Important leadership skills for your career

Published: 22 July 2014

Your career as a leader

Leadership skills are always valuable in moving you through your career, and ultimately to being a leader of an organisation (possibly your own). So, the key questions that need to be asked involve what skills leaders have that others do not, and how to cultivate these skills.

We all need to improve our leadership skills and some practical advice is presented here.

Leadership starts with having an interest in the outcome of a situation. By being enthusiastic and seeking to contribute to a situation, you differentiate yourself as someone that takes on challenges. If you take on tasks you must complete them with an absolute sense of dedication and urgency. These small successes make others want to be part of this too.

Approach tasks positively. While it is certainly possible to lead with a negative attitude, it is easier to build a positive environment in which people contribute to a positive outcome and everyone carries a part of the load. By spending your time working out how to involve others you create a positive environment in which challenges are socialised and solved.

Be creative. By finding a better way to do something, or linking someone to a situation, you show your creativity. Creativity and innovation are highly valued skills for leaders. By getting involved in, and understanding problems, and working on potential solutions, you create a natural attraction point for others, and you have the stage for leadership.

Encourage creativity. If you give people the opportunity to make a contribution to a situation, they will often go the extra mile for you. If you fail to recognise the potential contribution of a person, it often leads to frustrated potential. Regenesys views leadership as a platform on which you liberate the potential of others - which speaks to our motto of Awakening Potential.

Cooperate. It is easier to lead people that you also make a contribution to. Leadership is a little bit like a bank account: if you only withdraw and do not deposit, your potential followers find this relationship unfair. If you do not let others contribute, you are viewed as elitist and seen as excluding others.

So how do you get started?

Explore leadership in theory and in practice
Understanding the theories of leadership with practical examples is always important. A lot can be learnt from how others approach leadership and historical leaders.

Understand your personal strengths and weaknesses
Knowing what you can and cannot do is very important if you are to harness your skills.

Recognise achievements and how to use these to create future success
Reward and challenge are very important in mapping the requirements.

Understand the impact of leadership styles on those who are being led
Different people are led differently and it is important to understand how your leadership style will impact others.

Influence people towards a common goal and purpose
Understanding the goal and purpose and influencing skills all contribute to this key ability. Building your vision and having a clear understanding of how to get there makes your leadership effective.

Recognise personal values and how these affect decisions
Decision-making is a function of weighing many variables. All your past experiences and your outlook contribute to the decisions that you make. Followers are very close to our decisions and scrutinise them carefully. By understanding what shapes your decision making you can achieve more positive impacts - especially in multi-cultural environments.

Build a support structure
The most effective leaders use the best skills of the people that they lead, to achieve the potential of both parties. Understanding how to maximise the value of this support structure goes a long way in changing the leadership game.

The Regenesys New Managers Development Programme

The Regenesys New Managers Development Programme acknowledges that becoming a manager is exciting, but can be terrifying. This programme will help you break your fears by equipping you to handle new challenges.

Regenesys is running the first module of this course called Lead Self on the 26 - 29th of August, where you can build the first step of a three-part course aimed at giving you all the leadership skills, as a new manager.

    The first module of this course, Lead Self, is geared to equip you with a solid grounding in the skills and techniques you need to manage yourself - essential before you begin to lead others. You will start with spiritual and emotional intelligence - needed for the most important part of your job, which is dealing with people - and go on to communication, problem solving, critical thinking, and stress and time management.
    In the second module, Lead Team, you will be introduced to what is needed to tackle team development and management as part of fundamental human resource requirements.
    With the final module, Lead Organisation, you will tackle the essentials of business management, gaining an understanding of the economic system and business environment into which your organisation fits.

Organisations that would like to put teams of delegates through this New Manager Development Programme may opt to do Marketing, Financial Management or Project Management instead of Strategic Business Management as their Lead Organisation module.

Upon completing this programme, you should be able to:

    Develop emotional and spiritual intelligence to foster success in your personal life and in the business world;
    Apply individual and organisational approaches to manage stress;
    Manage time effectively and efficiently;
    Understand the basic tenets of good written and verbal communication;
    Explain and apply creative thinking to business practices;
    Develop and implement the problem-solving cycle to identify and address the root causes of problems;
    Understand the processes of recruitment, selection, effective performance appraisal and motivation in the context of the work environment;
    Know the important role that organisational culture and reward systems perform in an organisation;
    Understand factors contributing to the successful management of people and group dynamics in the work environment;
    Understand the principles and processes of conflict management;
    Know how to plan, organise, lead and control effectively;
    Know the basic economic systems and describe the business environment in which organisations operate; and
    Understand the role corporate social responsibility plays in organisations and society as a whole.

These three core modules will be delivered over three months. The first, Lead Self, runs over four days; the second, Lead Team, will run over two days a month later; and the third, Lead Organisation, will run over two days a month after Lead Team.
- Regenesys

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