Leadership skills encompass the ability of an individual or organisation to lead or guide other individuals, teams or entire organisations. In other words, leadership skills are defined as skills which one uses when organising other people to reach a shared goal. Leadership skills require an individual to motivate others to complete a series of tasks, often according to a schedule. Leadership is not just one skill, but rather a combination of several different skills working together. Effective leaders are essential to any organisation. They can help build strong teams within a business and ensure that other work functions are performed successfully. Good leadership skills involve multiple interpersonal and communication skills. Good leaders increase employee engagement, support a positive environment and help remove obstacles for their team. Good leadership is also kind of contagious, inspiring colleagues to apply positive leadership traits in their own work.

TOP LEADERSHIP SKILLS – TRAITS THAT WOULD PUT YOU AHEAD IN A RACE

Almost any positive soft skill might be considered a leadership skill. Patience, empathy, dependability, confidence are some of the skills that leaders need to possess. Here is a list of must-have leadership skills :

• Decisiveness – Effective leaders are those who can make decisions quickly with the information they have. Decisiveness is seen as a valuable leadership skill because it can help projects move along faster and improve efficiency.

• Integrity – Integrity in the workplace often means being able to make ethical choices and helping the company to maintain a positive image. All businesses seek to hire people who have a strong sense of integrity.

• Dependability – Being a dependable leader means that people can trust and rely on you because a dependable person follows through on plans and keeps promises. Thus a dependable leader can create a resilient team that is able to work through difficulties that may arise.

• Empathy – Empathy is one of the most essential skills to build. If there is more empathy in leadership, employee engagement problems would go away and it would help you to understand your team.

• How to delegate – To delegate means to entrust the responsibility of some work to someone. Delegating is a common and essential practice in workplace. Delegating means that you have found the best way to spread out the work. Delegation of duty and authority to right people, is an important aspect of leadership.

• Communication skills – Leaders need to have good communication skills. Some of the biggest issues in the workplace come from lack of communication or miscommunication. 

• Relation building and problem solving – Leadership requires the ability to build and maintain a strong and collaborative team of individuals, working towards the same goal. It also needs effective problem solving skills which include staying calm and identifying step by step solution.

• Ability to teach and mentor – One skill that differentiates leadership from many other competencies is the ability to teach and mentor. Often this skill requires the leaders to think less about themselves and more about how to make the team successful as a whole.