Leaders are an essential component of any successful business. Whether it’s the CEO or just a shift manager, companies need people in charge to make sure that things run smoothly and that the staff completes their jobs efficiently. Using a leadership competency list can help employers find the right leaders for their company.
What is the Leadership Competencies List?
Industrial and organizational (I/O) psychology is a branch of psychology that studies people in the workplace. I/O psychologists help companies discover ways to improve the way things are done so that employees are happier, more productive, and more loyal to their company.
It’s no secret that unhappy employees often do subpar work. I/O psychologists can help implement changes that can increase employee satisfaction. One change that these experts often recommend is the way the company chooses its management.
Industrial and organizational psychology research has determined that there are competencies that a leader should have if they want to be successful. Despite the different cultures, languages, and customs, companies from around the world look for the same leadership competencies.
Why are Leadership Competencies Important?
Picking the right leader is crucial for a company’s success. Improper management can cause the most promising business to fail. If you place the wrong leader in a power position, it usually doesn’t turn out well. You won’t have happy customers or employees. And the quality of your product can suffer.
Bad management is a critical component of employee turnover. To put it simply, nobody wants to work for a difficult boss. Companies don’t want to invest a lot of time and money in training staff that ends up leaving because they can’t get along with their coworkers or supervisor. Ensuring that the leader of the team has the proper leadership competencies can reduce employee dissatisfaction.
Being a leader requires a lot of work and dedication. Some people are good at taking charge. These people often naturally possess some of the qualities on our leadership competencies list. But it is possible to learn these competencies if you don’t already own them. Under each category, we provide tips.
Leadership Competencies List
The Center for Creative Leadership has a list of 28 core competencies that they have determined a good leader should possess. These are broken down into three categories: leading self, leading the organization, and leading others. We’ve organized these components into a list of ten essential qualities.
Leaders Must be Good Communicators
Being able to communicate correctly is an absolute must for a person of power. A leader is responsible for managing the members of his or her team. Communication is the exchange of information from one person to another. Leaders will need to be proficient in communicating in multiple methods.
Naturally, a leader needs to be able to speak fluently. You should talk in a clear, professional voice and avoid using slang or jargon when addressing the group as a whole. You want to get your point across as naturally as possible. If you explain something in a roundabout way, you’re wasting time, and you risk having someone get too confused to do their job correctly.
Leaders also need to know how to communicate effectively using written formats. Most companies don’t expect you to be a professional writer, capable of stringing words together to create masterpieces. But they do expect you to know how to add in periods, use correct capitalization, and for the love of all that’s holy, please spell check!
Improve your Communication Abilities
As someone who spends every waking moment constructing art out of words, I’ll let you in on two secrets. One, check out Grammarly. It’s like a spell check on steroids. Another useful tool, especially if you want to make a great impression on people with your writing, is the Hemingway App. They’ll flag every hard-to-read sentence so you can be sure you’re getting your point across without any confusion.
Some people aren’t good speakers. I’m excellent at communicating through the written word, but when it comes to talking, there are many times when I sound like a blubbering idiot. It’s quite frustrating when you can’t show how good you are at something because you keep struggling.
If you’re not a good speaker, remember that practice makes perfect. Try talking to yourself in front of the mirror. Make eye contact with yourself. Observe your facial features so you can be sure you’re not scaring the crowd away (been there, done that).
Gather your family, or friends, together and give them a presentation so you can be used to standing up and moving around while you’re talking. An extra tip, kids are more likely to participate if you pay them. You wouldn’t expect your employees to participate in a focus group for free, would you? Of course not.
Good Leaders Are Ethical
Leaders should be of good character with strong morals and ethics. Companies require background and reference checks for a good reason. You certainly don’t want to employ the wrong people. Having the wrong employees can damage a company’s reputation and cause legal complications.
Leaders are responsible for your staff, but some of them will also have access to company finances, personal information, and proprietary information. You wouldn’t want this type of information to be available to someone who’s been in jail for identity theft or embezzlement.
Likewise, most companies require drug testing. You certainly wouldn’t want to have a boss who comes in intoxicated or who uses drugs while they’re working. Employees find it harder to respect someone who doesn’t act professionally. To be a good leader, you must act professionally at all times.
How to Avoid Acting Unethical
Most people have decent ethics and morals. Unfortunately, it can be hard to tell if someone is as honest as they claim to be. An ethical person works as a team player. If they present an idea that isn’t theirs, they give credit for it to the appropriate person. They listen and value the opinions of other team members.
