The 5 Important Leadership Skills

It is a common notion that leaders are born and not made.  On the contrary, I think that leadership is a skill that can be learned and polished with time.  No one becomes a leader over night; in fact it is a process of trial and error, self education, training, experiencing success and failures and importantly, learning from these experiences.

The following are some leadership skills that can be practiced in your professional as well as your personal life so that you can become more efficient and successful.

a) Proactive

It is a common observation that most of us wait for things to happen for us, and then we react to situations.  A leader is someone who makes things happen after careful planning , considering all the risks and visualizing the outcome to give the maximum advantage and edge to the company.

b) Commitment

Leaders are committed towards the goal. For them, achieving the goal is more important as they believe that their achievement gives them the edge that they need towards their competitors.  Without commitment, leaders may not make difficult decisions that are required in a situation.

c) Creativity

Creativity and out of the box thinking are necessary ingredients for success.  Leaders do not necessarily have Einsteinium brain, but they use their imagination to get others to convince and act.  Joe Badaracco once said," When you put aside the handful of path-breaking geniuses the world has seen, most leaders are creative in an almost microscopic way".

d) Decision Making

The most important leadership skill is decision making and the implementation of it.  Everyone has to make decisions on situations that confront them in their daily lives.  Decision making is to choose the best between given alternatives in daily situations and requiring all the above mentioned skills in the process.  Leaders have to choose several alternatives and categorize them so that they can move on to other plans if one plan fails.  Leaders do not rely on one plan for a simple reason as best described by Shakespeare that "Error is humane", that if the plan fails or does not meet their expectations, then they can initiate an alternative plan.

e) Implementation

Every decision requires action to achieve the goal for which a decision is made.  The implementation process is decided in the decision making phase while choosing the best alternatives.  It also requires follow up of process after some time to make sure of the validation of the process in different times and situations and make necessary adjustments whenever needed.

I am concluding this post with the words of Warren Benns and Burt Nanus, "Recognizing strengths and compensating for weaknesses represent the first step in achieving positive self regard."