What are leadership skills?
Leadership skills are the soft skills you need to lead a team effectively. Soft skills are non-technical skills that include personality traits and developed skills that relate to how you work with other people.
They are the strengths, attitudes and abilities that help professionals guide organisations, projects and teams in an effective way to reach a common goal. Effective leaders with good leadership skills can delegate responsibilities, motivate others, manage deadlines and provide clear instructions.
Unlike industry-specific skills, they cannot be demonstrated on paper alone and are transferable between roles.
Important leadership skills
An effective leader of a team has a variety of traits and characteristics that encourage team members to follow them. Team leaders naturally possess or develop certain qualities, such as compassion and integrity.
Some examples of important leadership skills include:
Communication
Effective leaders need to be able to clearly and succinctly explain a range of specific tasks or organisational goals to employees. Leaders need to master all forms of communication including departmental, full staff and one-on-one conversations.
They need to be able to communicate via a range of tools including chat, phone, email, social media and video.
Problem solving
Problem-solving skills require quickly identifying the underlying issue and implementing a solution. This skill helps you solve issues quickly and effectively. It’s a key skill that most employees seek.
By familiarising yourself with common issues in your industry and learning from more experienced employees you can improve your problem-solving skills. Problem-solving skills can also be developed with courses that introduce the essential tools, processes, and methodologies that help you adapt to disruption and complex problems.
Ethical leadership
Leaders should be a key source of ethical guidance for employees. Ethical leadership is a conscious decision and individuals behaving according to a set of principles and values. It’s related to honesty, trust in the leader, interactional fairness and socialised charismatic leadership. Ethical leadership results in employee job satisfaction and dedication, and a willingness to report problems to management.
Other qualities of good leadership
What soft skills are required of an effective leader?
- Active listening skills
- Ability to teach and mentor
- Creativity
- Change management
- Dependability
- Give honest feedback
- Empathy
- Emotional intelligence
- Flexibility
- Motivational
- Patience
- Positive attitude
- Team building
- Timely communication
- Time management
The importance of leadership skills
Becoming an effective leader can instil confidence in your team and contribute to the growth of your department through improved team productivity.
Effective leadership is important as it provides focus and drives a team forward as well as empowers team members to work at their full potential. Effective leaders take responsibility for decision-making and take steps to fix any mistakes they make instead of shifting the blame.
How to develop leadership skills
Some people are more intrinsically drawn toward being a leader but that doesn't mean others can't develop the skills needed to become an effective leader.
You can learn leadership skills on the job, and you may have already developed some of them in your current position or activities outside of work. Several online courses can help you improve your leadership skills.
Here are some ways you can develop your leadership skills.
Find a mentor
Ask an experienced, knowledgeable, caring and compatible colleague or associate to be your leadership mentor. Their role will be to nurture and encourage you to learn, grow and upskill. This will empower you to perform better in your role as an effective leader and further your career. Having a mentor will help you generate confidence, inspire trust and fast-track your team's development.
Take leadership training courses
Enrolling on a leadership development program or taking short leadership courses helps to increase your confidence, knowledge and ability to inspire and lead.
Sample leadership courses or topics for training can include
- how to lead people, how to manage teams,
- how to coach and motivate employees
- how to influence others.
Other typical leadership courses can address decision-making, leading with deliberative democracy, leading culturally diverse teams and sustainable leadership.
Brush up your hard skills
Most leadership skills discussed in this post are soft skills, improving your hard skills or those technical non-transferable skills which are directly related to the business you work in.
Leaders are expected to be experts in the field they work and be able to assist team members with their knowledge and expertise in the field. If you do not have the technical skills to assist team members they will lose confidence in you as a leader.
Take the initiative
Taking initiative makes you stand out in a crowd and has become increasingly important in today's workplace.
Successful leaders think on their feet and take appropriate actions without being told to do so. They are flexible, confident and courageous and are proactive rather than reactive. They help their teams and organisations to innovate, progress and overcome competition, and they spot and take advantage of opportunities that others pass by.
Become politically savvy
To be an effective leader it’s vital to understand the political landscape within your organisation – a leader needs to manage office politics well. When you introduce a new idea, you need to be able to manage the office politics so that you don't meet resistance to your idea or changes within the organisation.
Personal reflection
Reflection allows us to think about our experiences and learn from mistakes and successes. Different models and tools for reflection suit different people, so you may also want to explore some different ways of understanding reflection, for example, Kolb or Honey and Mumford's learning styles.
Study leadership styles
There are many examples of great leaders who aspire to achieve goals. When you see one you admire, note the great qualities they have that make them a great leader. Focusing on developing those qualities one at a time can help you develop the skill to lead like them.
Leadership skills can play a large role in a person's career development. There are opportunities to develop leadership skills in the workplace or by enrolling on leadership courses. Developing strong leadership skills can give you confidence in your position and make your role more satisfying and less challenging.
