Leadership Skills

Leadership Skills: Here’s a link to ‘the top ten leadership skills. What intrigues me is that these skills are STILL referred to as ‘soft skills’. It’s like we need hard skills in most work environments these days?!

Yep, on a building site, sure, we will need to get deep-down-and-dirty in order to get stuff done. On a battlefield there would be some hard fighting with proper weapons. In an office, or an organisation, in the service-industries, the tools we use are primarily psychological and cerebral. If you have ever had a run-in with the office gossip I am sure that you can confirm that these instruments of the mind were hardly soft and fluffy.

So, leadership, Just because it takes place in a carpeted environment is rarely soft in its approach. Isn’t it amazing that men are given a round of applause for cultivating demonstrating such skills. These skills that many a woman brings naturally. Ok, gender-generalisation alert; Yet leadership and women still do not go easily in hand. Get this fact: If employing 25% of women
on your board, you will double you company profit, why is this not the norm? My guess is that it is because most leadership is still primarily about power. It is about keeping power, even if that’s to the detriment of profit. This is stage three leadership.

This is not the empowering “play to everyone’s strengths” kind of leadership. This kind of brilliant. subtle and agile leadership is whole new skill entirely. That is stage four leadership (see the brilliant Tribal leadership for more information). Power-over others merely serves to dilute their skill, and thus dilutes the results. If you say you are going to empower your team then do it. Do not say one thing, and then undermine your colleagues with your behaviour. Your team is a reflection of who you are.

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