Leadership skills are the skills that motivate the inventions, construction of dreams and visions, quick and long term solutions of personal, social, economic, political, business and natural problems through self and collective actions, consideration and analysis of responses, that inspire self and others to take actions on the existing instruments for the progress and peace of soul and mind of the whole nation and its subjects and objects by ceaseless efforts.
In other words, “The skills and manifestations required for the creation and fulfillment of Personal, Social, Economic, Natural, Political and Business goals and actions are leadership skills”.
List of good and propitious Leadership skills with Explanations:
Following leadership skills help new and experienced professional to handle daily life career and business problems. These skills are helpful for personal development practices, leadership development in students and team. If you have any confusion or don’t know why leadership skills are important please read this article: Why is leadership important in life
1. Self-contemplation and self-analysis skills:
Self-contemplation and self-analysis skill is the most important leadership skill. It will help common humanity to think about himself- Who is he? What is his thinking pattern? What do parents expect from him? Who are his friends? What are his beliefs? What makes him happy? and most importantly – what are his strengths? What is the standard of society around him? When someone answers these question it will show his/her clarity of mind and reality of life. It’s very tough to focus on goals and own standard of life and without this self-analysis, it’s difficult, even impossible to be a leader without clarity.
Clarity comes from self contemplations and self-analysis. It will help his/her mind to listen to the voice of his soul. Ideally, when the soul + mind both will think and act equally without any confusion and arguments then you can see the boost, passion and higher productivity in people. That’s why I think leadership starts with listening to the voice of your soul. And yes, you can say it is a skill because we can practice and perfect it.
Thousands of people around the world are confused today in career and business and it’s due to the unbalanced situation of mind and soul. The mind does not have the time to listen to the voice within and even outside, because it’s busy in tech and artificial world. The mind is fickle and that’s why it’s important to control and guide the mind, so it’s the most important leadership skill. Anyone can be successful without achieving this, but never be happy. And you know, who likes leaders without smiles?
That’s why saint Kabir, the Indian mystic poet said in Doha (lyrical verse):,
मन अपना समुझाय ले, आया गफिल होय
बिन समुझै उठि जायेगा, फोगट फेरा तोय।
I think It means do not lose focus in life by standing in confusion.
To communicate with your soul and you will be happy. It is important to be a leader of mind, body, life, your business, group, society, industry, and career. It’s better to be king of your mind than its slave.
2. Understanding of Present, Awareness Skill:-
To be a leader it’s important that you have awareness skill. From a business point of view, it’s important that you know what is happening in your industry and market. What customers are looking for, what are their new behaviors, what new generation demands etc. From a career point of view, it’s important that you’re aware of what type of industries are looking for specifically skilled force, etc.
When someone is aware and understands his/her present career and business situation, he/she will be able to take the right decisions by being able to visualize the future.
It’s very important for the new generation that they do not believe blindly on government policies, politicians, existing business leaders, media, self-certified experts and advertising. I am not trying to say that you should not believe anyone, I just mean be aware of the reasons (facts) behind beliefs.
To be a good leader first you need to understand your own or family, social, financial and mental situation. Understanding the situation helps you to decide, what is required for the development. When you first develop yourself, your family by following good daily life practices then you will be able to develop others, your village, city, country, and the world.
3. Analysis of data waves and information storms management skills:
The new generation leaders have to live and work with technologies. That’s why future leaders need to be skilled to handle business data, social data, economic data, and national data waves. Analysis of data waves helps them to think about how to drive the ship according to the data that is generated by their internal company application and external applications (Artificial Intelligence).
Everyone is creating and consuming/eating data and after that, the digestive system of data can generate valuable information and viral content on the internet. The structure of the mind, foundation, speed and cash flow of business gets affected if the information that even experts are sharing is overused by leaders.
Data is not food nor it is water but it’s important for leaders to acquire skills that help them to understand where the data is coming from (quality of data), where it is going (Who is behind), what it is doing (How it’s influencing people), who is using it (Target Audience), who is eating (Consumer), who is selling (digital marketing companies), who is mining (Freelancer and analytics companies), who is leaking and why (Inside and outside elements of companies and governments).
But without these type of data imagination skills, leaders can be manipulated by other companies, politicians, media, and experts. And it’s not good for national commitments and social interests.
4. Actionable Strategic Skill:-
A real leader believes in his/her own principles, ideas, execution methods, process, and implementations. But not all of his/her followers and team member think and visualize the future in the same way.
Followers have their own life and career problems such as inflation rate, job security, financial stability, work, and life balance, so they do not have that much time and a state of mind-soul balance. It’s important for a leader to create easy-to-follow processes, ignite ideas, a positive work environment, shared goals and reporting methods based on collective principles. And for that, they need actionable strategic skills so that team members can adapt themselves to the working culture for longer.
