To be a good and successful leader, it is essential to hone certain skills that will help you become more effective. Your leadership directly reflects your ability to give your work, business, enterprise, your best and keep your team motivated to do the same. If you are looking to improve your leadership style and become a successful corporate leader, here are a few leadership skills you must look at improving.
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Adaptability
Change, they say, is the only constant in life. A good leader is adaptable and can perceive changes in the business environment quickly. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, India witnessed an unprecedented change in its economy. Some of India’s top financial business leaders took on this challenge as an opportunity to come up with a plan of action that would see them and their businesses through tough times. A visionary entrepreneur leading Bajaj Finserv Sanjiv Bajaj took the pandemic as the perfect opportunity to leverage Fintech innovations and build robust mobile and web platforms to increase the company’s outreach. Adaptability helps a leader navigate changes and support their team.
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People Skills
People skills are possibly the most important among leadership skills. Leadership is primarily about inspiring people to achieve their highest potential. Some of the company leaders have managed to build their businesses by motivating their teams to pursue excellence. Sanjiv Bajaj, the Chairman and Managing Director of Bajaj Finserv, is best known for connecting with his team and empowering them to take charge. People skills are also essential when it comes to connecting with stakeholders and customers. Connecting with every stakeholder, vendor, customer, and team member personally and professionally defines a successful leader.
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Self-Awareness
Leaders understand their strengths and weaknesses and also those of their team. Only self-aware leaders can be reflective and can hone their virtues and eliminate vices. All too often, we tend to react to external situations. Self-aware leaders understand their triggers and can manage difficult situations effectively. A leader who is introspective or self-aware, for example, may understand how his actions and words may be perceived and thus improve his ability to give constructive criticism. Self-awareness also helps you work on your other skills such as communication, management style, organisational and personal philosophies. This brings a great deal of clarity needed in a leader of an organisation or an entrepreneur.
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A Sense of Purpose
A good and effective leader helps build team morale from a sense of greater purpose. Any team or organisation is built on a vision. Very often, it is the desire to change the lives of people around them that makes teamwork cohesive and efficient. A good leader understands and binds his team with such a sense of purpose. A new entrepreneur, for example, may choose to hire some passionate young men and women who seek to make digital payment systems for small streetside vendors. The sense of purpose that the entrepreneur uses to motivate the team is a change in the payment system and improving the lives of small vendors.
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Decisiveness
Making tough decisions can be quite intimidating for most people. Decisiveness is one of the most important skills for a leader. With leadership comes responsibility and incorrect decisions can impact the organisation, business, and team members. This is what creates fear of making wrong decisions. A decisive leader, however, uses insight and experience to make quick and wise decisions when needed.
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Collaborative Skills
It is a small world. The proliferation of the Internet has made it a connected place. Some of the most famous entrepreneurs in india have collaborated and partnered across the country and across the globe. While team management is an important leadership skill, collaborating and working in a larger space is also just as important. Collaborative skills can help you be part of your team and steer it in the right direction. It can also help bring together vendors, stakeholders, customers, and the organisation and build on collaborative ideas for development.
We live in a dynamically changing world which calls for constant learning and skills development. Leadership, too, has undergone a complete transformation in the past few decades. Only when you develop your skills as a leader will you be more effective in bringing out the best in your team and your organisation and become a more conscious, productive, and successful leader. This means becoming more effective in introspection, communication, and collaboration. A good leader develops his strengths and works on eliminating his weakness in the march to success.