Leadership Skills and How to Develop Them?

Leadership skills can help you in all aspects of your career, from applying for jobs to searching for career progression. One of the many interpersonal skills that employers value, leadership often includes many different personality features and communication abilities that benefit a person in learning and practice over time.

Knowing leadership skills and seeing relevant examples can be particularly useful when writing your resume, for example. If you are applying for jobs that require you to be initiative and be a leader whether you are a manager or among your colleagues, you should include leadership skills in your resume.

Concept of Leadership Skills:

Leadership skills are the strengths and capabilities that individuals exhibit while supervising operations, motivating others to complete a series of tasks, and often directing employees to achieve their goals according to a schedule. Leadership is not just one skill but a combination of several different skills working together.

These skills are essential for making important decisions about the organization or company and allocating the necessary resources to achieve goals whether you are in a managerial position or leading a project.

Leadership skills are supposed to be directed towards managing risks to recover from the crisis and other aspects of team management and achieving goals.

A good leader requires a lot of things to excel, but these skills have to come naturally, and they tend to be accurate. The leader must be passionate and motivated.

The most important leadership skills needed by each manager:

Almost any positive interpersonal skill can be considered a leadership skill. For example, active listening helps leaders accomplish projects by hearing the team's ideas and concerns. Sympathy, for example, helps leaders understand how their team feels about burden of work, environment, and workplace relationships.

Below is a list of leadership skills which must be possessed that may be of value to anyone applying for work or looking to advance in a career:

1. Decision making skill:

Effective leaders are those who can make decisions quickly with the information they have. Effective decision-making comes with time and experience. As you become more familiar with your specific business, you will be able to make decisions faster, even when you do not have all the necessary information. Decision-making is seen as a valuable leadership skill because it can help run projects faster and improve efficiency.

Effective decision-making requires research, evaluation, problem-solving and goal-setting. Decision makers must be able to benefit from their own experience with similar tasks, evaluate what might work best, and make the decision and have confidence in taking responsibility for the results. Key skills related to being a strong leader through decision making include:

• Problem solving.
• The initiative.
• research.
• Evaluation.
• Setting expectations.

2. Independence:

Being an independent leader means that people can trust and rely on you. The reliable person follows the plans and keeps the promises. Strong relationships built by an independent leader create a flexible team that can overcome difficulties that may face. Being professional can be counted means meeting deadlines, being clear, sticking to commitments and when you can't deliver on a promise or goal, communicate about this early and have a backup plan. Independent leaders also have the following skills:

• Set realistic goals.
• integration.
• Respect the time.
• The initiative.
• Loyalty.
• Honesty.

3. Relationship Building Skill:

Leadership requires the ability to build and maintain a strong and collaborative team of individuals working towards the same goal. Building a team requires other leadership strengths, such as effective communication and conflict resolution skills. Building relationships is probably one of the most important skills for leadership because it makes communication between tasks, responsibilities and goals more effective. You will benefit by being able to evaluate strengths, delegate tasks, and complete your goals more smoothly. A successful leader who is skilled in building relationships also has the following skills:

• Cooperation.
• Management.
• Social.
• Communication.
• Active listening.
• work as one team.

4. Integrity:

Integrity is not just about honesty or trustworthy, but in many cases, it also means having a set of strong values and standing by them. Integrity in the workplace often means being able to make ethical choices and help the company maintain a positive image. All companies seek to hire workers with a strong sense of integrity.

Having integrity as a leader not only encourages the most honest and fair practice and results, but also sends a strong and positive example to your team. An integrity leader also shows the following skills:

• diplomat.
• Moral.
• reliability.
• Professionalism.
• Confidentiality.
• Honesty.

5. Problem solving skills:

Good leaders are skilled at solving problems that arise during work. Effective problem solving often requires staying calm and identifying a step-by-step solution. Problem-solving skills can help leaders make quick decisions, resolve obstacles with both their team and external teams, and ensure projects are completed on time, according to specifications. Leaders who are effective in problem solving also have the following skills:

• critical thinking.
• Analytical skills.
• research.
• Make the decision.

6. Supervision and Training Skill:

One skill that distinguishes leadership from many other competencies is the ability to train and mentor. A leader helps educate colleagues effectively to grow in their careers and helps organizations expand. Often, this skill requires leaders to think less about themselves and more about how to make their team as a whole successful. To be successful as a leader who can teach and guide a team, you can refine the following relevant skills:

• Motivation.
• Ability to confess and reward.
• Understand the differences between employees.
• Evaluation.
• positive reinforcement.

7. Responsibility:

The leader is responsible for both the successes and failures of his team. So, you have to be willing to accept blame when things don't go right. If your employees see their leader pointing fingers and blaming others, they will lose respect for you. Accepting mistakes and failures, then coming up with clear solutions for improvement. Here are some skills and qualities that help leaders take responsibility:

• admit mistakes.
• Openness to customer feedback.
• Evaluate the best solutions.
• Prediction.
• Learn From Past Mistakes.
• Listening to feedback from employees and managers.
• Project planning.
• Problem solving.
• Transparency.
• find the mistakes and resolve it.