In other words, the leader has to acquire action-based strategic skills for self and others. It means knowing when to add A and B When to use A + A When to use A+B+C and when to multiply and minus. It also means unit building process, group engineering and balanced situation of alternative motivations. This motivation will help a leader to think about next exponential growth actions for the people working with him and for the organizational goals.
The simplest actionable strategic skills example is “The way mother teaches, serve food, educates, handles and leads a stubborn child for his own success by being principle oriented”. But now the upbringing that nurtures leadership skills is disappearing from the world and it will be replaced by artificial intelligence.
5. The Art of Adding All to the Massive Goal:
The skill to add different parameters in one thread is the art of a leader. Its process to unite everyone in inspirational ways for collective goals. You can say delegation skills, you can say people skills. The basic lessons start from the head of the house such as from father to child.
An idea can change the world. But only when it is for everyone’s interests and commitments. At such times you will need this leadership skill to unite people for the common goal.
It’s not like all are your friends, maximum part of the society will be against you when you will start, because they are slaves of their mind, they don’t have powers like you to listen to what their soul is saying. So social, economic, national, educational leaders have to help them to identify who they are and what are their powers are and what they can do for attaining the best results that they have dreamed for themselves and the country.
It can be done by own characteristics, hiring analytical and digital marketing agencies like many politicians hire to create election campaign, it can be through defining the concept of goal emotionally.
Each leader uses own tactics to build and unite followers based on his/her principles. One leader’s principles can be destructive to other communities but for some, they can be ideological and acceptable. That’s why there are always many controversies around the globe for ideologies. It requires a balanced approach to execution. And this is absent in many current political, economic and business leaders.
But to replace greedy principles and ideologies we need to guide new generation leaders in a way so that they do not compare parts of nature or children of God based on color, position, cast, power, money. In simple words, respect for everyone and freedom to implement rights according to the law and constitution will mean the evils will be dead from societies, politics, business, economics, and the country.
That’s why we need such leaders who think and connect people for universal peace.
And for this purpose, it’s important to acquire Art of Adding All to the Massive Goal skill. It will start by farming honesty, truth, integrity, love, and natural and neutral creativity organically in the mind.
6. The ability to give the right direction to impulses, passion, enthusiasm:-
Leaders have to lead not only their own mind in the right direction but also thousands and million people worldwide. If a leader is not walking in the right direction, not following own set of rules and work principles, how he/she can influence and process the similar momentum in his team. That’s why a leader needs skill and ability to channel impulses and charged waves of mind into the productive direction with passion and enthusiasm.
Leaders are also humans they can get angry, they can be sad, they can make mistakes, their followers/partners can get angry, they can also get bad feedback and they can all fail but if they react based on anger, sad, bad and upset mind the same way they are getting from others then it’s will not be helpful.
You see many leaders suddenly become angry and use abusive language and makes abusive comments. Sometimes it’s important to be passionate in speech but it should not be so that people start rioting and destroy government property.
That’s why leaders need the skill to lead and use waves, passion and enthusiasm for collective peace.
7. Art of understanding the criticism and churning the praise:
Whatever you achieve, whatever good you do there are people ready to criticize and troll you. As I said above some ideas and policies can be bad for few people to digest. Even if they are good for them. But they will criticize and it’s their mindset. You cannot help it.
A leader has to understand the criticism and if someone’s point is logical and meaningful then you need to accept it. After acceptance, you have to focus on next time that you don’t repeat the same. Constructive criticism is always better than insincere praise, it helps people to become successful.
And with this, a compliment should be accepted after churning and filtering the intentions of the compliments. He does this to get the job done. Therefore people or leaders have to be careful of both types of feedback. It’s because they are not alone, their decision can affect thousands and billions of people and their families connected with their ideology and principles. That’s why for a higher standard of the leadership process, it’s important to have the art of understanding criticism and churning the praise.
And it’s best said by Kabir Das Ji
निंदक नियरे राखिए, ऑंगन कुटी छवाय।
बिन पानी, साबुन बिना, निर्मल करे सुभाय।।
Kabir Das says that a person should always keep his distance from the silversmith. And those who condemn them should be kept closed, because by hearing of condemnation, the idea of purifying, scanning of mind by an opposing thought may come in. And there is no need for soap and water to get this clarity.
In conclusion, I will say that there are various skills to acquire for leadership roles and it’s not only what is written above. Skills can be acquired according to the goal. Self-satisfaction, appreciation, communication, liberation from the desire of profit and appreciations, credits, consistent learning and observation skills, operation of strategies and actions and being mentally prepared for success and failure are also important leadership skills.