Leadership Skills Every Employer Looks For
What is authentic leadership? Definition
When things were simpler, a leader was just someone who delivered orders. Others joined in.
Things start to change now. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, leadership is the capacity to guide others. But why do people follow you? Simon Sinek, author of Leaders Eat Last, claims that "You are a leader if your actions motivate others to achieve greater heights in all spheres of endeavour.
That's not all, though. "I define a leader as someone who takes responsibility for recognising the potential in people and systems and who dares to develop that potential," writes Brene Brown, the author of Dare to Lead. According to Tony Dungy, author of The Mentor Leader, the chief responsibility of a leader is to "engage, inform, arm, enlighten, encourage, amplify, and energise.
Therefore, leaders are those who keep things moving along and keep others inspired. But how do you do that? Empathy, decision-making, critical thinking, effective communication, and other abilities are all necessary for leadership. Let's go over a few of them.
Empathy
Building an emotionally healthy business where each employee feels valued is what empathy entails.
Although it's frequently disregarded, empathy is actually a crucial component of creating effective teams. Consider this: excessive turnover is a result of toxic work environments, employee discontent, and emotional exhaustion. Money is lost as a result.
A leader who can keep the teams responding to work needs without upsetting people, prevent misunderstandings and inaccurate judgements, and keep them doing so will enable an even and sustainable business scaling.
Critical thinking
Making sound judgements and judgements based on in-depth fact analysis is a prerequisite for this competence. Although critical thinking is a skill that not everyone has, everything is possible with effort. We can deconstruct critical thinking into a variety of parts, such as:
Questioning
assumptions
Analyzing data and
drawing conclusions
Testing hypotheses
Checking evidence
However, the ability to identify the shortcomings in the current system and propose an expedient adjustment is the most crucial quality of a critical thinker.
For instance, according to Jason Fried, author of It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work, they merely chose one day to cease running advertisements on Facebook, Google, and Twitter after realising the benefits were meagre in the middle of the campaign. They won because they stopped using social media, which allowed them to spend more time and money in other areas. Not every business can do it that way all the time. However, using critical thinking enables leaders to choose wisely within a specific time frame. This is how it operates.
Decision making
This talent is a propensity for accepting accountability under urgent circumstances. However, there is a trap here: people only complement your decision-making if it results in profit. So, we must mention a success aspect when discussing this skill.
You must possess the following traits in order to correctly make decisions:
Courage to act fast
Knowledge of your
domain of specialization
Ability to analyze
trends
View different
perspectives
At the same time, you must understand how to steer clear of various decision-making pitfalls like Chip Heath's "spotlight effect." Heath cautions us against making decisions based solely on the information in front of us while disregarding the reality behind the scenes in his book Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work.
Consider leading a group of devoted software engineers. You notice a drop in output. The first choice is to identify and remove a weak link. A spotlight is that. Off-stage information, however, may reveal additional information, such as client feedback delays. Only by considering all the variables can you make wise selections.
