Key leadership skills you need to invest in

Key leadership skills you need to invest in

Career, Career Brand Management, Personal Branding

Discover the 15 key leadership skills essential for guiding teams, driving organizational success, and advancing your career. Learn how abilities like communication, decision-making, delegation, empathy, and conflict resolution empower leaders to unite their teams and achieve shared goals.

Leadership skills are the strengths and abilities that enable individuals to guide teams, oversee processes, and drive their organization toward the achievement of its goals. These skills are essential for making thoughtful decisions about an organization’s mission, effectively allocating resources, and ensuring that employees are motivated to contribute to the shared vision.

Whether you’re a manager, project leader, or team member, leadership skills are crucial at every stage of your career—from applying for jobs to seeking career advancement. Employers consistently value leadership as one of the most important soft skills because it often incorporates other key traits such as communication, honesty, creativity, and confidence. Understanding and developing leadership skills can help you unlock your potential and succeed in any role.

Leadership is not just a single trait, but a combination of several key abilities such as delegation, conflict resolution, decision-making, and empathy. These skills empower leaders to unite their teams, support initiatives, and inspire others to perform at their best. In this article, we will explore 15 critical leadership skills that can help you foster a collaborative, high-performing team and advance in your professional journey.

LEADESHIP SKILLS TO INVEST IN


1. Effective Communication

Great leaders maintain open communication channels, using a variety of methods such as one-on-one sessions, email, video, chat, and social media. They convey ideas clearly, break down complex information, and ensure everyone understands the goals. This fosters a transparent and collaborative environment.

2. Relationship Building

Building strong, trusting relationships within the team is essential for driving engagement and performance. Leaders who invest time in forming authentic connections create a more cohesive and motivated workforce, leading to higher productivity and a supportive atmosphere.

3. Emotional Intelligence and Empathy

Empathetic leaders excel at understanding their team members’ emotions and perspectives. This understanding helps in addressing concerns and creating a positive, inclusive work environment. By managing emotions and showing care, leaders build stronger, more engaged teams.

4. Decision-Making

Leaders need to make informed, strategic decisions, often under pressure. This requires gathering insights, thinking critically, and balancing immediate needs with long-term goals. Effective leaders stand by their decisions but remain adaptable when situations change.

5. Strategic and Critical Thinking

Strategic thinking involves long-term planning and anticipating challenges, while critical thinking enables leaders to solve complex problems by analyzing various solutions and making logical connections between ideas. This powerful combination of skills ensures that leaders effectively guide their organizations toward sustainable success. By solving complex problems, they can achieve the best outcomes for their teams while remaining adaptable in an ever-changing environment. Ultimately, honing both strategic and critical thinking skills empowers leaders to navigate challenges more effectively and make informed decisions that benefit their organizations in the long run.

6. Adaptability and Flexibility

Flexibility is essential for leaders who need to navigate constant change in the business environment. Adaptable leaders adjust quickly, take on various roles, and problem-solve in real time, ensuring their teams remain resilient in the face of uncertainty.

7. Innovation and Creativity

Creative leaders inspire innovation and motivate their teams to think outside the box. They encourage brainstorming and value employees’ creative input, recognizing and rewarding new ideas that drive progress and competitive advantage.

8. Delegation

Leaders who delegate effectively empower their team members by assigning tasks based on individual strengths and skills. This not only builds trust but also promotes engagement, allowing leaders to focus on high-level tasks while their teams thrive independently.

10. Conflict Management

Leaders must be adept at managing and resolving conflicts. By staying level-headed, analytical, and impartial, effective leaders address disputes efficiently, turning conflicts into opportunities for growth and stronger collaboration.

11. Accountability and Responsibility

Accountable leaders take ownership of their decisions and actions, ensuring their teams follow suit. This builds a culture of trust and integrity where everyone is responsible for their performance and outcomes, contributing to team success.

12. Mentorship and Development

Effective leaders act as mentors, guiding and supporting their team members’ professional development. By providing constructive feedback, recognition, and opportunities for growth, leaders help employees reach their full potential.

13. Inspiration and Motivation

Leaders who inspire and motivate their teams create an environment of enthusiasm and commitment. By aligning team members’ goals with the organization’s vision and maintaining high morale, leaders foster a productive and driven team culture.

14. Recognizing Potential

A great leader is skilled at identifying and acknowledging the potential talents and competencies within their team. By recognizing and rewarding employees’ abilities, leaders foster a sense of value and encourage continued growth and contribution.

15. Feedback

Constructive feedback is vital for employee growth. Effective leaders provide ongoing, actionable feedback, helping team members understand where they stand and what areas need improvement, contributing to a culture of continuous development.

By integrating these key leadership skills, leaders can create a well-rounded, supportive, and high-performing team, ensuring both personal and organizational success.

