Developing Leaders: 5 Steps to Developing Leadership Skills
Developing leaders is a major goal of all successful organizations. No matter what size your company is, right now is a great time to start planning for future growth. In fact, if your organization has a culture of internal leadership development programs, you will attract better team members and retain top talent.
In this session, we are going to pull back the curtain and show you how to build your own personal leadership style. We will also show you how to tap into the untapped leadership potential of your team. Follow these practical steps, and you can also increase productivity quickly.
The Key to Developing Leaders Is to Start with “Leadership Skills Development.”
People are basically trainable in three different areas — hard skills, soft skills, and attitude. Hard skills include all the technical skills that we learn in high school, college, and on-the-job training. Soft skills are how we take that knowledge and put it into practice. And, our attitude is the confidence we exhibit when we use those essential skills.
Here’s a good example: let’s say that we want to teach a kid to ride a bike. We may start the process with a few little pieces of knowledge. For instance, “The more that you pedal, the easier it is to keep your balance.” That’s great knowledge. However, if we just tell the kid that information without any skill development, she will still be nervous. Without the skill development, her confidence and emotional intelligence will be low.
In contrast, if you hold the back of the seat for her and let her get comfortable, the nervousness will go down. Then, if you run alongside her as she pedals, her attitude will improve more and more.
The key to understanding this is to ask yourself a few questions. Did the kid’s attitude improve because of the knowledge that we gave her? Or did she feel more confident because she actually developed a skill? The process is the same when developing leaders from within your organization.
Developing Leaders: Leadership Skills Development Basics.
Don’t get me wrong. Knowledge is important. I like to describe knowledge as the ticket to get in the game. Without it, you’re on the outside looking in.
However, let’s say that you are interviewing two potential leaders for a new leadership position. Both candidates have the same degree from the same university. Both also have a similar level of experience. If that’s the case, you will likely make your choice based on their leadership qualities.
You may look at how each one communicated during the interview process. Or, you might look for things like confidence, decisiveness, emotional intelligence, or interpersonal skills. These are what most people call leadership skills. The better a candidate scores in these areas, the more leadership potential we believe they may have.
In fact, in many cases, if one candidate is highly skilled in these leadership capabilities, they may be hired even if the other candidate has a better technical background.
When We Describe Successful Leaders, We Often Use “Attitude” Words, but Skill Leads to Attitude.
When a person develops good leadership skills, we often see them as having a great attitude. The key thing to remember, though, is that the skill led to the great attitude.
Think about someone you see as being a successful leader. Then, think of two or three words that describe this person. Chances are you will come up with words that describe leadership style or attitude. We typically don’t describe the essential skills that led to the attitude.
If the person has great communication skills, we use words like confident and persuasive. If the person has strong interpersonal skills, we use words like friendly, approachable, or influential leader. We don’t say, “That person has excellent public speaking skills.”
The truth is that about 80% of a person’s success depends on the leadership abilities, soft skills, and attitude that the person possesses. Only about 20% depends on technical knowledge. And the higher the skill level, the better the attitude tends to be.
5 Ways Developing Leaders Can Grow Using Leadership Skills Development.
Learning leadership is not a short process. It’s a full on training journey that normally takes years and years and, in a way, is never truly complete. But to become a better leader than 90% of the population, well that’s a different story. To become someone who can at the very least be the best leader in any room, there’s really only 5 things you need to learn. The 5 first steps on your leadership journey.
1) Leadership Skills Development Begins with Building Trust and Rapport with Others.
I worked at a fast-food place when I was in high school. One Saturday night, my coworkers and I decided to go to the movies together. The boss’ son, Andy, worked with us and brought his dad — the boss — along. One of our group said, “Oh no,” as she saw the boss get out of his car and start making his way to the ticket booth. Then, he turned back and started counting us all with his finger in the air. When he greeted the team members, he handed us each a ticket.
Andy leaned over to me and said, “Now aren’t you glad I invited my dad?” It was a generous offer that each of us appreciated. Little gestures like that built trust and made him a good example of effective leadership. The atmosphere of rapport was so high that many of us stayed in touch for years afterward.
Great leaders know that building relationships and fostering employee morale are the best way to create a foundation for organizational success. When team members trust each other, they are willing to contribute new ideas, collaborate toward organizational goals, and create positive change.
For additional details about how to build trust, see 7 Expert Way to Build Trust in Your Team.
2) Conflicts Will Develop. A Good Leader Is Skilled at Resolving Conflicts and Disagreements.
The higher the level of trust, the easier it is to deal with conflicts when they arise. However, even with trust in place, disagreements are inevitable in the business world. Good leaders understand that conflict is not necessarily bad — it can bring different perspectives to the surface. But effective managers must use decision-making skills and emotional intelligence to resolve conflicts quickly before they escalate.
