Leadership skills are very important aspects of our leadership journey. Many people who do not have positions of authority think that leadership is about who has the power. The moment young people realise that leadership is not about position, the earlier they begin to lead.
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What are leadership skills?
Leadership skills are simply the requirements that anyone who is going to lead people or a cause must possess if they are going to lead effectively. There are different types of leadership skills some of which are a function of the leadership styles that one chooses to adopt. As a leader, you need to be able to get these leadership skills on your leadership journey. Expects like John C. Maxwell, Sam Adeyemi, Myles Munroe, Etc have all emphasized the need for leaders at all levels to continually build themselves and horn old skills and get new ones.
There would never be enough positions for people to lead, but there would always be enough problems for people to respond their abilities to, in other words, your leadership skills are supposed to help you solve societal problems.
The moment you understand this, your sphere of influence would open up to you and you would be sought after in your field of endeavour.
There are leadership skills that every leader must have. Here are 5 examples of top leadership skills that an entrepreneur, career professional or business organisational leader should possess:
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Number 1 – Vision
Every leader, whether secular or religious that want to be relevant and actually lead must see far ahead than everyone else. This would help him or her to chart the course properly for those following. The place of vision in leadership cannot be over-emphasized. Vision guides and helps you to set SMART goals, get adequate and required knowledge and pursue your dreams rightly.
Number 2 – Communication
Anyone that won’t listen is not qualified to be a leader. Listening to what your followers have to say is a very important aspect of the leadership journey. Apart from listening, every leader should also ensure that those he/she is leading understands their communication channels. The goal of every leader is to ensure that those following him/her understands the goals and that they are clearly communicated.
Apart from active listening, other things that aids effective communication are business storytelling, public speaking, concision, clarity, facilitating group conversations, articulating, explaining, editing, and even non-verbal communication.
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Number 3 – Creativity
Creativity is a must for every leader. Every great leader thinks outside the box. Every follower, whether the person is an employee or just an ordinary follower becomes awwed and inspired by a creative leader. Skills that aid creativity include cognitive flexibility, being analytical, conceptualisation, foresight, curiosity, identifying patterns, observation, making abstract connections, etc
Number 4 – Feedback
One of the things that endears followers to leaders is their ability to provide feedback. It makes them feel among and they would give their unrepentant followership once this is in place. Apart from giving feedback, an effective leader must also be willing to accept feedback from those following him/her. This brings positive reinforcement, improves coaching, and building confidence in employees and followers alike.
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Number 5 – Motivation/Inspiration
Effective leaders don’t put fear in people, they motivate and inspire them to greatness. The ability of a leader to inspire is directly proportional to the success of his leadership. This is one of the reasons why this skill is very important. There are several ways to build motivation and inspiration in employees and followers, examples include allowing employee autonomy, asking for input, assessing interests of staff, convincing, mentoring, providing productive and challenging work, team-building, setting effective goals, tgif, understanding employee differences. By doing these, you would be building thankful and excited employees and followers which would impact on the overall results and your leadership as well.
Other skills equally important include delegating, training, positivity, trustworthiness, emotional intelligence, responsibility, commitment, transparency, forecasting, professionalism., flexibility, negotiating among others.
Seven skills you must build and cultivate if you to be an effective leader.
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The first is adaptation skills. Every leader must learn to adapt to his/her environment. We have basically two types of environment, they are internal and external. Internal environment is the environment you have control over while external environment is that which you must learn to adapt to. if you are going to succeed as a leader, you must learn to adapt.
Secondly, Communication skills are very important. The ability to pass an information from one person to another until it is properly decoded is very vital and this is what makes an effective leader. Most leadership flaws come as a result of this. Either the leader does not pass the information well or the follower does not understand what the leader is saying.
Interpretation skills is critical. All situations are not the same. The ability for a leader to accurately read a season or situation is part of what makes a leader outstanding in his leader journey. Every leader must learn to interpret data, understand scenarios and give good judgement regarding every situation.
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Every leader must possess organisational skills. The ability for any person to organise data, people, or systems makes that person exceptional in what he/she does and automatically makes such person a leader. As a leader or leader-wannabe, you must cultivate organisational skills.
Lastly, every leader must be visionary, i.e every leader must possess vision skills. No one can effectively lead people to a place he/she has not been before.
To your success,
I remain Yours truly,
Leke Ademo,
Your Personal Brand Strategist
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