When you do a quick Google search for the most important leadership skills, you’ll get results with dozens of skills listed. While there are far more than dozens of things to learn about leadership, narrowing down the most important can be a challenge. As an individual that spends a lot of time studying, reading, and thinking about leadership, I think these 6 leadership skills can easily be classified as the most important.
#1. Communication and Relationship Building
Leaders have to be able to communicate what they envision to people that understand them. This is accomplished in many ways, but focusing on five main components of communication and relationship building can help leaders-in-training to understand the vital aspects of developing a team that works well together.
Empowerment
Too often “leaders” fear empowering those that are supposed to be beneath them. This is an insecure and poor leadership habit. Giving power to those that you lead is crucial, as you communicate desired results with them and give them the ability to make big decisions. Yes, empowering someone else means giving away some power that you once had – you can no longer veto every detail you dislike when you give control to someone else. However, developing the trust to empower someone else by communicating well is an important skill for a leader.
Connection and Belonging
A leader that can communicate effectively and build relationships, as a result, develops connections and makes people feel as though they belong. That connection and belonging create an environment where workers can develop their own skills and become leaders themselves. A positive culture starts with a leader that is willing to go the extra mile to make their people feel welcome and part of the team.
Openness to New Ideas
Have you ever worked for someone that refused to listen to anyone’s ideas but their own? This quality (or developed skill) is imperative for great leaders. Diversity is vital to an organization, but only when the leader(s) can be open to those that think differently than themselves. Listening to the ideas of others that are very similar to yourself will do an organization no favors.
Nurtures Growth
A true leader wants to develop other leaders. Bring up people from entry-level positions and allow them the space and opportunity to grow. The leader should be the sunlight to an employee’s seed, not an obstacle. Communicating the tools for growth is imperative to be the best leader. Leaders should serve their people in this way.
Empathy
An empathetic leader is one that truly grasps the emotions and feelings of others. It’s more than reading the room or offering condolences for a lost loved one. Empathy requires sharing in the feelings of another – building a relationship out of deep understanding. Communicating that empathy and creating a space where people can share their feelings and thoughts with you will make you a valuable leader with a close-knit team.
Most Important Leadership Skills, #2. Ethics
An unethical leader is a self-serving leader. While ethics can be subjective in some cases, most ethical leaders agree on a set standard. Observing and acting on that standard is crucial to being a leader worth following. There are several ways to demonstrate good ethics, but the most important thing is that those ethics are indeed demonstrated.
Example Setting
As the leader, you set the example. You cannot expect others to want to be leaders when the current leader has poor ethics. While some aspects of ethics might be personal traits and qualities, you can learn about ethics and how to improve your own.
Be the example.
#3. Self-Reflection
Can one lead well without knowing themselves? Self-reflection is a part of self-awareness in that it requires looking at your own decisions, actions, feelings, and more to determine the overall success of the outcome. We must reflect on our daily lives to bring our true selves to the table every day and reach the goals we set. A lack of self-reflection can result in a leader’s incapability to see problems, thus bringing forth the inability to solve those problems.
Authenticity, as Part of the Most Important Leadership Skills
Bring your authentic self to work. While this can be a complicated topic as a leader (my authentic self might have said some choice words to that rude customer…), it is important that you don’t try to be someone else.
A common phrase in one of my favorite podcasts (Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast) is this:
“Be real. People would rather follow a leader who is always real than one who is always right.”
So, don’t be afraid to admit that you’re human! Be authentically you. Do not pretend to believe in something that you don’t or go against your values to please someone else. Be real.
Goal Setting vs Growth
I’ve recently discovered that goal setting can be important but not all-encompassing. Growth, however, is something to strive for. While goals can motivate you and encourage you as you accomplish each one, a failure can lead to demoralization and a halt to all productivity. Setting goals can help you to work toward an end. However, what comes after the end? Instead of focusing on the end goal, consider focusing more on growth. Improve within a set time frame as a way to grow, not reach the end.
Growth, growth, growth. It’s a goal to keep on your list.