A few months ago, my team was hired to facilitate a meeting for a client on a Saturday evening. At 11 AM the day of the event, the client canceled. That’s very little notice. Our contract required at least two weeks’ notice to cancel without penalty, but the account manager had used the client’s purchase order as the contract instead of our standard agreement. Three of our instructors gave up their Saturday to teach an event that never happened.
Naturally, everyone was upset. There was tension not just with the client but also between the instructors and the account manager. A strong leader stepped in with effective communication and de-escalated the situation. Instead of blaming, he treated it as a great opportunity for continuous improvement. “What can we do differently next time?” he asked.
This strategic approach created a shared vision for future growth. Successful organizations practice conflict resolution as part of their leadership development strategies because it preserves employee satisfaction and keeps the entire organization moving forward.
For additional details about how to resolve conflicts, see 7 Turnkey Conflict Resolution Strategies.
3) Gain Cooperation from Your Team.
When the Covid-19 pandemic first hit, it was devastating to the meeting and training industry. My team had events and contracts booked out for over a year. In a matter of a couple of weeks, the potential for new contracts just dried up. To make matters worse, we also had customers canceling events that were previously contracted but not yet fulfilled.
Our outlook was pretty dismal. So, I called the team together on a Zoom call and we brainstormed. Within a week, we had created our first virtual team building event. During the next couple of months, a couple of my instructors each wrote a book. Another team started doing daily Facebook Live sessions and later, LinkedIn Live sessions. By the way, not all of the ideas panned out.
However, just a couple of months after coming up with the first idea, we closed a deal for over $150,000. This was with a single client and the program that the client bought didn’t even exist prior to the Covid crisis.
The best part about it was that I, as the leader, didn’t come up with the idea. I also didn’t close the contract. I also have never even SEEN my team do one of these new events. They created the idea and ran with it.
“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” – Gen. George S. Patton
For additional details about how to gain enthusiastic cooperation from your team, see 7 Valuable Ways to Build Cooperation in Your Team.
4) Help the Next Generation of Developing Leaders Come to the Surface.
One of the saddest projects I ever worked on was for the border patrol in Washington DC. The supervisor for the team was an energetic woman in her mid-30s. She had a lot of energy and enthusiasm for her new team. So, she hired me to come in and conduct a leadership development course for the group. This young manager wanted so badly to help her team achieve a higher level of success and fulfillment.
However, her team was all in their late 40s to mid-50s. Almost all of them had hit their highest level of pay for Federal Government work. As a result, they were there passing time until they hit the magic number of years to retire.
By the way, the class itself was great. The participants grew as both employees and leaders. They gave me great reviews on the exit surveys. The sad part was that nothing that I help them accomplish made any difference. They had all waited too late to learn these skills.
My dad used to tell me to, “Dig your well before you’re thirsty.” Good leaders spend time developing their next generation of leaders well before those leaders are needed.
For additional details about how to build future leaders, see Building Leaders from Within: The 7 Best Ways to Build Your Next Leaders.
5) Developing Leaders Need to Focus on Communication Skills and Public Speaking.
“People judge your competence by the confidence that you show.” — Doug Staneart
Out of all of the items in your leadership skills development, a major focus should be on public speaking. Good leaders tend to be great communicators as well. If you think about it, have you ever come across anyone who was a great leader who didn’t speak well?
In my senior year in high school, Coach Spike Dykes spoke at our athletic banquet. I had applied to a number of schools and been accepted to all of them. So, the choice of which one to go to was kind of daunting. I didn’t want to make the wrong decision. One of the schools, though, was Texas Tech — where Spike Dykes coached. Ultimately, I chose Texas Tech because of the speech that Coach Dykes gave. He was interesting, a good leader, funny, and smart.
He was all the things I was trying to become. So, I figured he would be a good role model for me.
I never forgot this lesson. As I began to build my company, I realized that my ability to speak with poise and confidence attracted like-minded people. If you focus on your confidence and your public speaking skills, you will attract people to your cause as well!
If you’re looking to learn just how important presentation and communication skills are to your abilities as a leader, go check out The Importance of Presentation Skills in the Workplace.
Developing Leadership Skills is a Thing Anyone Can Do, It’s Just Something Few Actually Go Through With.
Becoming a leader is not something that you either are or you aren’t. Leadership is a skill that is trainable, just like anything else. No matter if you’re the CEO of a company or the lowest paid employee on staff, having the ability to lead a team will make you a better individual and a better employee.
So few people ever learn how to lead and most simply resign to the fact they were never meant to. The difference between yourself and the best leader you know is just the skills to understand the role, and hopefully these 5 steps were the perfect starting point for that journey.
Train everyone in leadership. The leaders will improve. The teams will improve.
About Doug Staneart