Conclusion

Mastering these 15 key leadership skills is essential for both personal and professional growth as a leader. These abilities—ranging from strategic thinking and decision-making to communication, empathy, and conflict resolution—are not only vital for driving organizational success but also crucial for nurturing and empowering your team to reach its full potential. Effective leaders understand that developing these skills is an ongoing process, which allows them to adapt to new challenges, inspire their teams, and create a positive, high-performing work environment.

Furthermore, investing time and effort into honing these leadership traits benefits not only the leader but also the team, thereby fostering a culture of trust, innovation, and collaboration. As a result, teams become more engaged, productive, and better equipped to meet their goals. Ultimately, the commitment to growing as a leader will have a lasting impact on your career trajectory, the performance of your team, and the long-term success of your organization.

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Develop or perish – key skills to remain competitive in the future workplace

Develop or perish – key skills to remain competitive in the future workplace

Career, Career Brand Management

Do you want to remain competitive in the future workplace? Check if you have the 10 key skills and competencies to stay relevant.

 

Overworked, discouraged and without energy – those are the characteristics of the XIX century workforce. An alarming picture emerges from numerous studies and burnout became a modern plague. Especially now, when social interactions are limited due to the global pandemic and most of the work is done remotely from the home office.

Many professionals start feeling that their potential or skills at work are not utilized to the fullest potential. As a result, they do not know what to look for, where to place their passions, what is the purpose and meaning of their lives. Does this sound familiar to you?

New competency model

Technological development, which is revolutionizing the world before our eyes, introduces inevitably changes in the way we live and work. The development of artificial intelligence, robotization, management of a huge amount of data – all this means that the competency model of employees is changing. And skills like comprehensive problem solving, creativity, innovation, cooperation, cognitive flexibility and empathy become more important. 

A big question is if all employees and leaders have the strength to become such?

Many employees often feel discouragement, irritation, fear or even anxiety. The tasks they perform do not give them satisfaction and joy and they don’t know the sense and purpose of their job duties. On such foundations, it is impossible to build competencies of the future that will help to win with artificial intelligence.

Ideal employee of the future

The ideal employee of the future is a flexible specialist. One that is digitally savvy and has the ability to see problems in a wider spectrum. A creative individual that can also demonstrate analytical thinking and understanding of the data.

And while machines can beat us in analyzing information, they cannot look at it creatively. For this reason, in the era of machines, there will be someone who is well-versed in his work, empathic, able to communicate and cooperate and having a flexible mind. Such a combination of features ensured success in every age and there is no indication that the machines would change something in this field.

 

Key skills to develop or acquire

Let’s look at the below 10 skills and competencies that can keep you relevant in the future workplace.

Interdisciplinarity – the ability to understand concepts from various fields and “connecting the dots”.
In the face of the increasing complexity of the world and problems, narrow specialities will not allow people to properly understand reality. Therefore, people with 360 degree view and expertise in various fields will have the advantage. 

Innovative and adaptive thinking – proficiency in unconventional thinking that goes beyond the usual patterns. Creativity, flexibility and openness to change are the base for development and progress.

Digital competencies – the ability to use a wide array of digital tool, as well as new media for effective communication.

Design thinking – the ability to use a non-linear iterative process to understand users’ needs and problems, creating solutions and prototypes,  defining tasks and their implementation to achieve the expected results.

Computational thinking – the ability to understand and translate huge amounts of data into abstract concepts. As the amount of available data increases, people will have to be able to process the huge amount of information in a meaningful way.

Deeper reasoning – the ability to recognize the deeper meaning or importance of what is being expressed. While routine and repetitive activities can be performed by robots, there is a whole range of skills that the computer will not be able to master, such as drawing deeper conclusions that go beyond the scheme.

Emotional intelligence – the ability to communicate with other people in a deep and direct way that allows you to feel and stimulate specific reactions. Employees with high emotional intelligence are able to quickly assess the emotions of other people, empathize with them and communicate more effectively. 

Intercultural competence – ability to work with people from various cultural backgrounds. In the times of progressing globalization, the ability to work with people who function in different cultural conditions may turn out to be a gold competence.

Working in informational noise – the ability to filter valid and credible information in the media noise and overload of facts and data will become increasingly important to effectively work in the world of complexity. 

Virtual collaboration – the ability to work effectively within virtual teams. The rapid development of communication techniques will require employees of the future to work at a distance within virtual teams. Usage of tools for online or virtual cooperation will be an asset.

 

 

 

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Career Brand Management – Skills Portfolio

Career Brand Management – Skills Portfolio

Career, Career Brand Management

To maintain your own employability, you need to develop capabilities to acquire new skills on your own or develop those which are necessary for career success.

Today, you will find out how to assess your own skills, how to perform skills gap analysis and how to read the job ads to be able to tailor your resume to succeed in the selection process.

In previous article ‘Strategic Approach to Your Career’ I asked you to set yourself career goals. Those goals should be precisely defined to make sure you are focused on a specific area of expertise required for the particular job, industry or even company. The objective of the exercise was to define job title(s) of your dream job. The next step will be the assessment of your skills portfolio, a benchmarking process and skill gap analysis in order to create a self-development plan.

