How to develop your leadership skills
For many of us, part of the journey to success is to become a leader or a manager. But becoming a leader is not an easy job. It requires developing essential skills that you will use to effectively lead others.
Leadership is the ability to influence other people and guide them towards a shared goal. In many organizations, good and effective leadership skills are a must for managers handling teams of any size.
Leaders are what makes and breaks a company. Having great leaders make team members work well eventually leading to more success in the organization.
So how does one develop their leadership skills? If you’re an employee who wants to be on the position of a leader someday, you’re probably wondering what you would need to do to become a leader and how you can start now.
In this article, you’ll learn some of the ways you can do to develop your leadership skills.
But first, there are hard and soft skills you should be aware of so you can become the leader you want to be.
Hard skills
It’s a no brainer: to become a leader, you must first be good at your job. You must first brush up on your hard skills.
Hard skills are those essential skills that you use in performing your job. These skills are needed so you can actually be good at your job and when you become a leader, your members can turn to you for assistance when they get stuck.
Examples of these are skills in using software tools, designing, typing/encoding, and all those other job-related skill sets you can think of.
One becomes a leader because they’re good at their job – that’s a reality. But that’s not all of it. You may be great at your job but still lack the necessary soft skills that you need to lead or manage others.
Soft skills
All skills not related to the actual job that you do but are more of personality skills are soft skills. Also called “general skills”, these include your problem-solving skills, critical thinking, compassion, empathy, creativity, communication, and many others.
As a leader, you need to possess these skills so you can better lead in a lot of situations at work. Just like hard skills, these skills can be developed with experience, trainings, and mentorship but are measured differently.
To summarize the difference between hard skills and soft skills, here’s Mark Lobosco’s well put words in his LinkedIn article:
While hard skills are about doing specific technical tasks, like tax accounting or graphic design, soft skills are more about the way you do them, like your ability to creatively solve problems or work within a team.
Developing your leadership skills
So how do you start developing your leadership skills?
Here are some areas to focus on in developing your leadership skills from Wrike and Investopedia.
Continuous learning
Learning is the constant thing that helps us in any aspect of our lives. To become a leader, you must always be open to new learnings of any kind, whether on hard or soft skills and especially in building relationships with people.
Learning comes from various sources like formal training or courses and experiences. It is only a matter of recognizing these learnings and applying them that will develop you into a leader.
Having discipline
Having self-discipline is very crucial in a leader. Practicing discipline means having control over situations and doing the right thing, abstaining from things that do not matter at the moment. It also is the practice of pushing yourself to become better.
By being able to discipline yourself, you can learn to discipline your team when you become a leader. It starts with you. Discipline is needed in a team, so if you feel like you are lacking discipline, you must start with yourself.
Critical thinking
To become a leader, you must be able to anticipate problems and opportunities that may come your way. Then, you must be able to provide solutions to concerns and problems that may arise.
Having a great sense of awareness in situations and understanding how to solve them is a great leadership skill as well. Develop your critical thinking so you know how you can steer the ship properly in or even before stormy situations.
Taking initiatives
Developing your skills means taking more initiatives from your leader beyond the delegated tasks from them. Taking more projects and tasks will help you not only develop skills but put yourself in the radar of managers who are looking for proactive members.
Being proactive shows a lot about how you will handle the work duties of a leader. It displays how willing you are to work hard. A word of caution though – we all have limitations so be sure to take only what you can and not beyond.
Active listening
The ability to listen to suggestions, criticisms and feedback is also a trait of a good leader. As you aspire to be a leader, try to develop a more listening side of you, if you haven’t yet.
This will help your members in the future to be more open to you, help you to become more aware of the situation, and decide better by gaining insights from your members.
Following
Aside from being more open, it is also important to consider the good ideas of your team members. You must be able to discern great ideas and follow them.
Motivating and inspiring others
As a leader, you must be able to identify situations where your members might be lacking the motivation to do their work. Become the leader who inspires and motivates your team members by speaking to them and discussing what problems they’re encountering and how you can help with the situation.
Perhaps rather than reprimanding members on having a low performance, it is better to motivate them so they can get back to their selves.
Empowering your teammates
Your members must feel they are doing a good job on their tasks. You can do this by delegating tasks that are important to them and entrusting them that they can manage the tasks as you have given them. Guide them while they’re still learning and praise them when they’re doing a good job.
Resolving conflicts
Conflicts can happen to any team. A great leader is always ready for conflicts and is capable of handling situations of this kind.
In case of conflicts, learn to speak with your members and be honest on what the situation is about. Show empathy and compassion so you can handle the situation better.
References
Kenton, W. (September 2020). Hersey-Blanchard Model. Retrieved from link.
Test Gorilla (n.d.). How to develop leadership skills in your workplace. Retrieved from link.
Workable. Hard skills vs Soft skills. Retrieved from link.
Wrike (May 2022). 9 Ways to Develop Your Leadership Skills. Retrieved from link.
Yan, A. (February 2022). How to Improve Your Leadership Skills. Retrieved from link.
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