Top 5 Leadership Skills Why You Must Develop Them
1. COMMUNICATION. The ability to communicate effectively is a must for anyone who aspires to become a person that people want to follow. The reason is that a leader depends on communication to impart vision, direction, and motivation to his followers. Without good communication skills, the leader's subordinates will tend to get confused about their roles. They will misinterpret instructions, and the leader will have very little control over desired results.
2. PROBLEM SOLVING. Having the skills to solve problems is extremely important for a leader in any field. There are different kinds of problems that may arise in any organization. People problems involve conflicts between two or more individuals. These kinds of problems include personality differences, misunderstandings and individual dislikes within the team. While not all conflicts are bad (task conflict seems to increase problem solving), the leader must be able to come to a resolution of these conflicts so that everyone can work together to achieve team objectives. Other problems that all leaders should deal with include problems surrounding a business issue, particularly strategy, and solution implementation problems, often surrounding change management.
3. PLANNING. A leader should be an expert planner to be able to lead the team towards the achievement of predefined objectives. Planning involves the ability to know what resources are needed to reach goals, but also know how to maximize the use of those resources. Hence, the timeframe for achieving the goal should also be mapped out in order to have the best return on resources, maximizing productivity and efficiency.
4. IMPLEMENTATION. Executing plans is an indispensable skill for leaders. Without appropriate implementation skills, the leader will be exhausted physically, psychologically and emotionally because he might end up being the frustrated. To implement plans effectively, the leader should be able to recognize talent among his team members. He should then delegate specific tasks and activities to people who can get the job done within the allocated timeframe. You might notice that great leaders in history are not necessarily the most talented people on earth, but they simply relied on their key people for the implementation of organizational objectives. However, when implementing, it is important to stay out of the way and not micromanage, and at the same time learn that supporting and rewarding solid implementation is another part of the leadership puzzle.
5. PEOPLE SKILLS. Being effective with people is important too. If a leader is competent but he alienates the people in the team, no one will be willing to follow. There are lots of leaders and managers who are competent enough but do not achieve positive results with people. The main reason for this is that these leaders never discovered how to genuinely attract and draw people to them. People skills include listening, empathy, sincerity and tolerance. The main reason for this is feedback, and without effective feedback, leaders will not have input for managing their plan.
Learning and sharpening these skills takes a lifelong commitment, but the results are larger than life. Every organization needs a dedicated pool of leadership talent, and these skills not only help built this pool, it enables greater capacity for succession in later years.
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