Leadership Concepts Fundamental Leadership Skills

Leadership Concepts

Fundamental Leadership Skills

Contemporary concepts of leadership outline numerous attributes and skills that are desirable in leaders. Among the most important are: (1) Communications Skills, (2) The Ability to Influence Others by Inspiring their Trust and Confidence, and (3) Strategic Vision (Maxwell, 2007). Arguably, communication skills are the single most important of all leadership skills because leadership is, at its core, the ability to communicate ideas and values to others and to cultivate followership. Organizational leaders must be able to share their beliefs, values, and their ideas for the success of their organizations in a manner that enables their followers to understand those concepts and in a manner that achieves their cooperation.

Renowned corporate leader John Maxwell (Maxwell, 2007) explains that the single most defining characteristic of effective leaders is their ability to establish a climate of honesty and trust in their relationships with others because those elements are the foundation of their ability to earn the trust of their followers and inspire their confidence and loyalty. In that regard, Maxwell (2007) also explains that effective leadership requires that leaders demonstrate integrity to their statements, beliefs, and values and that followers naturally trust leaders with integrity and doubt leaders who fail to do so.

Maxwell (2007) also emphasizes the importance of strategic vision in organizational leaders because that is the most important skill upon which the long-term success of organizations depends. In essence, the ability of organizational leaders to communicate effectively and establish and maintain the trust of their subordinates allows them to maintain their influence over them. Meanwhile, it is their ability to think and plan strategically that allows leaders to make productive use of those relationships (Maxwell, 2007).

The Relationship between Leadership Skills and Technical Competence

In contemporary business, there are so many technical areas that contribute to the success of organizations that it is practically impossible for most organizational leaders to be experts in every area required for that success. Therefore, it is important that leaders be sufficiently mature and psychologically evolved to avoid the common psychological impediments to learning from others (Fitch, 2010). More specifically, effective leaders are capable of empowering others (Maxwell, 2007) and of allowing others to contribute to their knowledge base without feeling challenged by the isolated reversal of their leader-follower relationship where circumstances (such as technical expertise) make that advisable for the benefit of the organization (Gove, 2010). In principle, leaders who are threatened by the success of others in their organizations (Maxwell, 2007), or who cannot assume the role of learner because they perceive that dynamic as threatening to their authority (Fitch, 2010; Gove, 2010) are less likely to increase their own knowledge base from interactions with others in their organizations.