8. Flexibility:

Regrettable accidents and last-minute changes always happen at work. Leaders need to be flexible, and accept any changes that come their way. Employees will appreciate your ability to accept changes in solving the problem ethically. Similarly, leaders should be open to suggestions and feedback. If your employees are dissatisfied with an aspect of the office environment, listen to their concerns and be open to making necessary changes. Employees will appreciate the commander's ability to accept appropriate feedback. Skills related to resilience include:

• Ability to learn new skills.
• Ability to respond to new problems or issues.
• Adaptability.
• Improvisation.
• Negotiation.
• Receive feedback.
• Identify the strengths and skills of individuals.
• Treatment of the employees as humans.

9. Importance of Leadership Skills:

Leadership skills play an important role in the development of any organization. No organization can function efficiently without effective leadership skills. Leadership is an important function of management that helps to enhance productivity and achieve organizational goals. In fact, leadership is an essential part and critical component of effective management that helps increase efficiency and achieve organizational goals.

The importance of leadership in organizational development is undeniable

10. Influencing people's behavior:

A leader impresses his subordinates with his or her leadership. It puts them under its control in such a way that they do their best to achieve the goals of the organization. Good leaders usually get good results through their followers.

11. Helping employees meet their needs:

The leader establishes a personal relationship with his/her subordinates and tries to meet their requirements. People follow the leader because he provides them with security and opportunities to earn wealth, gives them the right to work and tries to understand their feelings. Employees accepts it willingly because it takes care of their needs. Thus, they work with total dedication and enthusiasm.

12. Make required changes:

The work environment changes at a rapid pace, in order to face the changing environment, many adjustments must be made in the organization. Since people were already under the influence of the leader, he/her could easily get them to agree to implement these changes. In this way, the potential resistance to change is eliminated by the power of leadership.

13. Effectively Resolve conflicts:

A leader can effectively resolve every type of conflict whether that employee versus the employee or employees versus the employer, the leader allows his/her followers to freely express their opinions. That is why he/she easily understands the reality of the conflict, and in this way, by understanding the nature of the conflict, he/she tries to provide solution on the right time and reduces the possibility of negative consequences.

14. Training and development of subordinates:

The leader assists in the training and development of employees. Makes them familiar with modern working techniques. In addition, he/she makes it possible for them to be good leaders in the future.

15. Creating a clear vision:

This means influencing employees to understand and accept the future state of the institution. A good leader will influence his/her followers to perform their duties by explaining the vision and the importance of their role in the result.

16. Motivating and guiding employees:

This includes knowing and meeting the needs of employees. It is important to define the role of employees and provide them with the necessary tools. A good leader will explain the task and will be available to help them if they face a problem.

17. Building morale:

A good leader will let employees know how much their work is appreciated. Like complimenting a well done job, or making a party to recognize small accomplishments, will renew their spirits.

18. How to develop leadership skills:

You don't need to supervise or be a manager to develop leadership skills. You can develop these skills in the job in the following ways:

Take the initiative:

Look beyond the tasks in your job description. Think in the long-term about what would be good for your department and your company. Try to propose ideas and commit to work that goes beyond routine.

Asking for more responsibility:

Although you don't want to ask for extra responsibility in your second week on the job, once you're in a position long enough to become an expert, you can share with your manager that you're keen on doing so. And seek to develop your leadership capabilities. Ask how you can help and are there upcoming projects that require a specific person? Is there any job you can remove from your manager's to-do list?

Target specific skills:

If you have a specific skill that you want to develop, whether it's in creative thinking or communication, create a plan to improve your abilities in this area. This may mean taking a course, finding a teacher to help, reading books, or setting a small goal that forces you to develop this skill. Talk to managers and co-workers, as well as friends outside the office, to help develop your plan.

Impact of Leadership Skills on Employee Performance:

Leaders have a distinguished impact on organizational culture. Employees tend to follow leaders in professional and cultural ways that lead to a broad impact on the organization as a whole, leadership is generally defined as creating a clear vision, communicating with it and resolving direct conflicts between employees or facing the organization as a whole. Leaders are tasked with guiding the efficient achievement of the organizational goal and taking into account the main skills of team members to produce the required productivity. Since leadership is an aspect of management, it is necessary to prove that management is well equipped with leadership skills. Effective leadership can influence organizational values such as honesty, respect, ethics, tolerance, etc. by showing the ideal attitude in the workplace.

Conclusion:

Being an effective leader is a very difficult task but it gives rewards that are worth the effort. In order to appear as a good leader, you need to master the skills mentioned above, which helps to increase your knowledge range.

These skills help create an encouraging and productive work environment, gain love, respect, and dedication from team members and achieve great success.