person to understand his/her own emotions and the emotions of others’.

Leaders should exercise good control over their behaviour and be able to endure frustration and stress. They must avoid intense emotional reaction to the changes in the environment.

For leaders it is an important skill to manage his/her emotions as well as the emotions of the followers. The effective leaders have to know how to control their emotions particularly in tough situations.

With emotional intelligence skill they avoid negative emotions that can influence their decision making capabilities. In this way they can make good and effective decisions.

The most important thing is that, when the leaders control their emotions effectively they can understand the emotions and feelings of others. And that quality makes them great leaders.

When emotional intelligence or quotient (EQ) merges with intelligence quotient (IQ) it leads to success

IQ+EQ=SUCCESS

It means like IQ, EQ is equally important to get success.

Conclusion

These skills for everyone who wants to join the leadership club. The good thing is, these can be learnt and developed by anyone with a conscious effort.

Above mentioned list of skills may  not be completed yet. There is still room for adding other skills like setting vision, and strategic thinking etc.

These skills include the skills ranging from managing oneself to managing other people or followers. The leaders have to master if not all them, but the maximum to lead the followers in a better manner and achieve goals.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the five leadership skills?

The five leadership skills are;

1. Communication
2. Self-control
3. Creativity
4. People management
5. Decision Making

What are the 10 characteristics of a good leader?

The characteristics of a leader as below;

1. Integrity
2. Trustworthiness
3. Self-awareness
4. Empathetic
5. Influence
6. Responsible
7. Accountable
8. Courage
9. Knowledge
10. Inspirational

How do you demonstrate leadership skills?

Here are the ways to show leadership skills;

• Clear and effective communication
• Listen actively
• Lead by example
• Take responsibility
• Trusted relationship with subordinates
• Keep learning

What skills should a leader possess?

You can follow the skills a leader should possess, as described in this article.