The 5 Core Competencies of a Great Leader and How to Practice Them
Being a great leader is about more than just getting results. Although stakeholders might judge performance based on quantifiable results, your team will judge you on your leadership influence. Are you a role model for new employees? Do you act with emotional intelligence? Do you create an enjoyable work environment and prioritize effective communication?
These are just a few qualities of effective leadership, and they can be used at any level of an organization. Whether you’re a senior executive, team leader, or just starting out in your career, acting with integrity and demonstrating your leadership qualities will show others that you care about your role and the wellbeing of those around you.
In this article, we’ll look at the five leadership skills that every good leader should practice day in and day out:
Listening
Communication
Humility
Emotional Intelligence
Self-Awareness
Listening
A leader’s greatest tool is their ability to listen. You need to be open to others’ opinions and willing to hear different perspectives. It helps you broaden your thinking and shows you value input from your team. No matter what your position is, the most effective leaders purposefully seek out the perspectives of customers, other team members, their peers, and mentors or coaches.
Consider Feedback
When you’re beginning your career, odds are you’ll spend a lot of time listening to other people. It’s important to pay attention to what supervisors and team leaders tell you because they’re trying to help you grow your skill sets. They’ll advise you on how to solve complex problems, teach you decision-making processes, and even encourage you to try something new on your own. The more you learn, the better leader you can become.
Encourage Others
As you climb the ranks and start to lead teams, your role as a listener will shift too. Listening to the people who report to you empowers them and teaches them to think outside of the box. It also fosters meaningful relationships between you and your team members, so when you do offer professional growth opportunities and support, they know you’re truly invested in their success. Building trust through listening is an easy way to strengthen the bond among your team and develop more leaders in your organization.
Communication
An important part of being a good leader is sharing your ideas, plans, goals, and vision with your team. To do this effectively, you need to have well-developed communication skills. And this doesn’t just go for top-level executives. No matter your leadership role, clearly communicating your ideas and goals can set you apart from others and show you’re invested in your professional growth.
Be Personable
When it comes to sharing your thoughts with others, interpersonal skills often play a significant role in how effectively you explain yourself. You need to be aware of the other person’s facial expressions and body language to gauge if they’re interested in and understand what you’re saying. These clues will give you an idea of if someone is receptive to your message or if you need to change tactics so they can see the value in your message.
Stop and Listen
Effective communication is also about handing the mic over to your audience. After presenting ideas, you should always be prepared to accept feedback and answer questions. A great way to practice this with your team is through small group exercises. Allow one person to explain their idea to a group, then have the group members give feedback so the speaker can adjust their message and try again.
Choose the Setting
Another communication management skill many people overlook is knowing when and where to have a conversation. Some questions will require a little research to answer and some feedback might need further discussion. A good leader can assess a situation quickly and decide if it’s a good time to offer an answer or if they could better serve their team by deferring an explanation until they have all the necessary information.
Quality communication is more than a leadership style, it’s a pillar of effective leadership. When you clearly communicate your ideas and potential solutions, it shows you’re confident in your abilities and encourages your team to work together toward organizational goals.
Humility
Successful leaders remain humble because they acknowledge they couldn’t reach their goals without teamwork. They might be leading the charge, but team members are in the trenches day in and day out getting the job done.
Keep Growing
One of our core beliefs at Building Champions is that leadership is a journey. Good leaders know that they’ve never fully arrived and are humble enough to admit there’s always more room for growth.
At the lower levels of an organization, this could mean seeking out advice from experienced team members and always accepting feedback from supervisors. At higher levels, it might mean seeking out executive coaching or setting personal goals so you’re striving for something beyond your current comfort level.
Benefits of Staying Humble
The benefits of humility are tenfold, but when it comes to team leadership there are a few particular ways it can benefit you.
It keeps you open to suggestions and willing to consider ideas that weren’t your own but might offer the best results.
It shows others that you resonate with their ideas and the work they’re doing for the organization.
It makes you more approachable and encourages people to engage with you when they need help or advice.
Overall, remaining humble no matter how high you climb in your organization makes you an accessible and effective leader for your entire team.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence—or EQ as we call it—is all about understanding and managing your own emotional responses so you can better relate to others. When you can do this effectively, it makes you a more consistent leader which can boost your team member retention rates. People want to work for someone who’s compassionate and predictable.
At Building Champions, we offer an EQ assessment and debriefing with a leadership coach to help you discover what areas of emotional intelligence you’re thriving in and where you can develop your skills.
Assess Your Emotions
Your emotions often cloud your perception of a situation, which in turn might affect how you react. Leaders know how to take a step back and objectively evaluate what’s in front of them. Don’t let your personal feelings dictate your problem-solving process. Start monitoring your reactions to certain situations and challenge yourself to see things from an objective perspective.
Be Empathetic
Empathy is a pillar of emotional intelligence. In some roles, such as employee engagement or human resources, being empathetic is part of the job description. But that doesn’t mean those are the only roles that should relate to team members.
As a leader in your organization, it’s important to recognize when people are lacking motivation or struggling in their work. They won’t always say it plainly, so you need to keep an eye on people’s body language and actions for clues about their state of mind.
A large part of being empathetic is simply being available to listen to someone share where they are in their journey without an agenda to solve their problem or help them improve. It’s about being there for them. If you can enter into their challenge or frustration and deeply understand their perspective, then you’ll gain their trust and respect. Once a relationship is formed, they’ll likely be open to your guidance in the future.
Self-Awareness
Before you can lead others, you have to lead yourself. Self-awareness helps you identify areas of growth in your personal and professional life and everyday opportunities to practice leadership skills. Maybe you want to work on your time management or learn about your organization’s budgeting structure. Whatever your personal goals, recognizing where you are will help you get where you want to go.
Help Others
As you develop new skills, show your leadership competency by sharing them with other team members. Teach your coworkers how to arrange their calendar for more productive days or empower a team to optimize their work process. You could even organize some team-building activities to learn more about the people you work with and how everyone’s unique skill set can help move the organization forward.
Build Confidence
Self-awareness breeds confidence. At first, you’ll discover areas where you can grow, but along the way you’ll start to notice areas where you are growing. Seeing this positive change in yourself will bolster your spirits and have you eager to empower your team to do the same. When you put self-awareness and self-leadership first, you foster skills that you can utilize to better your team and your organization.
Put A Plan Into Action
The competencies we highlighted today will not be developed over time. They require intentional pursuit and action. To help you with this we’ve created a simple 5-step process to help you create a leadership development plan.
5 Steps To Achieve Your
Leadership Development Goals
Using insights gained from over 25 years of coaching and leadership development, we’ve developed this process to help leaders, teams, and organizations achieve their goals and increase their impact.
Building Champions can help you develop your leadership skills, no matter where you are in your career. Reach out to us today to learn more about our various coaching offerings for leaders at all levels.
