Leadership starts with setting the direction you wish to take yourself and your people.

Leadership Development Skills: learn to lead

Being a leader, is not be a title but a personal skillset which a successful leader must develop. Successful leadership requires leaders to continually refine their skillset to deal with different situations. Our leadership development skills programmes develop leaders to lead people with genuine authority. The title leader, does not make you one. Genuine leaders must learn how to lead their people effectively based upon trust. Our leadership development skills, learn to lead programmes create, and support leader’s success.

Leadership is an ever-evolving skillset. Successful leaders learn how to lead their people through different situations as the business evolves. As a business grows, so must its leader. Successful leadership is about solving new challenges as a business evolves.  

Every organisation is unique, its nature, structure and most importantly its culture. These important environmental factors determine the leadership style a leader must deploy to be successful. With years of experience in working with leaders, Richard Gourlay has developed bespoke programmes to support leaders develop their skills.

Like to learn more? Then contact me to discuss how my leadership development skills programmes can assist you click here     

There are four primary core skills which leaders must develop for every leadership role, here’s a brief summary.  

1. Leadership Skills: Self-Awareness Skills

Self-awareness: is the understanding how a leader’s behaviour impacts upon organisational outcomes. Building self-awareness starts with self-reflection. Knowing what impact you make within your organisation is a vital skill. Knowing how you make an impact with others and how to develop and influence people is a essential leadership skill. 

The impact do you make, and with whom and why, determines what you achieve as a leader. Learning how to build your self-awareness is a vital skill for leaders to develop. Self-awareness skills are essential in improving a leaders’ impact, an essential element for leaders to discover.

2. Leadership: Communication Skills

Secondly leaders must develop good communication skills to engage and inspire people. Being able to communicate at all levels of the organisation, from board level to the first day apprentice, is a vital leadership skill. Good communication is core skill for a successful leader. 

Being able to communicate to a wide range of audiences builds successful relationships. Successful leaders engage with management and employees using a range of communication tools. A key part of communication include skills developing active listening to really understand what people saying to you.

3. Leadership: Influencing Skills 

The third skill of leadership is the ability to influence people. Influencing people requires leaders to use persuasion, promotion and delegation effectively. Being able to influence people enables leaders to achieve business goals. Influencing people includes being able to communicate your vision for the organisation to employees. Great influencing skills build individual commitment to change their behaviours. Successful leaders develop different approaches to influence different types of people through a variety of engagement tools.

Being able to influence people throughout a company requires leaders to use a variety of influencing techniques. For leaders, they must learn to influence beyond their people through partner, customer and stakeholder channels. All successful leaders develop powerful influencing skills across all of these parties. 

In senior-level or executive roles, influential skills must be focused on steering their people on long-range objectives.

4. Leadership: Agility Skills

Finally, leaders must learn how to adapt quickly. Leaders must be agile in both their thinking about themselves and their business.  Successful leaders keep learning. Leadership is not a static goal, but an evolving reality. Leaders must be open to refining and honing their skills. Great leaders must learn new behaviours, attitudes and approaches to solve existing and emerging problems. Being agile and an active learner, successful leadership is about being open to change. Learning faster than your competitors is a key skill for leaders to stay ahead of the competition. 

Leaders must also keep checking the direction they are taking. Being agile does not mean jumping around from one direction to another, but it does mean listening to a range of external voices. Listening equally to those who challenge assumptions, and not just listening to a narrow group of those who follow the leadership team, the nodding heads. 

Agility skills are about strengthening your leadership skills. Being able to step back, even from your own ideas, and validate them by listening to external voices. 

Learn to Lead: Our Leadership Programmes

We develop bespoke leadership programmes to support leaders develop their leadership skills. We enable leaders to be more successful in leading people and organisations. We support leaders improve their skills and capabilities to lead people through change. Lead organisations through growth, and through the lifespan of an evolving organisation.

Our leadership development programmes provide supported learning for leaders to develop their personal leadership skills. By combining a range of learning styles and models, we support leaders to be able to grow and develop their skill set in developing their leadership potential.

Let’s talk about you!

Like to know how we can support you develop your leadership skills then drop us a line to learn about our leadership development programs contact us click here