Leadership Skills Introduction

“At the age of seven, a young boy and his family were forced out of their home. The boy had to work to support his family. At the age of nine, his mother passed away. When he grew up, the young man was keen to go to law school, but had no education.

At 22, he lost his job as a store clerk. At 23, he ran for state legislature and lost. The same year, he went into business. It failed, leaving him with a debt that took him 17 years to repay. At 27, he had a nervous breakdown.

Two years later, he tried for the post of speaker in his state legislature. He lost. At 31, he was defeated in his attempt to become an elector. By 35, he had been defeated twice while running for Congress. Finally, he did manage to secure a brief term in Congress, but at 39 he lost his re-election bid.

At 41, his four-year-old son died. At 42, he was rejected as a prospective land officer. At 45, he ran for the Senate and lost. Two years later, he lost the vice presidential nomination. At 49, he ran for Senate and lost again.

At 51, he was elected the President of the United States of America.

The man in question: Abraham Lincoln.”
— Author Unknown

Many of us are acquainted with this eloquent example of persistence and determination in achieving victory. We read it, stop for a moment and then sigh and say: “Wow! That’s the stuff real leaders are made off.”

And in saying this, it’s all too easy for us to think about leaders like Lincoln almost as “mythological creatures”, separate from the rest of humanity and empowered by some mysterious quality that smoothes their path towards inevitable success. This is the view of leadership that many people have traditionally taken: That leaders are marked out for leadership from early on in their lives, and that if you’re not a leader, there’s little that you can do to become one.

However, that’s not the way we see it now. The modern view is that through patience, persistence and hard work, you can be a highly effective leader.

This section of Mind Tools helps you make a start in finding and developing these leadership qualities within yourself

Our first tools explore different approaches to leadership: the Blake Mouton Managerial Grid allows you to assess how you balance concern for your team with concern for production. We then look at Winning Expert Power, one of the profoundly honest sources of strength and power that you can draw on as a leader, before moving on to consider the different Leadership Styles that you could adopt.

The people skills that come from having good Emotional Intelligence are the subject of our next article. This leads into a set of tools on team dynamics including a Team Effectiveness Assessment to help you identify how well you and your team are working together right now, as well as the core skill of Delegating.

Leaders also need to understand what motivates the people working for them, so we look at Herzberg's Motivators and Hygiene Factors, amongst other tools.

Finally, we explain the important skill of Conflict Resolution.