Episode One: How do you build your Leadership Skills

Leadership isn’t just about steering the ship, it’s about mastering the art of soft skills. From empathy and communication to adaptability and emotional intelligence.

A City & Guilds skills survey identified five soft skills they believe business will need to develop.

1. Leadership skills (40%)

2. Interpersonal skills (39%)

3. Problem-solving skills (31%)

4. Communication skills (29%)

5. Time management (19%)

These soft skills in leadership are foundational competencies I have built into a new style of Leadership - Leadership 3.0 - and have become increasingly apparent in a post-covid age.

So in this new series of blogs, let’s explore how sharpening these skills can elevate your leadership game and inspire those around you.

As Gill Harper, Development Manager at City & Guilds said: “Someone promoted to senior leadership because of their technical skills might be the best engineer or medical professional in the world…. But without the right set of leadership skills -and soft skills - there will always be a struggle to lead teams to success.”

In this first part of my new series about how to become an effective leader (EL), I am going to dive into one of the skills the World Economic Forum has identified as most important to effective leadership: Emotional Intelligence - or your own Interpersonal Skills

How good are you at recognising and managing your own emotions as well as the emotions of others?

How would you rate your qualities of empathy, self-regulation and social skills?

Here are five simple steps you can take to improve your EL

1. Improve self-regulation

Recognise your triggers when you become stressed and react impulsively, and develop techniques to manage them.

Try deep breathing exercises, take a short break to clear your mind, practise pausing before reacting to challenging situations - this gives you time to think about your response rather than acting on impulse.

Practise self-awareness:

• Regularly take time to reflect on your emotions and what triggers them.

• Look back at when something didn’t go as well as you had hoped and think about what you would do differently next time. Write it down - a written note helps to engrain new thoughts.

• If this suits you, try mindfulness as an effective practice to help you become more aware of your thoughts and feelings in the moment.

2. Enhance Social Skills:

Work on active listening by fully concentrating on the speaker and understanding their message. Respond thoughtfully and remember what was said: I run a whole training module about improving your active listening skills.

Try holding meetings in a way where you encourage people to speak without being interrupted. As Nancy Kline** says, this is when you can get your best thinking done.

3. Cultivate Empathy:

Put yourself in others’ shoes to understand their perspectives and feelings. Do this by practising active listening and not being fixed in “broadcast mode”. Too often leaders are focused on the message they want to get across without pausing to listen to the other person’s perspective.

4. Seek feedback:

I’ve left the most difficult one to last.

Regularly ask for feedback from colleagues, peers and friends on how you manage your emotions and interact with others. This can provide valuable insights and help you identify areas for improvement

Be open to constructive criticism and use it as a learning tool to enhance your emotional intelligence.

So here are five simple steps you can take to build your own Emotional Intelligence Skills.

If you would like to find out more about how to work on your own EI or want coaching support in doing so, then let’s have a conversation.

Read part 2: How do you delegate effectively to better manage your time and workload.

*City and Guilds Skills Index 2021

**Nancy Kline: author of Time to Think, Cassell Orion, 1999

Jeremy Clifford runs Chrysalis Transformations - a leadership and coaching business focused on helping individuals and businesses to be inspirational leaders.

My Leadership 3.0 model has been rigorously tested by leaders who have identified areas they want to build their leadership competencies.

Photo by Олег Мороз on Unsplash