In every job ad, you can easily see two sections: required skills and future responsibilities. Those two give you an indication of who the company is looking for, and what tasks the person is expected to perform.
Those two sections should be a basis for the evaluation of your knowledge and the portfolio of your current skills, abilities and competencies.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, ABILITIES AND COMPETENCIES
There is a difference between knowledge, skills, abilities and competences. So, before we continue, let’s dive into each of them.

Knowledge is simply the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, an awareness of some facts, acquired through experience, observation or learning process.
Skills are your ability and capacity, acquired through systematic and sustained effort, to carry out complex activities or job functions.
There are also your abilities, which are acquired or natural talent or power to successfully perform a set of tasks under particular circumstances.
Lastly, huge word now: competencies. They are defined as the applied skills and knowledge, that enable a person to act successfully and effectively in a job.

Skills can be developed and improved over time, by combining your abilities and knowledge. But the underlying abilities are necessary for the skills to be developed.
To give you an example: if you were a football player, you may be very good at juggling the ball. This is a skill, which you would not be able to perform without the ability to move quickly, be flexible, which is down to your muscles and physical condition.

Competencies specify how the job tasks are performed and what the person needs to do the job successfully. They are used for a spectrum of human resources activities including:
– assessing and selecting candidates for a job
– assessing and managing employee performance
– workforce planning
– employee training and development

SKILLS PORTFOLIO
As you know, from the previous article in the Career Brand Management series, career brand has two components: the emotional one which is personal image, and the functional – which is your marketable skills.
Those are generally divided into two categories:
– hard skills – Hard skills are teachable abilities or skill sets that are easy to quantify. They might be specific to an industry or a trade or a profession.
– soft skills – non cognitive skills or personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people.
Soft skills are a combination of interpersonal people skills, social skills, communication skills, character traits, attitudes and emotional intelligence. They are desirable qualities for certain forms of employment that do not depend on an acquired knowledge.

You might have come across the term ‘transferable skills ‘ or ‘portable skills‘. Those are non job specific skills, that you can take with you, and can be effectively used to serve another employer. Decision-making, leadership, communication or problem-solving are good examples of desirable transferable skills.

You should take some time to reflect on your own portfolio of skills and list your hard skills, soft skills and transferable skills. The list will be a very handy when it comes to creating your LinkedIN profile, tailoring your resume and writing your motivational letter.

HOW TO READ A JOB AD AND TAILOR YOUR RESUME
When companies and recruiters look for a candidate, they list the required knowledge, skills, abilities and competencies. When reading the job ad, take some time to spot the key requirements, list them as keywords and make sure that your resume and your motivational letter contain them.
In most cases, your CV goes first via electronic system that scans the documents for job titles and set of keywords. A final selection that passes the system, ends on the HR person’s desk. This means that it is critical for you to always tailor your resume and the motivational letter, to pass the preliminary selection process.

 

career brand skills assesement

 

SKILLS GAP ANALYSIS – PRACTICAL EXERCISE
Look at the previous week’s article, what was your career goal, what was the job you wanted? Got it? You should have a define job title(s) for this. To be able to succeed in your career you have to develop skills that are critical for your dream job. Which are those? Check any recent job ads for your dream job and make a list of required skills.

What is between your current role and the dream role is either the expertise level, the experience or the set of skills. Remember, while the expertise and experience often come with time, the skills are something you can actively develop.
Now, search for a recent job ads for your dream position and list the key requirements, with a focus on skills. Examine the job description and break down skills areas and required  mastery level.
You should have at least five on your list. Try to assess your level of mastery in each of them on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being none and 10 being excellent. You should be able to benchmark yourself based on to-date experience and peer comparison.

As a result, you should spot the skills that need an improvement. Make a priority list of critical skills and plan how to develop those, probably best, one at the time. To do it efficiently you should:
– define a reasonable time frame to develop the skills
– set a mastery level you want to reach

Let me give you an example. If you would like to be a Sales Director, a critical skill could be leading weekly meetings and regular sales training. You do not feel comfortable speaking in front of the group, and you would like to improve your presentation skills. You have the skill to focus on, now set yourself a time, how many weeks or months do you need?
What mastery level you would like to achieve? And of course very importantly, how would you like to do that?
Think, what courses could you attend? How could you practice?
List the obstacles, if you feel there is something that would prevent you from developing the skill. Then try to see how to overcome it.

If you would like to develop in depth knowledge of online advertising, perhaps a course in Google Advertising would be an idea. Do you have the resources, money and time to commit? You may consider the online resources, that are cheaper and offer more flexible learning system.

ACTION PLAN
1. Set yourself a clear career goal and define dream job titles
2. Assess your current portfolio of skills
3. Benchmark your skills against those required for your dream job
4. Conduct skills gap analysis
5. Set self-development plan to acquire new or develop existing skill to needed mastery level

NEXT WEEK

Stay tuned for more tips on Career Brand Development. Next week you will find out how to market yourself. I will give you a few tips on creating your professional resume and LinkedIN profile.