To understand leadership or to become a leader yourself, you need to first understand the qualities and skills of a leader. Some of the biggest leaders in the world did not have leadership skills naturally in their personality. But they acquired them by taking all the necessary efforts and by understanding the basic leadership principles. You may have some leadership traits in you but you have to nurture and sharpen them to become leader in the true sense of the term. In the following paragraphs I have made an attempt to make a list of all leadership skills - a list that will give you all the necessary character traits of a good leader. Keep reading.
List of Leadership Skills
This list contains only the most prominent leadership attributes. There are many more skills that a leader may need, but the ones mentioned below are mandatory.
Relationships
The biggest asset of any business is manpower. It is said that a person's personality is judged from what company he keeps. So all the people around us are very important and so are the relationships we share with them. A good leader can initiate and deepen relationships very easily. He likes to deal with issues that people face. He also likes to suggest solutions to those issues. In short a good leader is a 'people person'. A related skill is that of persuasion. A leader should be capable of convincing and persuading people to his point of view. The skills required to be good with relationships are as follows-
- Communication Skills
- Counseling Skills
- Interpersonal Skills
- Mentoring Skills
- Persuasion Skills
- Convincing Skills
The second most important skill required for effective leadership is that of building and coordinating teams. What is a leader without his team? Any good work is a result of good team work. But it is very difficult to lead the team, which includes making them work as one and at the end of it all, making every individual feel that his contribution was important. Team work is a result of the coordinated working of many other leadership skills like-
- Controlling Group Performance
- Setting an Example
- Conflict Management
- Listening Skills
- Dealing With Difficult People
- Compassion
Being strategic is the basic role of a leader. And his vision is followed by his followers. So these are probably the most important leadership qualities. Considering all the dimensions of problems, their future consequences and the solution for the same is what a leader has to do. A good leader has to take care of it all. He doesn't always have to come up with the solution and he doesn't need to have 'ultimate wisdom'. His task is to consider everything and inspire his team to think in the right directions and try to come up with the solutions. Being a visionary will demand the following skills-
- Decision Making
- Planning Skills
- Ability to Give Influential Pep Talks
- Motivational Skills
- Sharing Leadership
Decision-making is kind of a tricky skill. The leader has to ideally make a decision based on all the inputs from his team. But sometimes he has to think about the greater good and make a decision which is different from what most of his team wants. So he has to make the necessary decision and also make the team feel like they have come to this conclusion together. For making the perfect decisions you will need the following-
- Knowledge
- Vision
- Problem Solving
- Negotiation
- Courage
Planning and more importantly getting everyone to stick to the plan and complete it, is another important leadership skill. This skill demands the working of many other skills, like decision-making, vision and strategy etc, in harmony. The skill also involves the ability of the leader to modify the plan as and when required, without deviating too much from the original plan. Some qualities that you will need to be a good planner are-
- Goal Setting
- Crisis Planning
- Prioritization
- Strategizing
- Confidence
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