How to Know Development Skills Required For A Leader
Posted by: Manish Sinha
“We all are born leaders in ourselves.” Why am I saying this sentence? Recall your past years and look at your journey so far. Was there any occasion where you were involved in an activity and you led that activity? If you are looking back then look back both for your professional as well as your personal life. You will find an event where you participated and you led the entire activity.
For example: Going for a holiday. This an event you might have organized for your family. Didn’t you lead the planning or the entire journey you took your family together? Ah! I know I know you will say yeh. I see the smile on your face. So, keep smiling and read through the article.
In your office, I presume that you would have led a meeting with your subordinates or organized a meeting on performance or building a strategy, or employee engagement programs. These small events do get completed. You led these events. Even if you have participated and have shared your opinion, I call it your leadership skill. As we move forward you will understand why am I saying this.
While these events happened in your life, did you realize at times that something could have been done in a much better way, rather you could have dealt with this much more professionally and in a much better way.
This means there is scope for improvement in your skills which I call as a gap in Leadership skills and needs development. It can be worked upon and mastered.
I hope so far you would have understood what I mean to say, that everyone is a leader in itself and you too can harness these skills and work your way to leadership.
I am a challenger and my way of thinking is unorthodox. I have taken clues of leadership both from my father and mother. From my father what I imbibed was being a caretaker of their subordinates and from my mother to be as practical as possible and to never hesitate to say spade a spade. But I had difficulty in executing it though I remained largely practical. Why I say this because I could not say no to any activity even when I did not want to do it. But then it took me way up the management ladder. Above whatever I have mentioned we can conclude that leadership lessons start from home.
As I grew the challenges increased and all were different for different positions, I handled the various assignments assigned to me in my career either by my own choice largely due to shifting organization for growth or within the organization assigned by my seniors promoting me to take higher responsibilities.
Based on the challenges that I have identified while working as a boss and other colleagues or bosses I will list them down to help you all understand the same and improvise as per your thought to become a better version of yourself as a leader and human being.
Being a boss in a company we come across the greatest challenge of handling a team. You all can list them down as per your own experiences but for me, it was keeping them motivated, full of enthusiasm, and getting the work completed at a steady pace.
But before I proceed to it let’s understand “What are Leadership Skills?”
Here I would like to define leadership more broadly here.
Douglas MacArthur was one of the finest military leaders of the United States as described by John Gardner in his book on leadership. He has described him as a brilliant strategist, a farsighted administrator, and a flamboyant nature. He was disciplined and was an effective general, statesman, administrator, and corporate leader.
Leadership skills are important for any organization, as they help build a strong team and to get the work done more efficiently. So, one can define leadership broadly and can be said that — “Leadership is all about focusing on the ability to inspire and organize other people to achieve a shared goal within the given timelines.” It’s all about self-accountability.
Your leadership style will differ from that of your colleague. For example, you may exhibit soft leadership skills such as patience, empathy, and deep listening while your colleague may demonstrate strengths in risk-taking and decision-making.
It is also about your natural strengths and if you can align them with those aptitudes, as a leader you will be more effective on your job.
You may ask why is it important to have good leadership skills. What I am is who I am and I function and lead people the way I am. But believe me, leadership is not as you think. It’s much more than that.
So, let’s understand “Why is it important to Develop Leadership Skills?”
Leadership skills are an essential component of all success equations, whether on a personal, professional, or academic level. Leadership skills are the essential life skills you use in organizing and working with others to achieve a common goal. These skills allow you to motivate others to complete a certain series of tasks within the time period that was specified when the project plan was developed.
Leadership skills include several personal traits and communicative abilities that each of us must learn and master in order to achieve the success and development that we aspire to.
Developing leadership skills is one of the most powerful moves you can make to transform your life. Leadership skills aren’t just for your career — they can also improve your personal relationships. That’s because as you learn how to improve leadership skills, you’ll learn about communication and building connections with others. This is called emotional intelligence, and whether you’re negotiating a big sales deal or negotiating chores with your spouse, it’s essential to influence others.
Developing leadership skills will also allow you to grow as a person. It’s an empowering process of harnessing your natural talents to inspire others. You’ll become more attuned to your strengths and weaknesses, which creates a self-awareness that you can apply to help you control your emotions, increase your focus, and more.