Leaders come in on time every morning and look presentable. It’s hard to take a boss seriously if they’re wearing rumpled clothes and smell like a brewery. They also stay at the office until the day is over. If the team is putting in extra hours, the leader should too. A good leader is fair to his team.
Responsible bosses take care to present the best version of themselves to their staff and clients. They show appreciation for employees’ hard work and show understanding when an employee has a situation that is affecting their work. A good leader will attempt to help resolve the staff’s issue rather than immediately terminate.
Leaders are Organized
It’s hard to be efficient when you’re surrounded by chaos. Take it from a mother who works from home while raising four kids and two dogs. There’s always something going on that pulls my attention from work. And stuff was always getting misplaced, so I’d spend more time looking for something I need to work on than I did complete the task.
Once I designed my office, things became much more manageable. Leaders have to juggle multiple tasks, which can be difficult if you aren’t organized. Imagine trying to present a client with a proposal that will get your company a million-dollar deal, but your folder is a mix of different client ideas, and you throw out the wrong one. You lose the contract, and probably your job.
When you are responsible for a bunch of different things, you have to be able to stay organized. Companies look for leaders who are known for being able to put together proposals and teams that exceed client expectations. They want someone who will be able to keep things on track and who will be able to meet deadlines.
Leaders don’t just have to keep their work organized. They have to be able to organize the workload evenly among the team so that everything gets done on time and correctly. Leaders have to be able to keep up with other people’s work, as well.
How to Get More Organized
Being organized isn’t as tricky as it sounds, I promise. Your ability to sync all your electronic devices together means you should always have access to everything you need. Make use of your phone by putting all your appointments into your calendar. You can customize reminders to go off as you need. I always set more than one, just in case.
When you store your info in Google calendars, you get an update from any device that’s synced to your Google email account. Three computers, a tablet, a phone, and my television all go off at the same time for the same thing. Not to mention my Alexa, which reminds me of a voice alert.
Your workstation should be free of clutter. There should never be any loose papers strewn about. I keep empty Manila folders at the back of my desk on a rack so I can easily file away papers. Sticky notes allow me to jot down important reminders. I’ll place these around my computer screen, on my phone, on the file, or a corkboard I keep on my office wall.
And I keep a desk blotter calendar on my desk at all times so I can quickly write down appointments and deadlines when I’m too busy to grab my phone. A sticky note reminds me to add the info to my electronic calendar later on. I even have a to-do list I fill out every night and add to every morning, so I’ll know what all I have to accomplish for the day.
Leaders Know how to Team Build
As a leader, you have to know how to work well with others. You will be in charge of a group of people. You’ll have to be efficient at communicating if you want to maintain a peaceful working environment. Many conflicts have occurred over misunderstanding someone’s behavior – whether spoken, written, or physical.
Mediation is a crucial element of team building. Leaders know how to address conflicts and resolve them to everyone’s satisfaction. There are no sides taken and no favoritism shown. A good leader doesn’t pick sides on his team, and she never supports one team member over the rest.
To get the best results, a team should work as a cohesive unit. They should be able to build off each other’s work and be aware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. The best team leaders know his team well enough to be able to assign tasks appropriately. She knows which member is best for the spoken presentation and which member would be best to handle the IT portion.
How to Team Build
If you want to know if you’re a successful leader, look at the way your team functions. Does everyone work well together and collaborate throughout the process? Or do they all do their own private thing and then rush to cram everything together at the end without consideration of cohesion?
A team is a reflection of its leader. If the boss doesn’t seem to care how things are done, the employees aren’t going to either. But when the leader takes an active role and stays involved with the group, you notice a lot of positive benefits. Work will get done quicker. Your employees are happier and cooperate. And the final project has more cohesion.
Leaders should encourage team members to communicate and share throughout their process. If the project requires multiple inputs, everyone must stay on the same page from the beginning. Otherwise, you’re doing more work when it’s time to go back and fix all the gaps that happened from working separately.
If you haven’t already tried it, I highly recommend Google for your projects. It offers the same programs that Microsoft Office offers, but with added benefits. These files are saved online, so they’re available for immediate sharing. The whole team can have the file open and editing at the same time while viewing the changes the other members are making. And changes are automatically saved, so you never have to worry about lost work.
