A recent survey by Grovo found that 98 per cent of managers thought their company would increase KPIs such as retention, revenue and innovation with a little more training – and that’s a tall order
Leaders need a wide range of abilities such persuasion, problem solving and motivation.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is the systematic breakdown of thoughts in order to analyse, interpret, evaluate and reach reasoned judgments and decisions that are based on reliable evidence. These skills are sometimes described as ‘higher order thinking’. An example of learning a lower order skill could be simply memorising facts, a figurate or a concept. Being able to think critically allows you to identify what information is pertinent for your desired outcome, and this tends to streamline the research process for the web since your mental filters are geared towards identifying information that is pertinent to your problem or conditions. By actively thinking about your thinking, you can catch inconsistencies or flaws in the reasoning process that would affect its credibility as well as catch errors in the reasoning steps.
Communication
Leaders, for example, need to communicate goals, expectations and strategies in ways that are easy for team members to understand. They need to mediate conflicts and provide feedback. They expect their manager to be someone they can count on and confide in, while also giving them distance and space to try things out, experiment and make mistakes without fear of retribution, from the leadership. Workplace realities might look different a decade down the line than they do today, but some leadership skills never go out of style. Leadership training prepares managers for building better relationships on which business success depends. Wise leaders have also learned how to best manage themselves, and not just their own workload, but also their emotions and their schedule.
Problem-Solving
Once having solved those problems with creative solutions, problem-solving skills enable a leader to clear the path for employees, removing obstacles in the way of teams and companies in order to allow them to grow. The problem-solving process often creates additional solutions that might unlock growth avenues necessary in order to support strategic objectives. A good problem solving leader will be able to create an environment where someone feels safe enough to share their individual view and experience to come up with them either individually (in a framework) or with other team members in group creative problem solving exercises (eg, using Design Thinking or other lenses) in order to list possible solutions to your problem. Any solution that you adopt will have to bring lasting change to your business, and needs to be aligned with organisational goals. It requires looking at the root causes in detail, and also how to succeed under specific environmental conditions.
Inspiring and Motivating
Stimulating and encouraging is a fundamental leadership quality that enables the leader to provide and build a motivated and productive work force; through inspiring the individual’s’ personal learning and development; and allowing the group’s ideas to flow, encouraging feedback and an environment that allows for conflict resolution. Managers likewise are expected to energise their teams with a common mission – increasing delegation and acknowledgement, offering appealing incentives and physical rewards – to support uniqueness that boosts productivity and performance. Another characteristic of a good leader is to foster team engagement via task delegation, support and capability development, which in turn helps to develop greater autonomy and allow the employee to become a high-performer.
Conflict Resolution
But conflict resolution takes time, and if the actual reason for the problem is hidden, all the more so. Employ your objectivity to keep all parties focused on the issue at hand, and not somewhere else sparked by feelings or by faulty interpretation of comments. Empathy can also be encouraged through active listening, such as repeating or paraphrasing what is being said back to people to indicate that you’ve been listening carefully. I also discourage competing styles of conflict resolution in which someone’s interests are sacrificed to someone’s else’s in a zero-sum process, as such moves undermine trust and can block the principled and respectful resolution of disputes.
Decision-Making
The ability to decide, to choose the best action from available options and then skillfully navigate your team through those choices with clarity or agility – that takes a good dose of business savvy complemented by analytical thinking. Making good decisions requires collecting and assessing information, looking at the impact over time and the consequences of risk, engaging your stakeholders, being inclusive, and deciding with an eye towards strategic goals for your organisation, as well as for adapting to changing circumstances. Second, focus on building up your mentors and peers as resources to help you identify the important considerations. Third, practise reflection, so you get better at evaluating, learning from and building on past decisions – both good and bad.
