8 Characteristics and Skills to Develop for Effective Leaders

Leaders or managers, this is the problem. While managers can be leaders, the reverse is not a must. In fact, these two roles are often separate. After all, modern businesses seem to prefer it this way. While leaders lead, managers manage.

On the other hand, every organization strives for success. Hence, any team wants to achieve, above and beyond. However, most often, management does not have a leadership role. In fact, management often deals with quality control and compliance. Also, they exercise control and offer accountability. Modern managers do all sorts of things, yet effective leadership seems to not be on the list.

And what’s most important of all, the best results happen with a combination of the two. Both effective management and effective leadership are responsible for success. Although effective management is widespread, effective leadership is hard to cultivate.

Here are the 8 skills and qualities you need in order to develop effective leadership.

1. Capable of making hard decisions
Risky or complicated decisions are hard to make. So, most people would rather avoid such decisions. Hence, your team will look up to you for guidance. And you should promptly take charge and offer the best course of action. After all, leaders inspire trust and determine others to follow.

2. Leaders are people-oriented
Team leaders are as good as the people they’re leading. To become an effective team leader, you should always stay in contact with team dynamics. If Susan has been feeling off lately, you need to know what’s going on. What does she need to get back on her feet? Who can help her do so?

Meanwhile, you should also consider how the rest of the team is feeling. They will have extra weight to carry while one member is down. Knowing your team is essential when dealing with sensitive situations.

Grow your business faster with better team communication!

After all, a leader knows how to read people. Also, leaders take a genuine interest in the mood of the group. In fact, they care about the needs of each individual.

People-skills are “improvable”. First, learn how to know yourself. Second, learn how to understand others. You can know yourself through meditation, therapy or coaching. And the list could go on.

You can learn to understand others in several ways. While getting a degree in psychology helps, experience is also an asset. A go-to solution is sales-training. In fact, any training in sales packs a lot of soft-skills development. Arguably, the best solution is a blend of the two.

Leaders must, therefore, be able to make hard decisions, often under pressure. Without this ability, there is no direction towards which to lead. However, hard decisions are hard because of several factors. First, the total number of options. Secondly, the complexity of their interactions. Thirdly, the immediacy of required response. Finally, most people are not comfortable predicting the future.

To get better at problem-solving, do either math or logic or both. Perhaps a bit of coding. You could try “Project Euler” and go solve various basic math problems in Python. Some people work on International Mathematical Olympiad problems. Sounds like it’s too much? Training can yet again be a solution. Simply go for problem-solving and creativity training.

3. Inspire confidence in team efforts
Leaders are typically confident in everything they do. Transferring that to an entire team is challenging. In fact, it’s OK if you settle. Most of all, settle for each individual trusting team efforts.

One thing leaders must do is never diminish confidence in team efforts. They must always praise in public and criticize in private. Now extend this advice to a lot of other situations. For example, leaders should manifest interest with what each team member is doing. Or celebrate any milestone the team reaches.

The best solution is to have amazing recruiting. In fact, trusting your team starts with recruiting and continues with every achievement. And having each member trust team efforts becomes a breeze.

4. Think strategically
A leader has vision that inspires and carries teams ahead. A leader can also see the long-term goals of a team and individual team members at the same time.

Leaders must look ahead and analyze each step. Strategic thinking is at the core of any modern business. This is also applicable to modern leadership.

Vision and strategy. To develop vision, leaders need to make the right step. The right step is not one ahead, but rather, one above. Strategy is a step ahead, vision is a step above.

The solution is not simple. You can learn strategy. Play chess. It’s transferable. Spend 15 minutes every day thinking about the 7 steps to improving something. Study algorithmic thinking.

Vision, however, comes from a very special place. Vision is a place inside you where you let others dream. Most people cannot even open up to communicate.

5. Lead from the front
Lead by example and motivate others through personal actions. If employees have trouble following a tight schedule, a leader will be first to arrive and the last to leave. Closely following every deadline.

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