Leadership Competencies

While not an extensive list, these key competencies will help to set the foundation for successful leadership.

Setting direction: Today's leaders are responsible for defining a vision of what they want their organization to be and accomplish. Setting a vision should include those who are expected to buy into it. For example, a representative of a team can be appointed, and its members asked to provide input from their respective constituencies. A senior leader or high-level body may sometimes write the vision statement.

Aligning people: The ability to establish trust and communicate the vision will help sell that vision to the people needed to help achieve it. An effective leader can give people a strong sense of where they are going and why. Even if each team member operates at full potential, alignment and synergy may still be missing, that is, people may not be working together, focusing on a common goal: the task or project. This course will assist participants in creating a synergistic team.

Motivating and inspiring. Leaders today are expected to motivate and encourage their people Instead of mandating performance, which can inspire loyalty to the task, to project goals, and to the leader.

Leading teams: A team leader can bring out the best in team members. Obtaining optimal performance from team members helps to ensure a successful project and is in the best interest of the team leader; it also serves the entire team's interests, as well as the customer’s Interest In a synergistic team, the whole team becomes more than the sum of its parts and the difference gained is team spirit. Maintaining that spirit requires diligent leadership. And that spirit is the "glue" that holds the team together.

Communicating: A leader knows that effective communication occurs only when those to whom you are communicating understand exactly what you are trying to convey. At any step along the way, faulty communication can cause a problem resulting in a delay or an inability to achieve goals.

Building relationships: Understanding one's motives and values and the motives and values of others Is an important step in building effective relationships. Different people or groups may need the same information presented in different ways. An effective leader can rally everyone to a common cause, while recognizing that each person may have a different motivation for lending support.

Facilitating ethical conduct: The effective leader can facilitate ethical conduct, acting with integrity and making ethical decisions to support and strengthen the team and organization.

Negotiating: Leaders are responsible for managing their own tasks, programs, or groups of projects, by establishing limits on what will be done, who will do it, and in what time frame, to support the overall organizational goals. The task must be prioritized so that scarce resources are concentrated efficiently. All projects (whether internal or external) have conflicting priorities­ particularly when many projects vie for scarce resources. Effective leaders must anticipate and resolve these conflicts before they jeopardize the tasks/projects.

Leading change: Leading change is a difficult aspect of leadership because those people going through the change often perceive it as a negative experience. The effective leader takes the time to communicate the specifics of the change and the reasons behind it to everyone involved, balancing a positive attitude with a realistic presentation of any negative aspects of the change. Another aspect of this competency is the ability to guide and coach followers through the change.

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