Five Must Have Leadership Skills

Organizations spend over 50 billion dollars a year on leadership training. Much of it misses the mark. When pressed for a full pipeline of leaders they spend even more money to find new "potential" leaders only to find that many they believed had leadership potential exhibited little or no leadership qualities at all. No wonder corporations spend so much money on leadership. They are constantly involved in a non-productive cycle of hire-fire-hire again hope for a better outcome.


The vicious cycle of hiring, developing, firing, and costing even more money is for the birds and unnecessary. We too have spent a lot of money, (over a half-million dollars) but we have spent our money seeking to find out why, seemingly good, leadership candidates fail to live up to expectations.

A half-million dollars and 30 years later we believe we have a handle on what we call "Leadership Wilt." Leadership Wilt is an insidious disease that attacks organizations from the inside out. It attacks even the best leadership candidates among all organizations, worldwide. The disease attacks without warning and transforms potential leaders into managers that are weak, ineffective and even dangerous.

So, what did we find that would allow us to do a better job of identifying real leaders and helping them advance their skills? Through arduous research, trial and error, real commitment and perseverance we have identified five skills that leaders must have to function at the highest level. Those five skills are: Self-Awareness, Optimism, Empathy, Reality Testing and Followership. The good news here is that 4 of these essential leadership skills are measurable and the 5th is discernable. That being the case, lets visit the four that are measurable, first, and then address the one that is only discernable.

In the early 1980s Ruevon Bar-On and Howard Gardner began raising the issue of emotional influence and discussing how emotions played a larger role than originally thought regarding personal performance. Later John Mayers and Peter Salovey officially gave that influence a term-Emotional Intelligence and in 1995, Dan Goleman wrote the best selling book, Emotional Intelligence. From that early work sprang many tools designed to measure Emotional Intelligence, defined generally as "one's ability to recognize your own emotions and those of other and work the two together for good." Today, a tool called the EQi has become the most scientifically validated instrument for measuring Emotional Intelligence and because of its validity, the most popular tool used for that purpose around the world.

The EQi measures many fine skills but none more useful than Emotional Self Awareness, Empathy, Reality Testing, and Optimism. This is not a commercial for the EQi, so let’s talk about those 5 essential leadership skills.

Self-Awareness

Self Awareness may be the single most important of all five essential skills. You can not create that "presence," so critical to leadership, without being deeply, self-aware. Knowing yourself is the first step to understanding others and without others, there is no leadership. Emotional Self Awareness is large part of Self Awareness but, not all of it. To be sure, a superior leader must be emotionally self-aware but, also aware of your other strengths and weaknesses.

Empathy

Empathy is almost an extension of Self-Awareness, in that it requires you to see and feel emotions, but through other peoples shoes and eyes. It requires listening to others versus listening to self. Empathy requires you to understand others but even more, it requires you to emotionally connect with others. High Empathy levels indicate an individual has the ability to build the relationships necessary to grow spans of influence and create a more effective leadership bond with people. When people know you care for them, they begin to care about you.

Reality Testing

This is a term is really jargon used by the EQi people to describe one's ability to recognize the real from the not likely. Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, the writers of the Leadership Challenge share that people admire people with vision, and that is certainly true. But to lead you need to have a vision and be able to communicate it an inspirational way, but you better be able to explain the practicality of that vision. People are quick to abandon ship once they sense the leader's vision is not very practical or, at least within reach. The skill of Reality Testing is not a nice to have, it is a must have quality.

Optimism

Well, what can I really say about optimism that better expresses the need for it than ask the question; How many people do you know who rush to join a pessimist in an important journey? Probably not many, if any, I would think. Few wish to be a part of anything viewed in a negative light and to gather followers, one needs optimism. Most of us need a positive view of where we are going. Everyone want to be a winner!

Followership

I am saying that you can not be a good leader unless you have been a good follower. All leaders are followers and have been followers. So don't expect those who have been poor followers to morph in to exceptional leaders. They will not.

Now a word about my earlier comments regarding measurability and that Self-Awareness, Empathy, Reality Testing, and Optimism are measurable and Followership is not. At least, it is not measurable before you hire the person unless you have observed them, in action, at a previous employer.

For the most part, Self Awareness, Empathy, Reality Testing and Optimism can be measured as they are subscales within many Emotional Intelligence assessment tools. Followership can only be judged through observation, in action. Often we do not have the opportunity to observe a potential leader before we hire them but they can be observed immediately after the hire and from there on. Regardless of the method you develop for measuring the potential followership skill, training and direction needs be given to all to improve their contribution to the organization and their potential for leadership.

Previously, we have identified Four Essential Leadership skills that can measured before you make a hire and one that can be judged very early in the employment cycle. Organizations that insist upon the presence of these 5 qualities in their every hire have a leadership pipeline full of quality candidates with fewer surprises. They have profits that far exceed those who have no focused and validated selection system and On-boarding policies. Screen all potential leaders for Self-Awareness, Empathy, Optimism and Reality Testing and watch you profits rise. Offer followership training to all hires, early in the employment cycle and watch leaders grow. Avoid "Leadership Wilt," hire with a plan.