Are good leaders born or made? The answer is probably a mixture of both. However, if you are aspiring towards a role in leadership for your career, you can add leadership skills to your repertoire that can make you more effective. Doing so will help your personal and professional future.
As you consider your options for the future of your career, you may be considering moving into management or leadership of some sort. Yet in order to be a good leader, you must gain some leadership skills. The right training program can teach you how to lead people well and develop the personal skills and soft skills that make good leaders.
What are the benefits of being a good leader? When you are a good leader, you inspire people to do their best. You can see an entire organization succeed by inspiring the people in it to excel. You can also advance your own career goals by positioning yourself for professional and financial success in the future.
How can leadership skills help you with your career goals? Here are five ways that improved leadership skills could help you not only be a good leader but also advance your career towards a solid path for the future.
1. Leadership Skills Improve Your Negotiating Skills
What are the benefits of being a good leader? One of the first benefits is learning how to negotiate. When you are in a position of leadership, you will occasionally have to negotiate. Whether you are negotiating your own position for a raise or promotion or are negotiating with an employee to help them do their job better, your role involves quite a bit of negotiation. For this reason, you will develop negotiation skills as you develop your leadership skills.
How do leadership skills make you a better negotiator? First, being a good leader means being a good listener, and that is a key component to negotiating. Also, being a good negotiator requires the ability to work for the benefit of the entire organization, and that is something you will learn in leadership training. Finally, negotiating requires both self-confidence and good communication skills, and these are both things leadership training will teach.
Improved negotiation skills help you in the workplace, but they can also help you in your personal life. When you’re ready to buy a house, you will know how to negotiate a fair price. When you are haggling with a car dealer, you will strengthen your position to be a good negotiator. This particular skill set is one that will follow you both personally and professionally.
2. Greater Self Confidence
One of the things that makes someone a great leader is the self-confidence they exude. Even if they don’t fully feel that self-confidence, if they can display it, people will want to follow them. According to executive coach Peter Stark,
confidence is the foundation of a strong leader. Knowing how to solve problems, communicate well, and be decisive are insufficient if a person does not believe in themselves. People without confidence do not inspire others to follow them, and thus they do not have the makings of a good leader.
Why is self-confidence so important? Because it gives the people following the leader the assurance that they know what they are doing. This, in turn, makes them want to follow the leader well, and the entire organization succeeds.
It is natural for people to admire and follow others who are confident. Confident people are easier to trust, and people want to work with leaders they trust. In addition, self-confident people laugh more, have greater motivation and ambition, and have better relationships overall. They are willing to accept feedback and can think for themselves. They are not afraid to take risks, either. All of this adds up to a strong leader.
3. Inspire Initiative
A good leader knows how to get their employees to demonstrate initiative and do their work well. When someone is self-motivated and willing to take risks themselves, which are character traits of a good leader, they inspire others to take initiative. The key to leading well is being able to get others to do what they need to do to achieve their personal best and help the organization succeed; this requires initiative.
When you learn to be a better leader, a key component of that is learning greater emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence teaches you to understand the emotions and motivations of others. This, in turn, will help you learn what is necessary to inspire initiative and innovation in your team members and keep pushing them towards success.
Developing leadership skills as part of your overall career goals will transform you into someone that will inspire initiative by learning what motivates and inspires people intrinsically. This works for the future good of both the people under you and the organization as a whole.
4. Stand Apart from Your Peers
Anything you can add to your skill set as a professional will help you do better as you advance your career, and leadership skills are one of the most valuable types of skills to add. Putting an advanced degree in leadership on your resume, such as the
master’s degree in organizational leadership from Wilmington College Cincinnati, will help you stand out when you are applying for advanced positions or new roles within your company.
As you think about your career goals and where you see yourself in the future, you need to look for ways to make yourself stand apart from the competition, particularly if you work in a highly competitive field. Strong leadership skills learned in advanced training will give you the competitive edge you need to advance your career. This training looks good on your resume, and the soft skills you gain as a result of leadership training become apparent once you start your work. That can cause you to catch the eye of the people above you as well.
5. Better Communication Skills
Finally, when you invest in leadership training, one of the most important factors of that training will be communication. Good leaders must communicate daily with their team members, with those in leadership above them, and with other departments in their organization.
Leaders use communication to inspire their teams to do their jobs well, to negotiate on behalf of the organization, and when reporting to those above them about how their team is doing.
Communication includes both verbal and non-verbal communication. It also includes written communication. Being able to use words and body language to convey the appropriate message is a key to success as a leader.
Start Your Leadership Training Today
Leadership skills are sometimes learned naturally, but most good leaders pursue training to help them achieve these skills. One way you can gain them is with a master’s degree in leadership. Wilmington College Cincinnati offers a master’s degree in organizational leadership that provides the training you need to take the next step in your career. It has a track in organizational transformation that is particularly effective in teaching leadership skills, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking. These combine to make you a more effective leader, capable of inspiring others and furthering your own career. This program is entirely online, making it ideal for busy professionals in the midst of their careers. Full-time students only have to meet online one night a week, making this a flexible option.
If you are interested in learning more about the
master’s degree in organizational leadership offered at Wilmington College Cincinnati, request information today!