You can try:
- Google Docs – the equivalent of Word
- Google Slides – PowerPoint equivalent for slideshows
- Google Sheets – their version of Excel
Leaders are Adaptable
Things rarely go as expected. No matter how well you’ve planned a project out, you will hit a few bumps. Knowing how to think on their feet and improvise is a crucial trait of a strong leader. Employers like supervisors who know how to adapt and overcome.
You also have to be able to respond well under pressure. As the leader of a group, the outcome of the project will rest on your shoulders. You have to be sure that your team did their job correctly. It’s your responsibility to be sure that you have met the client’s expectations. And it’s up to you to get everything done on time. If you’re not good at meeting deadlines, a leadership role might not be ideal for you.
Being a leader also means planning. You are in control of how long the project should take, who does what, and how it should be done. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t know how to design a plan of action to get the job done, you might struggle to lead a team.
How to be Adaptable
Some people might struggle with being flexible. Not everyone can think by the seat of their pants. If you need time to brainstorm, it’s no big deal. Spend a few hours, or even a day, weighing different options. Don’t be scared to think outside the box.
You could also present the problem to your team and make it a group brainstorming session. Getting feedback from others can help you see the issue in a new light. You could come up with a solution that you might never have otherwise considered.
Although it’s okay to take a bit of time to reassess a situation and work out how to fix the problem, you shouldn’t procrastinate. Try researching to see how other people might have resolved a similar situation. Use compassion if a team member causes the condition. We all go through things in life, and some things are unavoidable.
Good Leaders Have High Social Intelligence
Everyone knows that IQ means how smart a person is. Your IQ controls how well you learn and comprehend complex information. But many people don’t realize that there is another crucial trait that everyone possesses to some degree. This trait is called social intelligence.
Some people consider social intelligence to be more important than intellectual knowledge, i.e., book smarts. SI determines how well a person engages in social situations and how well they form relationships with others.
Someone awkward around people will have a lower SI, whereas a politician will have a high SI because they know how to work a room. When you have high social intelligence, you have self-awareness. You’ll know how you’re using your body language, tone of voice, and word choices, so there’s no misinterpretation of your meaning.
How to Improve Social Intelligence
Just because a person doesn’t currently have high social intelligence, it doesn’t mean they’re doomed to be socially awkward forever. You can improve your social skills by learning how to be more culturally aware – knowing how you respond to social situations.
To improve your social awareness, you can practice empathy. This occurs when you sympathize with another person’s situation or feelings. When you learn how to listen actively, you’re putting yourself in the position to understand what someone is going through.
Empathy allows you to build stronger bonds and better relationships. You learn how to value your teammates as individuals and as a group. You figure out how to act appropriately in different situations. You know that you’ll act differently at work than you would at home or with friends.
Influential Leaders Have Emotional Intelligence
High emotional intelligence (EI) is another competency that is found in most strong leaders. Emotional intelligence is our ability to comprehend emotions, both from ourselves and from others. Emotionally intelligent people usually have a good grip on their feelings and can keep them in control.
EI also controls your motivation levels. When you have high EI, you know how to think positive, ignore negative thinking, have a high drive to succeed, and you commit yourself to the cause (your team’s project). Emotionally intelligent people have less depression and are more optimistic about life.
Emotional intelligence is essential for leaders because they have to know how to deal with people under various conditions. A distraught customer or employee isn’t going to feel comfortable talking to someone who rolls their eyes and tells them to “Get over it.” A good leader actively listens and then tries to assist by offering solutions or advice.
How to Improve Your EI
If you currently don’t have strong emotional intelligence, there are ways you can change it. The first thing you’ll want to do is learn how to keep your emotions under control. It might not be simple for all of you. As a highly emotionally turbulent person, I can sympathize with my readers, who feel things too deeply.
When my thoughts get heavy, I write. I get everything out of my head. Then, I go back and review everything I wrote. A lot of times, I realize things aren’t as bad as I’m making them out to be. There’s always a solution if you step back and look at the problem the right way.
If writing is not your thing, how about meditating or praying? When you’re too deep in your emotions, it can be hard to see things. Find something that helps you clear your mind so you can think things through in a calmer manner. Maybe you like to run, hit the gym, kickbox, yoga, or play instruments.
Good Leaders Are Decisive
Being a leader means making decisions – lots of them. As the person in charge, it will be up to you to decide everything the team does. Once you’ve got your plan decided, you have to convince the group of your decision.
