Leadership skills are not only needed by leaders or business owners but are skills required for anyone who wants to be heard around them and to be influential.
Whatever you are doing now in your life:
- Student.
- Entrepreneur.
- Officer.
- Boss.
- Teacher.
You need leadership skills that fit your position, the larger your responsibilities and the circle of people you deal with, the more you need to master your leadership skills.
In this piece, we are trying to shed light on the most important leadership skills you need to become an influential and likable person.
Leadership Skills
1- Responsibility & Honor
There is no successful leader unless he holds himself accountable before he holds others accountable. If the company or organization fails, he is the first to say “I am wrong.”
The leader does not attribute to himself an only success and the right decisions, but he attributes everything to himself, and he bears all the consequences of the decisions of the team he works with because he is responsible for them.
You will not find any real leader who excludes himself from obligations, or gives himself more advantages than those around him, as He / She is like them and leads them by being an example to them.
2- Effective Communication
There is a saying “A great Leader Is A Great Communicator”, which means that a great leader is someone who knows how to communicate with others skillfully.
The leader knows when to speak up and when to be silent to listen to those around him and show them that he cares about them, knows how and when to tell someone on the team that he / she is wrong, and knows how to use words to praise someone who has done a good job.
3- Confidence
The successful leader moves with confidence in the steps because he/she trusts himself and his ability to make decisions, as he/she trusts those around him and gives them their space of freedom and creativity.
In the latest psychology studies, they found that people who are confident in themselves always have experience and knowledge of what they are doing, meaning that a large part of confidence comes from knowledge.
To speak in front of people or give orders to those around you and make decisions, you must be fully aware of what you are talking about, so you find the ignorant leader vacillating and hesitant and does not know what he/she is talking about.
Therefore, make sure that you are well versed in your skill and that you are familiar with everything in the organization that you run.
4- Have a Clear Vision
A true leader knows very well what he wants and what he seeks, and this in itself is a source of inspiration for those around him to follow him after they believed in this vision.
That is why you find that most of the employees who work in the best and largest companies in the world… work there mainly because they believed in the founder of the company and his vision for the future.
Vision is the main driver of any successful leader. It is the incentive that makes him wake up every day energetic to go to his work and get closer and closer to achieving his vision on the ground.
Always remember that the vision is not only for the person standing at the top of the pyramid, it is for the manager, the administrator, the student, and the supervisor, as long as you are responsible for a specific task or a group of people, you must have a specific purpose and a vision that you seek to achieve.
5- Good management and distribution of tasks
The leader knows how to take advantage of all the resources and opportunities available to him, knows how to exploit each individual in the work team according to his capabilities and capabilities.
He knows how to read the data and analyze it to know the locations of the defects and defects to correct them, and also to know the areas of strength and excellence to enlarge them.
6- Fast Learner
Any successful leader learns to speed up. If you explain something to him/her or tell him about a new technology that has emerged, he will work on it until he masters it to use it in work and management.
The speed of learning comes from concentration and learning how to search for information from reliable sources and then apply it well. What is the benefit of learning anything new without exploiting it?!
7- Creativity and development
A true leader never stops looking at the future. He/she looks at the problems in front of him and how to overcome them. He/she looks at the resources in his hands and looks for how to develop them.
Additional skills:-
1- The ability to communicate with others
As we mentioned earlier, the skill of communicating with others effectively is one of the most important leadership skills that you must have, it is a skill that all companies and organizations require.
The question here is, “How do you master this skill?”
A study published by UCLA University in the United States of America, says:
“People, in general, depend on 3 factors in accepting the other person and evaluating the message he wants to deliver to them.”
This evaluation was as follows:
The visual factor: 55% of the other person’s evaluation depends on his visual impact in conveying the information.
Auditory factor: 38% of the other person’s evaluation is based on the tone of their voice in different situations.
The verbal factor: 7% of the other person’s evaluation is based on the words and terms they use.
To win others and communicate with them, you must:
Always use simple, clear, and easy-to-understand words for everyone around you.
You should change the pitch of your voice according to the nature of the event, but be careful not to speak when you are angry or if there is any personal circumstance that may affect you.
When you talk to people, rely on communicating only one idea, and after you are sure that you explained it well, move on to the next idea.
You always have to look people in the eyes as you talk to them so that you go from one person to another when you go from one point to another.
Don’t be afraid to use your hands to speak, but make sure that there is space between your hand and your shoulder to give the impression of being open to others.
Make your facial expressions in harmony with your words; it is not correct to talk about something serious and decisive while laughing and smiling and vice versa.
You always have to be honest.
Your general appearance is a big factor, so make sure you wear appropriate clothes and pay attention to your hygiene and your smell.
Do not underestimate these simple steps because body language has a magic factor in influencing others.
Follow these steps constantly, and with the subject, you are talking about, you will be able to communicate your thoughts very easily.
This is the first half of being a good communicator. Remember, if you can have people’s ears and attention, you can easily shape their awareness and influence.
As for the second half of the skill of communicating with others, it is about listening to them. To master this part, you must:
When someone talks to you, make sure you always look at them.
Do not interrupt someone who is talking to you.
Hear more than you speak.
Be the last person to speak after you hear the other person so you can respond better.
Use your facial expressions and your hand in interaction with the other person to ensure that you hear and are affected by what they have to say.
When someone talks to you and sees you paying attention and asking them questions about the topic they are talking about, He / She will feel that you care and respect him, and this makes him reciprocate with you the same interest and respect.
2- The skill of dealing with the evaluation of others (Feedback)
This skill is part of the communication skills, here we talk about it separately because of its great importance, to be a successful person in any field, you must be proficient in dealing with people’s evaluation of you and your evaluation of them.
When someone criticizes you, don’t take the situation personally. Treat it like an athlete who listens to the coach’s screams and criticism and takes it as a motivator to achieve better results.
When you give an evaluation to anyone, be sure to be sensitive, give him the evaluation in private, make sure first that he is fine and in good health, and that there is no external factor affecting him.
When you give any evaluation be specific and clear and do not generalize.
Never nervously criticize any policy or law in public in front of everyone, control your feelings and follow the rules set out in the face of any problem.
When you do this, you will earn the respect of others, whether you are a boss or a subordinate, and you will be a role model for everyone around you, and everyone will turn to you in the event of any problem to help them solve it.
3- Taking the Initiative
This is one of the skills that show the true leader in any organization anywhere, the real leader is always proactive in solving problems and dealing with obstacles.
He is the one who takes action when he sees any mistake to remedy it, so be more courageous and be effective.
4- The skill of cooperating with others and distributing tasks.
To be a successful leader, you must cooperate with everyone around you, and this skill can only be acquired if you communicate well with people, read their personalities, and identify their strengths.
So that you depend on them at the right time and in the right way… and to do it right you have to be humble and clear.
