5 What Are Leadership Skills?

The news that their team leader was leaving the company after her pregnancy and delivery crushed Paula. Of course, Paula completely understood her leader’s choice to remain at home with her infant and to start her own home business. Although the company’s owner had grumbled that the leader would fail at business on her own, Paula knew that her leader would instead prosper leading her own company. The owner was right that Paula’s team leader didn’t particularly act like an owner, manager, or leader. The team leader didn’t have the age, credentials, or experience of other leaders. But the team leader’s pure skills mesmerized and awed Paula, who’d never seen anyone like her. Otherwise, the team leader acted pretty much like everyone else on the company floor. Yet for her team leader’s skills alone, Paula would do anything the team leader said and would follow her anywhere. 

Skills

Skills are learned, rehearsed, and refined abilities applied to accomplish specific functions or tasks. Skills have a lot to do with executing tasks or functions competently or, even more so, excellently. We refer to an especially skilled person within a technical field as an expert, one whom we admire and retain for their technical skill and expertise. And so skill has much to do with how well one does things that others may not necessarily be able to do at all. We retain surgeons and bomb defusers for their skill. Conversely, we retain refuse collectors for their willingness much more so than for their skill. Nearly everything requires a degree of skill. But when we refer to skills, we generally mean particularly useful capacities that one has improved beyond the norm. A skilled person is well above average in the advertised craft, maybe even gifted for a task that novices would botch. Don’t underestimate the role that skills can play in effective leadership.

Value

Skills don’t just have to do with refined performance. Skills also have to do with the value and risks of the work. Skill generally refers to excellently completing tasks of high risk and value. Value and risk, of course, relate to one another. The higher the risk of the activity, the higher the value of the one who can skillfully perform it. Some activities, like heart surgery and emergency medicine, carry both great risk and great value. Yet value also has to do with general or specific worth or utility, apart from risk. Some activities, like law enforcement, have great general value. Skilled officers save lives. Other activities, like civil engineering, have great specific value. Skilled civil engineers make roads, bridges, and dams work. Depending on the team or organization, skilled leadership can have great general or specific value, and high risk. Teams and organizations benefit from skilled leadership for its high value and ability to adroitly manage and reduce risk. 

Attributes

Leadership skills bear an interesting and important relationship to leader attributes. Skills differ from attributes. As the prior chapter addressed, attributes are the deeper qualities reflecting a person’s character or disposition toward subjects generally. By contrast, skills are the honed capacities for specific activities that pursue specific ends. In a leader, just as for other persons and roles, skills lay atop attributes. A leader may, for instance, have the attributes of a warm and compassionate heart, with high emotional intelligence. But if the leader lacks skills to express and communicate those attributes, the team or organization may benefit little from them. For another example, a leader may have a deep capacity for prompt and decisive action. But if the leader doesn’t have skill within the technical field in which the team members work, the team may benefit little from the leader’s efficient direction. Attributes reflect themselves outward through a leader’s skills. A leader with great attributes but little skill may be unable to reflect those attributes out effectively through the organization, like a fish out of water or duck off the pond.

Execution

When leadership is the subject, one usually thinks of attributes before skills, if one thinks of skills at all. We choose leaders to draw from deep wells of giftedness, personality, presence, and experience. Leadership draws heavily on the leader’s character, so much so that one could say that teams and organizations take on the character of their leader. Follow a schizophrenic leader, and you’ll have a schizophrenic team. Follow a bold leader, and you’ll have a bold organization. But skills can be significant to a leader, too. Skills reside in the execution more so than the decision and determination. But execution can be just as important as determination, indeed on occasions more so. Leaders need not just have the attributes of leadership to make sound and timely decisions drawing from those attributes. Leaders also need to see those decisions carried out, implemented and executed according to their discernment and desires. Skills facilitate the implementation. For instance, a leader may make a great decision based on the leader’s innate sense of discernment and judgment. But if the leader lacks the planning, communication, and motivational skills to turn that decision into action, the organization may benefit little from the decision. See your leadership as a matter of executing through refined skills.

Preferred

So what, then, are the preferred skills that a leader should exhibit? Decision-making skills are a good place to start. Sound judgment and common sense are attributes, but reliably exercising that judgment and sense can require research skills, listening skills, problem-solving skills, critical thinking and analytical skills, and decision-making skills. A leader may then need public-speaking, presenting, writing, editing, or other communication skills to inform others of the decision, followed by delegating, team-building, teamwork, teaching, mentoring, collaboration, and other motivational and interpersonal skills to build a team and get the team moving in the decision’s direction. The leader may then need strategic and tactical skills, administrative skills, and negotiation, mediation, diplomacy, feedback, and conflict-management skills, to see the decision implemented. And to accomplish all of that work in good spirits and health, the leader may need substantial time-management and work-life balance skills. Don’t underestimate the role of skills in leadership.

Priority

Just as some attributes like honesty and integrity may be critical for leaders, some skills also jump out as priority or critical for leaders in some fields and organizations. Decision making is, as the prior paragraph just suggested, a priority skill. Sound judgment, common sense, and a refined and sensitive intuition may be attributes, but decision making is, by contrast, a process and therefore a skill. Sound decisions may require correctly framing the question, discerning the necessary information, completing the research, performing the analysis, and testing the results, among other steps, all of them involving refined skills. Communication follows as a priority leadership skill. Great communicators tend to make good leaders. If you have strong decision-making skills and are a great communicator, you have the makings of a leader. Planning and administrative skills may come next, to ensure that the leader is providing the organization with adequate clarity and structure. The cluster of motivational skills, including delegating, mentoring, team building, and teamwork skills may come next in the descending hierarchy of leadership skills. Strategic and tactical skills, including conflict management, negotiation, and mediation, may come next. See leadership skills as involving a core or hierarchy of critical skills descending through priority skills. Some skills are more important than others.