Some bosses like to include their teams in the decision-making process, which is fine, as long as that method works for your group. Allowing members to put in their two cents on an idea builds stronger bonds between you and them. They feel more valued and are more likely to do things your way to impress you.
For other teams, there will be members who will never agree, no matter what the point is. As a leader, it’s your job to find a way to persuade them to meet in the middle. You should be able to inspire your team to agree on final decisions. When someone has to do something they don’t want to do, it can put them in a bad mood and affect their job performance.
How to Improve your Decision Making
Being a good decision maker doesn’t just mean that you make decisions quickly. It means that you weigh all the options before making a choice. You know all the pros and cons. You’ve looked at the situation every which way. When you make a decision, you are confident that it is the right one.
When you have to decide something, look at each option. Think about why it would be the right choice and then why it wouldn’t be. Write these down on a pros and cons list. Try to imagine how things will turn out based on the decision. Picture how it could go right, and how it could go wrong.
It can be hard to know if you’re making the right decision. It can cause you to stress and get anxious. But when you’re a leader, you don’t second guess yourself because you’ve made the best choice based on the information you had.
Ask yourself this about each solution. Will this achieve the goal you’re wanting? Is it feasible? Is your team capable of doing it, or will they need to learn something new? Can we get it done in time? Is this the best choice? What would make this work better? What can cause it to fail?
Leaders Need to be Action Oriented
Good bosses develop a plan of action and then encourage the team to stick to it. Leaders are motivators, so they should have no problem convincing the group to follow the guidelines and schedule. If you’re action-oriented, you know how to keep your team focused and on task, so the project gets done right.
Being the boss isn’t just about making plans and organizing the staff. A good leader knows how to take action. They know how to get into the pits with the crew and get things done. You can’t be scared to do work and get your hands dirty if the team is falling behind on a deadline.
A good leader should be willing to pick up the slack when the team falls behind. If there’s a weak spot, the leader should help support it. Employees are more willing to work harder and put in more effort when they see their leader making the same effort. When the team works as a cohesive unit, you reach your goals faster and easier.
How to Be More Actionable
Some people think just because they’re the boss, they shouldn’t have to do much work. They believe that all they should do is manage people. But a good leader knows that they’re a member of the team. Therefore, they should be in the trenches when needed.
You don’t have to do the same work as the rest of the team to be actionable. As the supervisor, you will have a lot on your plan that you have to attend to. The first step when starting a job is to work out a plan. Your task after that is to make sure that the team is moving along as expected.
Your role is to motivate, inspire, and lead your team down the right path to project completion. When you notice things aren’t working out, you step in and fix them instead of waiting for someone to ask for help. You clean up after the crew, metaphorically. If they have left loose ends in their project, you work to get them patched. If something isn’t getting done, step in and help finish it.
Good Leaders are Problem Solvers
Research has shown that influential leaders have high analytical and critical thinking skills. As you can see, a leader has to be well rounded in all areas. You have to know how to be social, how to control and understand emotions, think on your feet, make decisions, and solve problems.
When something goes wrong, it falls on the leader to fix the problem. It can be challenging to focus on a solution when you’re thinking of all the ways the project can fail. Leaders know how to push aside the turbulent thoughts so they can view the situation analytically.
They can see where the problem started, and they use critical thinking skills gained from their years of experience to come up with a solution. As the one in charge, you have to stay calm and level headed. When you’re in control of yourself, it can help others balance their own emotions out.
How to be a Good Problem Solver
You’ve been solving problems all your life, whether you’re aware of it or not. To be able to fix something, you first have to be able to figure out where the problem started. You’ll often have to start at the beginning and follow the progress until you see where things started getting derailed.
If you don’t pay attention to what you’re reviewing, you could end up missing the issue and have to start over. Or you could end up scrapping the whole project for nothing. Review the project as a team. Having more than one set of eyes can reduce the chances that something slips by.
Be open to hearing ideas from your staff. Don’t think that just because you have to solve the problem, it means that you can’t get suggestions from other people. You could even get an outside opinion from someone not involved with the project. An unbiased voice can see things everyone else is too close to notice.
Use this Leadership Competencies List to Improve Skills
Now that you know what employers look for in a leader, you can start improving your leadership competencies so that you can make the best boss in the company. Remember that these skills might come naturally for some, while others might have to make an effort to improve. A good leader has determination and drive. If you want to be in a position of power, you’ll put in the hard work and changes that are needed.