The world needs good leaders now more than ever. Especially when times are tough, it requires strong leadership skills to guide your company or team to achieve success.
If you want to become a better leader and help others perform at their best, these three essential leadership skills are key:
1. Define Your Vision
Every great leader had a vision and decided that he or she was going to create that vision. Mohamed Gandhi wanted India to be independent of Great Britain. Nelson Mandela wanted equality for all citizens of South Africa. Harriet Tubman decided that slavery had to end.
When your vision inspires and ignites your team, their job is no longer just a job. They are on a mission to make a difference, and their excitement is contagious. As a leader, you want to unite and inspire your team, raising them up and helping them to maximize their potential.
As a 9-year-old boy, Bo Eason had a dream. His vision was to play in the NFL as the best safety, and he wrote up a 20-year plan to achieve it. Every day, his vision of playing in the NFL was his driving force. He’d wake up at 5 am to train before school, and every day he practiced with his brother, catching 1,000 balls. His vision motivated him to continuously improve his skills and overcome the obstacles on his journey. What’s more, his vision inspired his brother and several of his friends. He motivated them to train harder, work harder, and become their best.
Being a leader starts with a compelling vision, and you must DECIDE to take responsibility for the outcome, for creating your vision.
To better understand what the word “decide” means, let’s look at its derivation. It comes from late Middle English in the sense of “bring to a settlement.” From French décider, from Latin decidere, “to determine.” The Latin decidere comes from de-, which means “off,” plus caedere, which means “cut” or “kill.” When you decide, you CUT OFF other alternatives. Basically, failure is not an option.
DECIDE is made up of the words DE-and-CIDE. -Cide comes from the Latin word “caedere,” which also means “kill,” as we know from words like “suicide” and “homicide.”
When you decide, you not only cut out all other alternatives, you remove that which kills you – indecision!
2. Continue Learning
To be successful as a leader, you need to be competent. People want a leader they can trust to get the job done; someone who brings results. They are more willing to follow your lead when you are competent and have a proven track record.
How do you become more competent?
Continue studying on a daily basis.
For some reason, most people spend very little time learning and improving their leadership skills. In this universe, nothing stays the same – either you’re getting smarter every day or you’re getting dumber.
Learning is not necessarily what we used to do in school where we had to read the textbook to memorize the answers for the test. Learning means understanding new things and getting better ways to do things. This is important because it means that you’ll be able to get better results.
The proof is in the pudding. If, after attending a conference or a training, you’re not able to do a better job than before, did you actually learn anything?
To learn, you need to understand the concept or idea. The concept consists of sentences, and so if you don’t understand the sentences, you can’t learn. What are sentences composed of?
Yup!
Words and symbols!
So, if you want to learn something, you have to understand the words and symbols that make it up. If you can’t do that, how can you expect to understand the concept? The only reason why you didn’t understand something or were not able to learn a specific subject was because there were words and/or symbols you didn’t fully understand.
Make the dictionary your best friend when you study. Look up words you don’t understand or that you’re not sure about-and grow your vocabulary. Studies show that successful leaders and top executives have a vocabulary well above average.
One leadership skill that is essential for every successful business leader is the ability to effectively communicate with others. When you have a broad vocabulary, you’re better able to understand others and learn new concepts.
3. Build Confidence
What does it mean to be confident? Confidence comes from the Latin word com-, meaning “with” and -fidere, “to trust.” Confidence means that you have full trust and reliance.
In other words, when people have confidence in you, they know they can rely on you. This is important because, as a leader, you need to be a stable point for them, like a pilar. Life can be confusing when there is a lot of random motion—too many changes, uncertainties, lack of clarity. And as you’ve probably experienced, it’s very difficult to be productive and accomplish anything when there is chaos and you’re feeling confused.
What can you do? How do you build confidence?
Nobody wants to follow a leader they can’t rely on or trust. But before others can trust you, you must trust yourself. Keep your word—especially to yourself. When you say you’re going to do something, do it. And if you say you’re not going to do something, don’t do it. Be honest and keep your integrity, so that you know you can rely on yourself.
You also build confidence by taking actions that are in the best interest of the group and its purpose. The group can be your company, department, or family. You are a good person, and you want to help. So, if you do things that cause more harm than good, if you cheat, lie, or do anything else that you know is not right, you’ll stop trusting yourself and begin losing confidence.
As a leader, you need to make decisions that are in the best interest of the success and survival of the group. For example, if one employee is not doing his job and is making trouble, you may feel bad having to fire him because he has little children and bills to pay. But you need to make a decision that is in the best interest of the team and the company. Even if it’s a tough decision to make, others will know they can rely on you and trust you to do what is right.
Take responsibility when you make a mistake. At the time, it seemed the right thing to do, so when later it turned out that it wasn’t, be honest about it. Don’t blame others or become afraid to make decisions in the future. No need to beat yourself up. Assess the situation, make up for the damage, and solve the mistake. Just make it go right.