Developing Leadership Skills

Leadership skills are behaviours and actions that get us the results we’re after while simultaneously motivating others. Unfortunately, many leaders acquire short-term results at the expense of employee morale. In other words, some leaders do not know how to positively motivate their employees to get the job done. The following are some things to think about as you develop your leadership skills.  

Emotional Intelligence

Some people may wonder what emotional intelligence has to do with leading others. Actually emotional intelligence has everything to do with being a successful leader because leading people requires interacting with those you are leading. In those interactions a successful leader will have an understanding of the dynamics involved in each of those interactions. That understanding is called emotional intelligence. There are five attributes or skills involved that will allow us to successfully manage these interactions.

1.      Self Awareness – Self awareness is fundamentally the sensitivity and understanding of our own moods, emotions, and motivations. Using self awareness as a leadership skill allows us not only to understand ourselves, but also how our emotions impact our performance and relationships with those we are leading. For example, you wake up on the wrong side of the bed one morning and you are aware of being slightly grumpy as a result.

2.      Self Regulation – Self awareness is inward insight of ourselves and self regulation is the skill of controlling counterproductive emotions that will prevent us from accomplishing our goals. Continuing with our example above, because you are aware of having a grumpy attitude you can control the emotions related to it so that your performance and interactions are not affected.

3.      Motivation Skills – It’s important to know what motivates you, as well as those you are leading. However, knowing what motivates others is generally discovered by trial and error. But by knowing what motivates you, you can use those motivators as a starting point to help you pinpoint the motivators in others.

4.      Empathy Skills – Empathy is the ability to see another person’s way of looking at things. It’s the ability to put oneself in the shoes of another and understand how they feel about a situation, like a change for example, and considering those feeling before implementing that change.   

5.      Social Skills – A successful leader must socialize with others, having confidence in themselves and comfortable in their own skin. The followers of the leader must know and believe that the one they are following is a human being, just as they are. This is achieved by taking an interest and listening to others when they talk about their personal lives, such as their families for example. This will help build rapport and that rapport will help you lead them.  

Golden Rule at Work

The key leadership skill to develop is “treat others as you would like to be treated.” In the work place this can be difficult at times because of deadline or profit pressures. The trick is to strike a balance between results and job satisfaction.

Developing leadership skills takes time and practice. You will make mistakes along the way, but be patient and continually work toward your goal – to become a better leader.