5 skills that management leaders must master

Chinmaya Kulshrestha

Leadership can have different connotations. One good way of defining, effective Leader is "an individual who Crafts an encouraging vision of the future, Persuade and stimulate people to engage with that vision, governs well the delivery of the vision, Mentors and develops team in order to achieve the vision effectively”.

There are many different leadership skills required in managing personal and professional aspects. However, future is always unpredictable as everything happens at the smallest level and humans are not that intelligent to decipher everything. Specially Covid has resulted in lot of uncertainty in not only managing, procuring, sustaining resources but also managing and empowering others during these extraordinary times.

It is anticipated that Post Covid times will bring in plenty of unforeseen circumstances and challenges which will surely require different set of skills to proactively manage the lives around …

Let us see what are the new skills that will be most sought after in future…

 From empathy to emotional intelligence

 As per Cambridge dictionary, Emotional Intelligence is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. "emotional intelligence is the key to both personal and professional success"

 It is an exceptionally crucial skill in successful leaders as leadership is all about relatability. The comprehension of how others are influenced and stimulated helps the leaders to accordingly decide on the communication styles and approaches to better manage their teams.

Effective leaders concentrate on fostering their emotional intelligence, they refine their skills to be more adaptive, resilient, and accepting and acknowledging the feedback from others. They are also effective listeners and open to change.

In its crude form, emotional intelligence appears as empathy.

 From optimism to voice and poise to confidence

At the end of the day, no vision or motivation tactic can be effective if it isn’t communicated in the proper intonation.

Great leaders must be able to interact in a way that feels genuine with individuals, business units, entire company, stakeholders outside the organization. This does not mean one has to be essentially an extrovert or a people-person rather, it

means being able to exhibit empathy, involving in active listening, and constructing meaningful working relationships.

In a growingly global economy, leaders must also appreciate and regard different communication traditions. Skilled leaders evolve a strategic verbal approach to exhibit all situations and have the potential to communicate the vision and goals of the company in an engaging, confident way.

Leaders cannot generate followers if they don’t have confidence in themselves and their ideals. It is unthinkable to assure employees that a new initiative will be thrilling and beneficial when underlying doubts are present.

One should look for poise when picking future leaders. As they adapt to change and use their current skills to make and learn from their decisions thereby strengthening their newly developed confidence.

This Leadership skill bases the situational leadership theory which says that effective leader adapts to and takes specific actions relating to different situations circumstances. The important tasks for such a leader are Delegation, coaching and mentoring.

Poise with empathy is the edifice to building trust, confidence, and engagement among the team.

From outgoing nature to courage

 Leaders are leaders because they move opposite to the current waves. They are the ones who run headfirst into the unknown. They are risktaker and ready to face challenges from any danger. This is the main reason that makes courage a key skill of good leaders. Rather than fight shy of problems or allowing conflicts to suppurate, courage empowers leaders to take actions that moves you in right direction.

Gathering the courage to speak up for what is best for the business, irrespective of the anxiety of failure, is where true leaders differentiates from others in the crowd.

From attentiveness to being meticulous

The prime job of leadership is to direct attention. For this, they must first master their own attention focus. Being Focused means single mindedness and separating out the distractions.

We can arrange the methods of attention into three comprehensive heads; focusing on yourself; focusing on others; and focusing on the wider world highlighting important leadership skills.

Focusing on yourself and focusing on others meticulously are the foremost facet of emotional intelligence. An exhaustive comprehension of how to focus on wider world will ameliorate their capability for strategic planning, initiate new inventions, handle organizations effectively.

Attention to Detail is not about just the language editing but getting all petty things right, as one mistake can lead to bigger problems and ruin integrity and reputation.

One should remember that being meticulous does not mean pointing to perfection, one must strike a perfect balance between reviewing work and trying to achieve perfection.

From ambition to vision

Good leaders have a lucid vision and can illuminate the track for their teams.

Vision imparts clear cut focus, motivation, and direction to face future challenges and obstructions.

It is an answer to questions like; What is your objective and intent? What aim are you trying to achieve; as an individual, team and organization?

Leaders should be intelligent enough to align the work at the bottom to the essence of the vision and explain the reason of doing so. Leaders who are

successful in doing this help their employees to align their work tactically and involve in more purposeful activities.

Last but not the least, it is necessary to comprehend that leadership is a social process.

In future it will be less about a powerful or charismatic, captivating individual, and more about a group of people working together to attain outcomes jointly. If one exhibits diverse skills of a good leader but neglects this, chances of failure increases as one may be well appreciated, liked and respected also but will find it difficult to climb the ladder of success and accomplish team or organisation.

The writer is Associate Professor, Marketing, MDI Gurgaon

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