Insights

How to focus on the leadership skills that matter. In its latest Leadership Skills Report, Zenger Folkman offer new insights on the areas where we’ll need to focus in order to bring about lasting changes within our teams. The report offers habits that are meant to be used as foundational building blocks.

I’m sure you have heard the old saying “leaders are not made, they are born.” While this slogan can be appealing to natural leaders, it is quite far from the truth. The truth is that leadership is a skill that can be honed and developed. If a person is brave enough to step up to the plate, anyone can be a great leader. In many instances, leaders are not necessarily the first people to raise their hands and volunteer.

Having worked and developed programs where sponsorship truly opens opportunities, knowledge, and career success, it’s exciting to see more organizations stepping into these initiatives. Yet, we need more courageous leaders to create access to sponsorship.

Resilience Does Not Equal Great Leadership

To grow and become our best selves, we must practice self-leadership to elevate our game. This means upgrading how we think, feel, observe and understand the world around us, even creating new stories that will help us explain what it all means.  No easy task, requiring adaptive responses to challenging times.  All of this is predicated on awareness and choice.  We have a choice of how we build our resilience and we have a choice, after bouncing back, to further our development as effective leaders.  Resilience does not equal great leadership, but it does give us the choice to become great leaders.  So, what will we choose?

Rather than showcasing as a hero in shining armor, a courageous leader makes the tough choices in the quiet moments when no one is looking.