leadership skills

The University of Kent recently stated that the most important skills to develop in employees to drive company growth over the next five years are (according to the Flux Report by Right Management):

  • Leadership skills 62%
  • Management skills 62%
  • Interpersonal skills 53%
  • Innovation and creativity 45%
  • Resilience 43%
  • Technical/specialist skills 40%
  • IT skills 40%
  • Sales/marketing skills 32%
  • Client management skills 24%
  • Other/none of the above 4%

Through research completed by Higher Futures in Wiltshire and Swindon Leadership and Management skills stand out as the ones which local employers have highlighted to be lacking amongst the workforce today. We have collaborated with the University of South Wales to develop a Manager’s Toolkit which will address most of these skills and lead to a level 4 qualification (Click here for more details).

Many skills overlap with one another. Leadership, for example, encompasses a number of other skills including cooperating with others, planning & organising, making decisions and verbal communication. Verbal communication itself involves various means of communication, some of which you may find easier than others - talking over the phone, making a presentation to a group or explaining something to a person with a more limited understanding of the topic. By improving one skill, you may also improve in a number of others.

We can all identify what we believe to be our transferable skills ourselves and is something that we can always improve on, in my experience people don’t always understand their own skill set, To support with this you can use 360 feedback from a range of colleagues and customers and engage in coaching to gain a true picture of your strengths and weaknesses and become more self-aware.