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Building Effective Leadership Skills
One cannot be effective as a leader without developing leadership skills. Learn the skills studies show are associated with success.
Content On This Page
Four Important Principles. Something you must understand—corporations want leaders but few want to pay for it.
Skills Predicting Success. If you are going to invest in your own development, what should it be? Find out below.
Leadership,
like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it.—Henry Mintzberg, McGill University School of Management, The
Nature of Managerial Work, Harper & Row, 1973
Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret. — Benjamin Disraei
These skills are different than those required to be a manager. Leadership and management are not the same. To be a leader, one needs an exclusive set of human relations and interpersonal skills. Tis essence is being able to influence.
To influence one needs a number of component skills. Some are fairly easy to development—others take a long time to protect. To get from A to B one can choose many different ways. for example one can ride a bicycle or ride a plane. One is easy to lear but not so fast. The other is fast but not easy to learn. For example, you can use your authority, it's quick. But leaning charisma take s more time but is more powerful.
Principle 1: Few Organizations Invest Enough Time or Money Building Leadership Skills
Leadership is needed at every level in the organization.
Many organizations are penny wise and pound foolish to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin. They are driven by short-term return on investment decisions, typically next quarters balance sheet and income statement. Therefore, anything that doesn't directly impact the numbers in the short-term is ignored.
There are a few exceptions. For example, organizations that must perform under stress such as the armed forces, have always known the importance of developing leadership skills. Similarly, nations in peace can be managed—in crisis they must be lead. Unfortunately, about one-third of the participants going through a leadership skills program consider it a waste of their time
Principle 2: I must Spend My Own Time and Money on Building Leadership Skills
One must face unpleasant facts—since one's organization is unlikely to provide much assistance, You will have to use personal resources
Principle 3: Leadership Skills Are Hard to Learn and Will Take a Long Time to Perfect
The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.— Vidal Sassoon
Athletes know it takes years to get good enough to be called a professional. Consider developing leadership skills like growing a tree. Like a tree that adds new branches year after year, so we should keep adding new leadership skills.
There is a great deal of truth to the saying, "Good takes years— perfection decades."
Principle 4: I Must Figure Out What Leadership Skills to Build
As one can see from the above studies, it is your soft skills that make the difference. Fortunately, if you devote time and money to leadership skills development, you will not have that much competittion.
Principle 5: I Must Learn HOW to Building Leadership Skills
Surprisingly, not the many people know how to develop skills. But for some reason, most people assume that leadership skills can be mastered by attending seminars and reading books. That said, one can accelerate the process of learning leaderhip skills if one knows the secrets of skills development.
Comparison Chart of Leadership Skills and Management Skills
One way to understand leadership and management skills is to compare them on the basis of listing the types of skills each requries. For example, many think that planning is a leadership activity, when in reality it is about management. Vision is the skill that leaders have but managers lack. They are both important, but are really very mental processes.
Other Lists for Leadership Skills
HR.com presented a survey in October of 2004 that listed the top 25
skills development issues of human resource managers. Leadership development
came in second, just behind performance management.
Leadership Skills and Competencies. The Office of Personal Managment (OPM) in the federal governement has defined 27 different competences essential to organizational success. These 27 skills are grouped into four ares:
Leading Change
Building Coalitions
Business Acumen (Management ability)
Results driven
Twenty Key Elements for Leadership Skils. This is a good list. All focused on leadership.
Developing Management Skills (7th Edition)
by David A. Whetten ,Kim S. Cameron
List Price: $98.99
While the title refers to management skills, it really is about developing leadership skills as well. It's major sections include: resolving conflict, self-awareness. stress, communication skills, power and influence,
