5 Essential Leadership Skills and How to Build Them

A leader’s job is tough. From defining the direction in which the company should be headed, making tough decisions, dealing with uncertainty to focusing on hiring the right talent, creating a culture of trust and respect, and building a highly performant team, they are expected to excel in everything. 

They are constantly challenged to guide, advise and lead their teams to excellence. They’re required to navigate uncharted territory. Playing safe or doing ordinary things doesn’t fit their profile. They’re required to find solutions others didn’t know existed. 

Many people in the world see events as they are; leaders are different in that they see things that could be. And the future they see is always a better version of the present. We believe we can make a difference; we think we can make the world, or at least our part of it, better. Leaders are generally more optimistic than nonleaders.
— Mark Miller, The Heart of Leadership

Meeting these expectations isn’t always easy. It requires an extraordinary set of skills that can only be mastered with the right attitude to learn, grow and improve. 

These five skills are crucial for leadership effectiveness. Without them, those in positions of leadership hold the title without the means to create the desired impact. 

Connecting Strategic planning to tactical execution

A leader’s biggest job is operating from a 10,000 ft view and charting out paths that others can’t see. 

They answer ‘what’ must be done and ‘why.’ They look into the future and its needs. They have a keen eye for real issues that demand and deserve their attention. Future oriented thinking guides how they think and act. 

They employ strategic thinking mindset to decide new initiatives to launch, identify projects that aren’t generating value and must be killed, ideas that require a new strategy to execute, challenges that must be addressed with creativity and innovation, conflicts that need to be resolved now before they are too difficult to handle, and decisions that require a fresh perspective. 

Are we solving the right problem? 

What’s our criteria to identify where our energy and effort must be spent?

These questions are always top of their mind. 

They don’t stop at strategic thinking. They know that a good strategy without the execution plans is a job half done. Strategic thinking (what must be done and why) without tactical planning (how it must be done and when) is just the intent without a means to generate the desired impact. It’s thinking without action, direction without a path, and a desire to achieve goals without putting in the effort to achieve them. 

People think of execution as the tactical side of business, something leaders delegate while they focus on the perceived “bigger” issues. This idea is completely wrong. Execution is not just tactics—it is a discipline and a system. It has to be built into a company’s strategy, its goals, and its culture. And the leader of the organization must be deeply engaged in it. He cannot delegate its substance. 
— Larry Bossidy, Execution

Giving life to strategy by stitching the two together is part of a leader’s job. 

To build this skill:

1. Start with challenging and questioning assumptions. Identify new ways to do things at work.
2. Set aside time and create space to allow your brain to form new connections. Dive into your industry, business and other functions in the organization to expand your thinking beyond your current scope of work.
3. Break down your strategy into tactics, the specific things you need to do to implement your strategy. Think about risks, obstacles and challenges upfront. Identify cost, effort and resources to achieve these plans. 
4. Don’t be rigid in your thinking. Open your brain to new possibilities by seeking diverse opinions and encouraging others to challenge your assumptions.

Building this skill is an on-going process. You need to audit, inquire and adjust your strategy based on learning from the past and the demands of tomorrow.

Bridging communication gaps by seeking alignment 

Communication problems are the source of a lot of misery at work. They lead to expectation mismatch, misalignment, confusion and even friction between people. 

When communication breaks down, project deadlines are missed, stakeholders lose trust and business suffers. Poor communication makes it hard to get things done and achieve success. 

Leaders bridge these gaps by asking:

What communication problems are we facing?

Why are these problems occurring (think root cause)?

What are we doing (or not doing) that’s contributing to these problems? 

What can we do to reduce these gaps?

One reason some leaders misunderstand communication is that they think they’re already good at it. They’ve been speaking since before they were one year old; reading since age four or five; writing since soon after that. Unlike just about every other discipline leaders have had to master, they’ve been communicating their whole lives. It seemed to be no big deal. Just as a fish is unaware of the water it swims in, leaders often are unaware of their own communication abilities. Or lack thereof.
— Helio Fred Garcia, The Power of Communication 

To build this skill: 

1. Seek alignment on priorities and agree on a common measure of success. Success is more likely when everyone is rowing in the same direction. 
2. Repeat important information often. Repetition is key to information recall. Unless you repeat what you wish to convey more than once, your message will most likely not sink in.
3. Good questions have the power to unlock creative thinking and surface out hidden problems. Use every opportunity to explore your curiosity by asking questions.
4. Assumptions when not validated can lead to gaps in expectations. Avoid frustration, angst and anxiety by seeking alignment upfront.
5. Blaming, shaming and complaining does not solve problems. Instead of pointing fingers, identify what caused these communication gaps and how you can avoid them in the future.
6. Leave your ego at the door. Your ideas, thoughts and opinions will be more valued when you let go of the need to be right or to be in control. 

Making communication less painful and more productive can ease out collaboration helping teams achieve targets without stress and anxiety. 

Connecting at a deeper level through empathic listening

The higher someone is in the work hierarchy, the worse their listening skills. They are more distracted, interrupt often, lead with judgments and ask less questions.

• Overconfidence can lead to the feeling that they already know the answers or understand the situation fully, leading to dismissiveness towards others’ input.
• Time pressures can create a sense of urgency, causing them to rush through conversations without fully listening.
• A sense of superiority can make them less receptive to feedback or alternative viewpoints, which stifles open communication.
• Personal biases can make them seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs or decisions, ignoring or discounting information that contradicts them.
• High expectations can lead to mental fatigue, reducing the capacity for active listening and thoughtful engagement.
• Perceived competence and a sense of self-importance driven by their title and position can make them undervalue the insights and opinions of others, assuming their own views are more important.

