5 skills all leaders should master on their leadership journey
Whether you’re an emerging leader, in your first leadership position or you’re an experienced leader, everyone has room for improvement. How you are perceived as a leader will significantly depend on your observable behaviours. Developing leadership skills by emulating your own previous leaders is a strategy fraught with danger. The best thing to do is to begin to identify and develop the skills that will set you apart as a respected leader. So, here are 5 skills to consider:
Become a coach, not a manager This is not a nice to have. The state of today’s workforce essentially demands it. Most people don’t want to come into work and do the same job every day for 50 years. People have dreams and goals, they aspire to grow and improve every day – and yes, even people over 50 have these dreams. So be a coach, help your people learn. Nurture their talent and let them shine. Of course this will mean you are going to have to say goodbye to some top performers, but if they’re leaving you because you helped build their capability and prepared them for the next stage of their career, I guarantee you they will become advocates for your organization. If they don’t get this development, they will probably leave you anyway.
Master the art of radical candour This can be a tricky one, largely because it requires passionate dedication to two separate attributes – firstly, the ability to genuinely care about the other person and secondly, the ability to challenge people directly. Unfortunately, many leaders misinterpret radical candour as a free pass to say whatever they want to whomever they want, but this will nearly always result in low morale and productivity with high stress and absenteeism. No, true radical candour means you can praise your people and have difficult conversations with them in a way that assures them your genuine motivation is to help them.
Perfect genuinely inclusive behaviours Inclusion isn’t just a word we’re hearing more and more in the workplace; it is part of the fundamental make-up of an effective workplace culture. But practicing legitimate inclusion means overcoming the cognitive biases we all have. For example, reminding yourself to listen to everyone’s perspectives and opinions rather than the perspectives and opinions of only those we trust – when those whose opinions we trust tend to be very similar to ourselves. It sounds easy on paper – in practice however, it takes effort.
Celebrate your people every day Most people will come into your workplace everyday wanting to achieve something, or to contribute to something greater than themselves. But too often those achievements are overlooked and subsequently motivation begins to downswing. Most of us have grown up learning to look out for the errors and fix them, forgetting to highlight the successes. The motivational power of acknowledging peoples’ contributions cannot be overstated. So celebrate all your people for their great contributions and remember, some people are going to tell you about their contributions, and some are not. Don’t overlook the quiet ones just because they’re not being vocal about their achievements.
Focus on self-awareness Perhaps the most critical skill you can master, self-awareness effectively underpins the other four. According to Organisational Psychologist, Dr Tasha Eurich, around 90 to 95% of the population will tell you they’re self-aware, where in fact the true number is closer to 10 to 15% of the population. Don’t just assume you have great self-awareness. Being aware of what you do is not being self-aware. True self-awareness requires you to be honest about your strengths and your weaknesses (and we all have them). It also requires you to know how you are being perceived by others – not just how you think you are being perceived – and to do that, you’re going to have to open yourself up hearing honest feedback from those around you, especially those in your team.
If you want to be a good leader in the organisations that exist today, you are going to need to learn these skills and continue to grow them as you proceed on your leadership journey. That won’t always be easy but the benefits you get from them will be worth the effort.
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