Finding areas of Improvement:
Now that we have understood why it’s important to improve Leadership skills, the question that arises is how one identifies areas of improvement. So, let’s do it now. There are two steps to identifying your leadership strengths and weaknesses.
- Identify Your Leadership Style: Your leadership style can open the doors for you to hone missing skills, hence it’s important to know what’s your style of handling people. Is your approach more democratic, visionary, coaching, or commanding? Once you have understood it’s easier for you to understand the gaps which you need to fill in through learning and improving upon.
It’s a good way to start as you are aware of your strengths which come naturally to you. For example: If you are a democratic leader, you will find it difficult to convey tough decisions of management to your team members. You may also find difficulty in taking decisions to in case of a crisis.
So as a leader, you have to keep working on improving skills with a growth mindset and commit to working on it.
2. Assess Yourself Honestly: When we try to asses ourselves, we become judgmental. Why I am saying this is the fact that as human beings we deny accepting the realities. For example, keep your hand on your heart and tell, how many times you have taken a test on self-evaluation and you have preferred choosing a different answer because it suits your current job assignments, i.e. reflects good to your management about you, even though internally you know you are not what you have chosen and you do not practice at all.
Let’s be honest, I have myself fudged it several times. But what have I done to myself I have lost the opportunity of identifying my weaknesses and have not worked on them at all and this gives me hardships in my current as well as later stages of leadership roles.
(I will talk more about it in a separate article as this will require more detailed discussion and you can learn from it so that you do not do the same mistake that I did in my career. Keep looking for the same on my blog — under “Guide >> Growth Solutions”)
It’s a self-assessment and largely it’s true since you do not disclose this to others. You can also ask others about your strengths and weaknesses ( leadership skills)from people whom you can trust. I do it every once in a while to understand if am I on the right path.
Once you have understood, you know how to start addressing them.
If I talk in general about the areas of improvement for leaders they are:
- Building empathy. Are you empathetic to others’ needs and feelings or do you focus solely on your own? Putting others first is essential to building rapport and inspiring them to follow you.
- Improving communication skills. Setting expectations and boundaries, providing clear goals and direction, and keeping employees in the loop are all part of creating and leading effective teams.
- Making tough decisions. Tony says, “It is in your moments of decisions that your destiny is shaped.” Are you confident in your ability to make tough decisions or are you plagued with self-doubt?
- Eliminating micromanagement. An inability to let go of day-to-day tasks and micromanaging is one of the most common areas of improvement for leaders.
- Giving constructive feedback. It’s tempting for many leadership styles to focus only on the positive. But ignoring problems with your team won’t lead to business success.
To Sum, it up would request you to answer these questions. These in my view will help you understand yourself better.
- Do I heckle my subordinates or strengthen and encourage them?
- Do I use moral courage in getting rid of subordinates who have proven themselves beyond doubt to be unfit?
- Have I done all in my power by encouragement, incentive, and spur to salvage the weak and erring?
- Do I know by NAME and CHARACTER the maximum number of subordinates for whom I am responsible? Do I know them intimately?
- Am I thoroughly familiar with the technique, necessities, objectives, and administration of my job?
- Do I lose my temper at individuals?
- Do I act in such a way as to make my subordinates WANT to follow me?
- Do I delegate tasks that should be mine?
- Do I arrogate everything to myself and delegate nothing?
- Do I develop my subordinates by placing on each one as much responsibility as he can stand?
- Am I interested in the personal welfare of each of my subordinates, as if he were a member of my family?
- Have I the calmness of voice and manner to inspire confidence, or am I inclined to irascibility and excitability?
- Am I a constant example to my subordinates in character, dress, deportment, and courtesy?
- Am I inclined to be nice to my superiors and mean to my subordinates?
- Is my door open to my subordinates?
- Do I think more of POSITION than JOB?
- Do I correct a subordinate in the presence of others?
Conclusion:
I end this with my advice to young people, “It feels good to be a leader!” Success and failure are part of the adventure of life. Young people need to see that good leader are important in their community — and there are great rewards for being a good leader. Those rewards include a sense of satisfaction and a feeling that what you are doing is meaningful and significant. You don’t always win when you lead, but that’s okay. Young people should be rewarded and encouraged for stepping up and leading, no matter whether they succeed or fail.
Note: Now that we have identified our missing skills, in part 2 we will discuss about actions that are required to improve your leadership skills.