Helpful

Leaders may, at times, make much of skills that frankly don’t relate directly to leadership functions but can nonetheless help distinguish the leader and even substitute for or satisfy core leadership functions. Social skills are an example. Leaders don’t typically have to be highly sociable. Indeed, leadership can be relatively or even severely isolating. With all their challenges, demands, and responsibilities, leaders may even fall into a bunker mentality, hiding in the executive suite while trying to effectively pull leadership’s many levers, put out the many leadership fires, or plug the organization’s many holes. Yet the leader who has a gift for social entertainment may put that gift to good use in ways that effectively pull levers, put out fires, and plug holes. A big Christmas party or Fourth of July picnic, where the leader can effectively pat workers on the back while glad-handing managers, may do wonders for team building and conflict management. If you have unusual gifts not directly related to leadership functions, explore how you may be able to put them to work to sustain or amplify your leadership. Even things so unusual as graphics skill, cooking skill, or skill at a certain sport may in certain situations form a groundwork for refreshing leadership.

Delegation

Leaders need not necessarily have all the skills necessary for the role, if they have other valuable skills and the organization can work around the leader’s weaknesses. An organization may be able to cover for a leader’s lack of skill in certain areas. The leader may be able to delegate tasks to others when lacking skill to execute those tasks. For example, a leader who lacks interpersonal skill may find a highly personable administrative assistant to fill the emotional and relational gap in the leader’s arsenal. The leader may alternatively be able to rely on one skill to cover a weakness in a related skill. For example, a leader who lacks writing skill but is a great public speaker and presenter may just do more speaking and less writing. Alternatively, the organization’s board or ownership may rely on the leader only for the skills the leader possesses, while handling other functions on its own or assigning those functions to others. For example, a board may rely on a leader who is only a great communicator and not much else, only to communicate decisions that the board itself makes, rather than entrusting those decisions to the leader to make a poor decision. If you find that you lack skills for the leadership role you seek or already occupy, see if you can compensate with other skills, delegate to others with those skills, or cede the function to another authority within the organization. 

Acquisition

If  you lack certain leadership skills, you may be able to acquire them. While we think of attributes as more inherent than learned, the opposite is generally true of skills. We think of skills as more learned than inherited. You can, for instance, learn a better process for decision making. You can also learn listening skills, research skills, and analysis skills to make better decisions, and writing and speaking skills to be a better communicator. Your education should have given you a basic skill set in multiple areas relating to leadership, not just in decision making and communication but also in time management, teamwork, and administrative skills. Your prior work experience before leadership should have augmented those skills and added other skills in interpersonal relations, conflict management, and work-life balance. Yet other skills, like negotiation, mediation, and motivation, may benefit from specific training. Organizational and behavioral psychology insights from well-designed training programs can quickly open your eyes to key leadership skills and opportunities for growth in those skills. Other skills, like strategic thinking and tactical sense, may come only with modeling, mentoring, and practice. 

Development

Don’t simply rue your lack of skills. Rather, be intentional in planning your leadership skill development. You may be able to do a lot on your own. Research leadership skills. Practice those skills in your current position. Volunteer for assignments and activities that require you to test, exercise, and hone your leadership skills. Volunteering for board and committee service can introduce you to other leaders, giving you a chance to observe and model their skills, while exercising your own leadership skills. You may also be able to gain your employer’s assistance in developing your leadership skills. Let your supervisor or other confidante and advocate within the organization know of your interest in strengthening your leadership skills. Identify a training program or seminar, or ask your mentor to help you do so, and then seek your employer’s sponsorship for that program or seminar. Attend conferences and workshops. And seek mentors both inside and outside the organization where you work or volunteer. Make a plan and execute your plan for your leadership skill development.

Reflection

On a scale from one to ten, how would you rate your overall leadership skills? What is your strongest leadership skill? What is your weakest leadership skill? Do you need to develop a skill that would be critical for the leadership position you seek or is critical for the role you hold now? What opportunities do you have immediately at hand for developing your leadership skills? Are there assignments you could seek and pursue that would test and grow your skills? Do you have seminars or programs in which you could enroll, or conferences you could attend, to learn leadership skills? Do you have volunteer opportunities you could pursue to test and grow your leadership skills? Do you have mentors available to you to guide you in your leadership skill development? Do you have an unusually prominent skill that you could deploy to compensate for weaker or absent skills? Can you delegate leadership functions to others who have greater skill in those areas? Can you work with your ownership or board to allow you to lead in functions for which you are most skilled, while reserving other functions for the ownership or board, or assigning them to other leaders or managers? Are you fully committed to your skill development?

Key Points

• Leaders and their teams benefit from a broad range of leadership skills.

• Leadership skills have higher value around high risk/reward issues.

• Skills allow a leader to reflect the leader’s better attributes.

• Leadership skills have to do with executing or carrying out functions.

• Preferred skills include decision making and communication.

• Skills descend in priority to planning, strategic, and team skills.

• Non-core skills may compensate for weaknesses in core skills.

• Delegating or reserving functions to others may cover for absent skills.

• Acquiring leadership skills involves training, modeling, and practice.

• Intentionally develop your skills to improve your leadership.

Read Chapter 6.