These behaviors make team members feel unheard and undervalued leading to decreased morale and shutting down active communication.

To listen well is to figure out what’s on someone’s mind and demonstrate that you care enough to want to know. It’s what we all crave; to be understood as a person with thoughts, emotions, and intentions that are unique and valuable and deserving of attention.
— Kate Murphy, You’re Not Listening

Learning to listen well is a skill all leaders need to build. 

To build this skill:

1. Give others your full attention, provide appropriate feedback, and ask questions to clarify.
2. Deeply understand and connect with their emotions and perspectives.
3. Demonstrate genuine empathy and compassion, recognize their feelings, and validate their experiences. Get inside their frame of reference. See the world as they see it, understand their paradigm, and how they feel.

For example:

Your team member is feeling down about a setback. You listen deeply, acknowledge their feelings, and reflect back their emotions, showing that you truly care about their experience. You say things like, “I can see how much this project means to you and how hard it is to deal with the challenges you’re facing. It’s okay to feel this way. Let’s talk about what you need right now and how I can help.”

Conversations get messy when leaders don’t put an effort to grasp other’s point of view, validate their feelings and recognize their perspective. People are more likely to share openly and honestly when they feel heard and understood. Understanding the full context and underlying issues also allows for more effective problem-solving and decision-making. It gets you on the same page as them and move forward constructively.

Applying resilient mindset to overcome challenges  

Leaders are required to make tough decisions without accurate information. They need to deal with high pressure situations that require them to think clearly and make trade-offs. They need to look past the obstacles, evaluate their circumstances, reflect on the challenges they are confronted with on a daily basis, make creative decisions and act in ways that open opportunities that didn’t seem possible earlier. 

They are required to make the best use of resources to create solutions to problems and to drive forward an agenda. None of this would be possible without exercising their agency—which is the ability to find a way to get what you want, without waiting for the conditions to be perfect or otherwise blaming the circumstances. It requires a resilient mindset to push through in the face of adversity with courage and confidence. 

Once a leader learns to recognize and cultivate it, high agency turns into their secret weapon for leadership effectiveness. 

Leaders with high agency are known to practice the 3 R’s:

• Relentless: They are relentless in the face of adversity.
• Resourcefulness: They know how to leverage their resources to turn adversity into opportunity.
• Resilience: They do not let minor disappointments turn into major setbacks.

Leadership’s responsibility is to work intelligently with what is given and not waste time fantasizing about a world of flawless people and perfect choices.
— Eric Greitens, Resilience

To build this skill:

1. Modify your self-talk. Watch your language and whenever you sense going down a negative path with words like “If only” “I can’t” “I have to,” reframe them with a more positive tone which directs the control back in your own hands with words like “I can” “I will” “I choose.”
2. Develop creative thinking skills. The ability to identify and implement creative solutions to problems by combining various types of information in your head in new and novel ways will enable you to identify solutions as opposed to giving in to your self-limiting beliefs. 
3. Purposefully step outside your comfort zone even in small ways for an extended period of time. By embracing discomfort, you will learn to push beyond your self-perceived limitations. 

Resilient leaders don’t play safe or give up when confronted with a challenge. They consider obstacles as opportunities to try new strategies, explore different possibilities and put their creative thinking skills to use. 

Handling conflicts head-on to improve productivity 

Conflicts are the reality of every workplace—differences of opinion, disagreements on decisions, mismatch in expectations etc. 

Avoiding conflict, not taking responsibility, denying or worse delaying it doesn’t help. Not paying attention to the conflict does not make it disappear, it only makes it worse. 

Not getting a closure keeps people’s minds preoccupied with the conflict instead of putting that time and energy to work. Unresolved emotions create a mental imbalance that harms their productivity and performance. 

Leaders embrace conflict and the discomfort that comes with it. They don’t treat conflicts “bad” or a thing to avoid, but rather as something that provides tremendous opportunities to improve and do better.

Crucial conversations well held accelerate the building of trust, they not only not damage it, they create a sense of connection.
— Kerry Patterson, Crucial Conversations

To build this skill: 

1. Start with defining your motive—what you wish to achieve from the conversation—without generalizing or exaggerating it.
2. Approach the discussion with an element of trust and not the intention to blame or attack. 
3. Share observations without passing any judgment and talk about the impact to communicate your message effectively. 
4. Use questions to help others arrive at their own solutions instead of telling them what to do. 
5. Instead of staying with your narrative, be flexible to change your views.

Leaders treat conflicts as a sign of a healthy workplace and not something to avoid. 

Summary

1. Leaders create tremendous value when they develop execution plans inline with their strategy. They not only carve out a direction, but also lay out a path to reach there. Bringing the two together bridges gaps between dream and reality. 
2. Communication gaps make targets hard to achieve. It leads to frustration, confusion, annoyance and lack of trust in leadership. Seeking alignment, clearly laying out priorities and ensuring everyone speaks the same language is a leader’s job. 
3. Leaders who speak more than they listen fail to build a genuine bond and connection with their teams. Not paying attention to their team’s ideas and concerns makes them feel unheard and undervalued. Valuing your team’s inputs, encouraging their perspective and challenging them to think differently requires a desire to understand them first before being understood.
4. When faced with adversity, leaders are required to find new ways to move forward instead of feeling like a failure, giving up or wallowing in self-pity. This requires exercising agency by giving up the victim mentality, embracing challenges as opportunities to learn and try new strategies. 
5. Navigating conflicts is an essential part of a leadership role. Healthy conflicts invite differences of opinion, encourage others to share perspective and create a culture in which finding right answers is valued over being right. Leaders who avoid conflicts or keep putting them off hurt their teams productivity and performance by letting issues linger on instead of putting them to rest. 

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