You can improve leadership skills through deliberate training. Some skills are more important than others in specific functions and situations. It is essential, therefore, to identify the crucial skills you need to perform at your best.
You can start by asking your managers about your most critical skills to perform your job.
Take inventory of your skills. Use and optimize those skills that you possess. Then, work on others you don’t have yet when necessary.
What are leadership Skills?
Leadership skills refer to the learnable abilities that enable leaders to perform at their best and achieve their goals. You can acquire leadership skills through experience and deliberate training.
In a VUCA world, leaders may sometime often lead in the dark because the situation is ever-changing. Some leadership skills which are highly-important decades ago are now obsolete. Universal skills like communication and interpersonal relationships remain relevant but are now used in different ways.
And leaders need to learn skills that will become more relevant for the next ten years.
To help leaders build on their skills, I am creating email series that explains how to make each skill work for you.
For a more detailed explanation, you may explore this article:
In this article, I will explore the leadership skills that will be relevant today and in the future.
28 Future-Ready Leadership Skills
In my experience, a leader does not need to possess all skills. At times, you can leverage the skills that your direct reports have.
Explore the following leadership skills.
Accountability
The obligation or willingness to be answerable for an outcome. A leader with strong competency in bearing personal accountability provides an inspiring model for team members to emulate.
Where embracing accountability is fostered, a team’s cohesion, trust, resilience, confidence, and performance pride are well supported, and its potential for success in meeting its goals is strengthened.
Action-Orientation
They don’t hesitate and procrastinate. Leaders work on projects after careful planning.
Approachability
Leaders put others at ease so that they can be at their best. It means initiating rapport, listening, sharing, understanding and comforting.
Boss Relationships
Good leaders can work with any boss. They can quickly adapt to the various working styles of their bosses.
Business Acumen
You have the knowledge and skills to help the business grow. People recognize your ability to see the big picture and future trends.
Career Management
You know how successful careers are built. You can figure out how far you can go, bust obstacles, and position yourself.
Caring for Direct Reports
Good managers know their people and care about what they do. They know about passion, strengths, and ambitions. The ability to show that you care is a competitive advantage.
Command Skills
You can lead in challenges or crises. You can keep your eye on the goal, inspire shared causes, deal with the unpredictable, and take tough stands.
Conflict Management
Most managers spend a considerable amount of time resolving conflict. Effective leaders can mine conflict and convert each to collaboration or win-win results.
Creativity
Good leaders can reveal high-impact problems and their causes and think of out-of-the-box solutions. We are all capable of being creative, and creativity techniques can help us solve problems in surprising ways.
Customer-focus
Leaders who pay more attention to customers than their competition can develop products and services others are not offering. In addition, leaders’ focus on customers helps them develop the fastest, simplest, and best ways to serve customers.
Quality Decision Making
Responsible leaders take immediate action. They based their decisions on available information, insights from previous experiences, gut, and foresight.
Delegation
Leaders who can distribute tasks and ensure their accomplishments save time and empower people.
Dealing with Paradox
Leaders who excel at this are versatile in situations and with others—they can lead and let others lead,
know how to apply “tough love” or remain adaptable in the face of crises.
Drive for Results
Good leaders can consistently hit goals and objectives by themselves and others. They push themselves and others to achieve stretch goals.
Humor
It is an ability often ignored because of the common myth that leadership is a boring discipline. Humor is a superpower that makes leaders more human. You can develop humor.
Innovation
Good leaders fully understand their markets and see their products and services as solutions. They create and design products that clients are hungry for.
Integrity
Integrity means doing the right thing in the right way and adhering to values firmly held. Trust is a belief that someone is honest and credible; trust is earned by being honest, having a positive intent, having solid competencies, and having a track record of results.
Interpersonal Savvy
Good leaders have a range of interpersonal skills and approaches they can use in dealing with different kinds of people. This ability makes it easy for leaders to work with anyone.
Learning on the Fly
Learning on the fly is a skill that distinguishes strategic leaders from others. This skill allows leaders to do things for the first time.
Listening
Good leaders can understand what people are saying, their purpose, and what they want to achieve. It is a skill that allows leaders to make excellent decisions, improve themselves, and make people feel important for having heard.
Managerial Courage
Managerial courage refers to the ability to say what needs to be said at the right time, to the right person, and in the right manner.
Managing Diversity
Good leaders can decide which differences create a more significant impact and enrich the organization. They can also identify the difference that makes people less effective.
Motivating Others
Influential leaders can figure out what motivates others and help them get what they want. Motivated workers produce better results.
Negotiating
Negotiation is getting all you can at the least possible cost and making others win. These days, we value long-term partnerships more than short and one-time victories. Good leaders have the ability to create win-win situations.
Presentation Skills
Effective leaders are excellent presenters. They can reveal the audience’s problems and their harmful effects. They can demonstrate how solutions work and persuade audiences to buy and act on the best solutions.
Problem Solving
Strategic leaders use simple but powerful methods to solve complex problems. They explore all possible sources for answers. They can see hidden problems. And they look beyond the obvious.
Strategic Mindset
Leaders must constantly challenge themselves to play bigger and think differently. A strategic mindset is a leader’s ability to visualize and prepare for the future.
17 Outstanding Qualities of Good Leaders
- What Leadership Is. Accelerate your leadership learning. Begin by understanding what leadership is all about.
- Increase Leadership Capability. Become an effective leader. Find out what are the things to consider so you can increase your capability.
- Walk the Talk. Leaders demonstrate how things are done in organizations. You can practice what you preach.
- 19 Effective Leadership Principles. Develop your leadership principles.
- 5 Principles to Guide Adaptive Leadership. HBR provided five principles that will guide leaders in times of a crisis like Covid-19.
- 4 Reasons to Invest in Leadership Development. Leadership development provides your organization a greater chance to succeed.
- Top 17 Qualities of Good Leaders. Do you want to become a good leader? Find out which of these qualities you want to cultivate.
- 3 Skills Needed for Adaptive Leadership. These three skills are resilience, influence, and leading change.
- What are the Qualities of Visionary Leaders? They see the world differently, help others see it, and make things happen. This article is informative.
- Develop a personal development plan. I recommend the 4DX framework in developing your personal development plan.