Most Important Leadership Skills, #4. Flexibility
Rigid leaders can be hard to work for and hard to stay with long term. People want a leader that has some give. Solid, immovable expectations and rules can damage a team, co-worker, or project. Work toward becoming more flexible in your approach.
Adaptability, Most Important Leadership Skills Component
Adaptability is the crux of flexibility. To be flexible is to bend without a fracture. To be adaptable is to easily rework plans to allow for new situations. By becoming someone who can adapt to changing circumstances without dire consequences, you can become a more prepared and innovative leader than others. These kinds of leaders are successful.
Tolerate Mistakes
Flexibility also requires leaders to be more accepting of mistakes. People make mistakes – sometimes often, sometimes rarely. To tolerate mistakes means letting people learn from them to promote growth. Leaders cannot expect perfection every second of every day. However, by accepting that mistakes happen and granting people the time to discover what went wrong, what should happen next time, and how to fix the issue now, leaders are developing their people into leaders themselves.
Responsibilities – Give Up or Take On
Being flexible means understanding the need to delegate or change personal tasks for the betterment of the organization. Knowing when to give up responsibilities that you’ve had for some time is vital to the growth of your team. Sticking to the same routine and tasks you’ve always had will not allow you to grow as a leader, nor give your people the chance at growth, either. When you’ve delegated a task you’ve always done, you now have time for something new. Taking on new responsibilities is where you learn, too.
#5. Motivation and Positivity
Motivating a team does not mean you have to be a cheerleader, although that is one potential route. Discovering the best motivation style for you and your people means knowing who they are and what drives them. For many people, sharing positivity is a great motivator, as people want to keep up the team’s momentum. A negative culture will shrink motivation and cause some efficiency and effectiveness to slack off in your organization.
Positive ways of motivation include:
- Recognition for good work
- Build an inclusive, happy, and positive culture
- Encourage and foster growth
- Transparency
- Flexibility in scheduling, hours, or work location
Creating a space where people feel appreciated is crucial to the motivation levels and productivity within the organization.
Most Important Leadership Skills, #6. Delegating
A leader that is unable to delegate work (or to the right people) is a leader that will struggle to bring the organization forward. Without proper delegation, organizations will stall and find themselves unable to grow. This results in an overworked leader and an irrelevant company. Delegating is more than assigning work to someone else – it is knowing your people and giving them tasks that they can accomplish successfully in perhaps a better way than you, the leader, had.
Recognize and foster potential
Knowing a person’s potential is completely necessary for delegating tasks. Imagine giving an accounting task to someone in marketing. While that may be an obvious mistake, similar issues can stem from delegating tasks to people that you don’t know. Leaders must know the strengths and abilities of their people to recognize and foster their potential.
Trustworthiness
Delegating also requires a level of trustworthiness on both ends. A leader who delegates tasks shows a level of trust in his or her people. In turn, those completing the newly assigned tasks must have trust in their leader to discover their own ability to accomplish said tasks. Leaders, trust your people to get it done, and people will trust their leader(s) in their decision to assign tasks.
What are Leadership Skills?
Leadership skills are not qualities that you are simply born with. Instead, they have to be worked at and developed over time. Think about a child that was believed to have “natural-born leadership skills.” Now imagine those skills were never tested, but that child is not an adult in charge of a major project. Would you trust those natural-born skills that had never been practiced to succeed in that environment? Of course not! Leadership skills are the practice in the expertise of empowering others to complete projects and grow into a shared vision.
Importance of Leadership Skills
Leadership skills are important to any organization, team, or individual because it helps people to get where they need to go. You must lead yourself down the path to success, motivate others toward their own paths, and bring an organization into the future. Without leadership skills, people will blindly search for the right path without any real direction.
A Quick Skills-Building How-To
How do you build leadership skills? Seek knowledge. Practice. Find a mentor. You must be active in building skills, as it is not a passive task. Read, take a class, go to a seminar. Work hard and discuss what you are learning with others. You will discover your own skills grow over time as you continue to work toward the growth of each one.