Leadership Skills Are Essential To Achieve Major Objectives
Many people think there’s something mysterious about being a leader. It’s true that there are some “born leaders”, but in many cases people who become leaders grow into their roles by development effective leadership skills.
The common concept of leaders defines them as people with the ability to energize a others, whether paid workers or volunteers, to move together toward a common goal. The skills that really define leaders are conviction, courage and collaboration.
Those big dreams, sometimes referred to as “big, hairy, audacious goals” (BHAGs), are what management experts call “convictions”. Every good leader has bedrock convictions about themselves, their colleagues, their organization and their mission. Leadership novices may need to make a thorough self-assessment to clarify their own convictions. Once they do, however, genuine leaders pursue those convictions doggedly despite all obstacles.
Furthermore, only those who see a leader’s role as being a steward and guide can become leaders. The people a leader oversees may be known as volunteers or associates, teammates or co-workers, but their leader must be someone worthy of their trust, someone they can see as working for a greater common good. Anyone who thinks being a leader involves being a tyrant or dictator doesn’t understand the true nature of leadership.
Convictions are rarely accomplished without courage. This leadership skill involves identifying the correct action, often a calculated risk, and taking that action even though the possibility of failure is clearly present. People often speak of the “courage of one’s convictions, ” a phrase meaning that holding a deep-seated value frequently provides the strength and clarity necessary to proceed. Leaders may possess this skill naturally, or they may learn how to develop it, but few lack it.
Once a leader has defined a vision, and summoned the courage to move forward, the next step in developing leadership skills is to build a collaborative team to achieve the objective. Collaboration often gets discounted among those managers who cling to the 20th century “command and control” model of leadership. However, the first years of the 21st century have shown clearly that “command and control” is no longer viable in our Internet-connected world. People work far more effectively in teams with mutual responsibility, where the leader motivates and describes the vision, but doesn’t prescribe or constrain the team’s action.
In order to recognize that key level and build collaboration around it, a leader asks lots of questions and listens closely to the answers. Many times the accomplishment of a goal can be motivated by a person’s own needs or desires for achievement. Their dreams may be personal achievement or they may be more corporate goals, but smart leaders recognize those dreams as motivating factors that can help everyone succeed.
Finally, true leaders listen to their customers as well as their co-workers. “Customers” may be people who actually purchase the team’s goods or services, or they may be the people whose work relies on the team’s performance. Either way, savvy leaders listen to what these folks have to say, especially when their remarks identify poor performance, inefficient processes or shoddy materials. Knowing how to spot where things have gone wrong, and how to encourage the team to improve it, is the result of superior leadership skills.
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