Leadership Skills

The leadership skills are not the same as the managerial skills. The people usually tend to mix the leadership and the management, but they have no many skills in common. The leader is not focused on the daily management, the leader lives his or her life in the long term vision. The different set of the skills is needed.

There are many leadership research studies trying to identify the basic set of the leadership skills. They explored many leadership skills, but many of them are not too important. Some are essential and the leadership development programs focus on development of them as they can bring the biggest leadership success.

The leadership studies identified the main following leadership skills:

• Understanding the role of the leader - the leader know, what is expected from the role and feels fully comfortable in this position, even when he is the leader by accident
• Keeping the group together - the most important leadership skill for the successful organization as the members of the group know whom they follow
• Communication - the leader spends most of the time communicating, supporting and motivating the members of the group. When the leader has no communication skills then he is not a leader. It is that simple.
• Planning - the leader does not plan details, but the leader plan a high level project plan for the whole organization or group and explains the outputs of each phase.
• Evaluating - the leader has to be able to tell the evaluation to the members of the organization bringing the results. The leader has to say a proper evaluation as the members can build their own values, which are awarded by the leader and they can develop their own skills necessary for the success in the organization.
• Setting the example - the people follow the leader, who sets positive examples and is able to warn against negative examples. It is the real leadership skill and as always... Draw, what you can draw and each successful leader draws picture for the members of the organization as the pictures are understood well
• Counseling - members of the organization have conflicts among them. The positive conflict is extremely important for the successful progress, but the counselor is needed from time to time. The leader has to counsel and the members of the group have to accept the solution.
• Teaching - the people love to learn and they want to learn new things through all their lives. The leader has to be a good and respected teacher. It is not easy, but it bring tremendous results.

The leadership skills are not unified and many leadership development approaches can develop different skills, but the leadership skills mentioned above are the most usual ones.