Although most managers think that the moment they climb up the career ladder, they are seen as leaders by members of their team, there’s a lot of a difference between bosses and leaders in the business world.
The word “boss” is mainly used in a very negative context and related to fear, punishment and salary reduction, while leaders are much more favorable people in a working collective. They don’t use fear for implementing their decisions, they use employee enthusiasm.
Leaders also serve as an example to all of their employees and help them grow and develop. In this article, we have listed some of the most important skills one manager needs to have to become a leader.
Leaders need to have excellent communication skills. They need to motivate their team by creating vivid visions of the future and enabling individuals to influence company policies, customer trends and their communities with hard work and engagement.
Their communication needs to go far beyond giving orders. They should be able to communicate with all members of their team in many different ways that range from private office conversations to Skype conversations, e-mail messages and blog and social network entries. In addition, great leaders know when to support their worker’s ideas and when to be compassionate and cut some slack. They give motivational speeches and toasts and make everybody in their company feel special.
A manager’s job is to solve organizational problems, and that’s why a leader needs to have an analytic mind and great problem-solving skills. They should be able to conduct complex research and determine the main organizational problems in teams and find ways to solve them. This should be done by using the advantages offered by the market and higher company management, which is why a leadership role requires great analytic abilities and people skills.
With advanced problem solving, they should encourage every team member to think about the company’s problems and develop their ideas and solutions.
Although managers rarely go beyond organizing their teams, they should also have a wide knowledge of the company’s industry. It is advisable for university-educated managers to enroll in courses that deal with the industry their team works in. Only managers with at least the same proficiency levels as other team members can be viewed as leaders.
By enrolling in different industry courses, they will be able to understand the problems their employees need to deal with. This will enable them to consider all relative parameters and extraordinary conditions that might come up when evaluating employees’ performance, which is very helpful since managers that stick solely to regulated work norms are usually seen as tyrants and quickly lose workers’ respect.
Innovation drives today’s economy, and leaders must follow new organizational trends to improve their team’s work results. Not every manager has the ability to innovate their work. Some don’t follow trends too closely, and others are just too lazy to prepare their team to implement new organizational models. Leaders can’t have excuses when it comes to innovation.
They should constantly test and develop new organizational strategies following new business trends.
It’s logical that acclaimed leaders should have excellent leadership skills. That is why we have left this for the end to emphasize other important skills that are regularly neglected due to the great importance of strategic perspective and a leader’s integrity.
Great leaders don’t sit in their offices and watch their teams. They are constantly in motion, trying to help employees and motivate them to produce better results and upgrade production processes with their ideas. They also represent a strong link between their team and higher company management and can protect both parties' interests in this process.
Becoming a leader requires an extended learning and adjusting process. The digital world offers many opportunities for career advancement, including a long list of online courses. If you want to upgrade your status from a manager to a leader, you should choose skill courses that you are lacking the most. Of course, remember that other than learning new skills, leadership also requires a little talent and, in some cases, a major attitude change.
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Sawaram Suthar (Sam) is a Founding Director at Middleware. He has extensive experience in marketing, team building and operations. He is often seen working on various GTM practices and implementing the best ones to generate more demand. He has also founded a digital marketing blog - TheNextScoop.
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