10 Effective Leadership Skills To Lead a Team
Leadership skills are important in managing a team and fostering career growth. Leaders can be found at all levels of an organization, and exhibiting certain characteristics will help management recognize you for your potential.
If you want to be considered for promotions and other career opportunities, you should show upper management that you have the necessary skills to lead. In this article, we'll detail 10 of the most effective leadership skills you need to lead a team.
What are leadership skills?
Leadership skills are traits that help motivate and encourage team members to work together to reach a common goal. Leadership traits encompass a variety of skills that are useful for defining a vision and finding the best way to reach it. Many employers value leadership skills since they can be valuable in nearly any position. They can also show an employee's growth potential and how they can contribute to the company.
Mastering these leadership skills could benefit your career. With strong leadership skills, you can be a good choice for additional roles and responsibilities. If an employer trusts your leadership abilities, they may be more likely to offer you a promotion. Leadership traits can also help you build better rapport with your coworkers, making it easier to reach goals.
10 effective leadership skills
The following leadership skills are essential to lead a team:
Communication
Decisiveness
Self-knowledge
Collaboration
Respect
Talent recognition
Mentoring
Storytelling
Motivation
Direction
Communication
Communicating effectively helps a leader convey ideas and directions while also understanding and implementing feedback. They should have good written and verbal communication skills to work closely with team members and clients. Active listening is an important part of communication as well since it helps leaders learn about the needs of their team.
An effective leader understands the kind of questions they should be asking to get the information they need. Good leaders use open-ended questions for better understanding and stronger communication.
Decisiveness
Effective leaders should make decisions quickly with the information they have while considering all options. Decisiveness helps a project progress and improves efficiency by defining clear instructions. Being decisive involves building confidence in yourself and your team. You should be certain your team can reach attainable goals.
Self-knowledge
If you want to be an effective leader, you need to understand the environment in which you perform best, the skills you possess and the areas you need additional assistance in. This requires an examination of your past working environments, especially the ones where you thrived or where you struggled.
Applying that knowledge can help you understand how you can best lead. You can review past evaluations of your work or data, like quotas you needed to meet, to learn more about your performance.
Collaboration
An effective leader can create a cohesive group under a common principle. To do this, you should be willing to share the mission and goals with your group.
You may also need to translate that into something they can apply to themselves directly. For instance, telling a customer service department that the company's sales goal for the year is 3 million dollars likely won't unite them in a common course of action.
However, if you show exactly how they're part of that through improving customer retention by 25% and outlining ways to reach that objective, you can show them how they're a part of the overall goal.
If you can show how their careers will be directly impacted by the larger company goals, they'll understand their role and feel personally invested in the outcome. If they help construct the path by which you attain the goals, they will feel challenged to exceed the goals.
Respect
To be an effective leader, you should respect all levels of the organization and outside stakeholders, such as vendors, partners and affiliates. Respect could be listening to their needs and opinions, learning more about their perspective and coming to a mutually beneficial agreement. People often work harder and contribute more often to those who respect and treat them like professionals.
Talent recognition
Many effective leaders are good at developing skills and abilities in their team members. Sometimes that means recognizing a natural talent in another person that they haven't recognized themselves. Once you recognize that talent, you may be able to leverage it for the benefit of the organization and the individual.
For instance, if you discover a member of your team enjoys writing as a hobby you may suggest that they get involved in the company blog or social media.
Mentoring
Another important leadership skill is investing in others. Look for ways to help team members progress their career paths. Mentoring can help individuals learn more about their strengths and how to apply them to their careers. If you invest in them, they'll be more likely to stay with the company. That keeps the talent internal instead of losing it to the competition.
Storytelling
Storytelling can help a leader compel others to take action. For leaders who master storytelling, people listen to what they say and have an emotional response to it. This skill also helps leaders maintain a dedicated team that stays motivated. Developing storytelling skills involves strong communication and emotional intelligence.
Leaders should be able to understand their audience's reactions when pitching an idea and make adjustments to their story to keep them engaged.
Motivation
This trait involves team motivation and self-motivation. Leaders need to keep motivation and engagement high in teams to reach goals. To maintain motivation, leaders can offer praise, recognition and encouragement. Self-motivation is also important for keeping leaders focused on their vision. They need to stay inspired to complete their own parts of a goal.
Direction
If a team is going to follow a leader, that leader must lead by example. Leaders with a well-articulated direction, a guiding principle, moral code or mission have a basis for strong, understandable decision-making. A leader should always conduct themselves in a way that makes people feel like they would never ask anything of them that they wouldn't be willing to do themselves.
How to cultivate effective leadership skills to lead a team
There are several ways to build upon your current leadership skills, such as:
1. Be creative
Whether you're talking about solutions or ways to meet your goals, a creative approach is a sign of a good leader. It can also help you be a more agile leader, another necessary skill for good leadership.
2. Get feedback
Try asking your direct supervisor or manager what areas you could work on to improve your leadership skills. Be ready to accept and act upon constructive criticism.
3. Find a model or a mentor
Select someone who models your ideal leadership type. Examine what it is that you find so effective about that person's leadership style. Try to replicate it in your life. If possible, consider asking them for leadership advice or if they could be your mentor.
4. Apply what you've learned
If you want to improve your leadership skills, you need to practice leading. Identify places where you can put your new knowledge into action. For example, you may ask if your manager can make you the lead on a project. If your current employer can't give you more leadership opportunities, you can find ways to leave on a volunteer level with a nonprofit, professional association, chamber of commerce or hobby organization.