Great Leadership: Developing Practical Leadership Skills

What makes a great leader?

If you look deep into this question you will begin to realise there is no single answer, characteristic or style. The theories of Leadership range from traits, styles, behaviours, situations and many more, including emotions. However, successful leaders do have things in common, but as we can see not all the same things. Leadership is not about seniority, titles or attributes. Nor is it management, they are not synonymous. 

According to Forbes, “Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal or vision”. Similarly, in the words of Peter Drucker, “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes”. Therefore “what makes a great leader” must be achieving goals, vision or results, in other words, the ability to do their job well.

For centuries the leadership debate has been about whether leadership comes from a certain set of inherently qualities that make them good leaders from birth, or is this social influence a result of being taught?

I intend to let the debate continue beyond this article. If true leaders are born, there are certain skills that they leaders need to know in our new world. If you believe leadership can be taught, then the same skills will also need to be known. In our fast paced, ever changing world any leader, born or socially influenced, will need to develop and maintain practical skills that keep pace with change throughout their career.

Before we look at these practical skills, we should also clear up another major fallacy found in business today. Very often we find outstanding employees, the bedrock of their trade, being promoted. Now they can have a problem. What made them successful in their previous job is no longer that required for leadership. They have been moved from getting their job done to influencing and maximising other people’s results. It’s not because most managers are incapable of leadership. It’s simply that most managers aren’t getting the guidance they need before they’re placed in leadership roles.

When it comes to business survival and success, leadership training cannot be ignored. The entire personnel, not just at the management level, is the chief components that impacts on the organisation’s productivity and sustainability. This is one reasons why most organisations are embarking on professional leadership training programs and seminars to develop their organisations leadership skill.

There are many components of leadership training such as the identification of the key skills needed to succeed in the current turbulent business marketplace. They also need to understand the practical approaches that contribute to high-performance including engagement and buy-in from their people. And possibly the most important, the great leader needs to be able to effectively lead change.

We look forward to meeting you on our next Great Leadership: Developing Practical Leadership Skills training course!

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