20 leadership skills for the future of work - Part IV

Here's your fourth instalment with the final five essential leadership skills for the future of work...I hope you've enjoyed the?first fifteen leadership skills ?shared over the past three weeks. So far, we've explored the skills of:

1. Becoming undistractable
2. Creating and maintaining a safe work environment
3. Creating and innovating
4. Growing and developing yourself and others
5. Building communities and fostering trusting relationships
6. Be the driver of change
7. Be kind, show compassion, embrace empathy
8. Engage through coaching and mentoring
9. Be curious, ask questions and listen without judgement
10. Continually build resilience
11. Be effective in managing time and prioritising what’s important
12. Build awareness and increase emotional intelligence?
13. Be authentic, be true to yourself and be humble
14. Deliver results while upholding organisational values?
15. Improve your communication?

Let's take look at the final five...??????????

1. Maintain healthy boundaries - Boundaries set the expectation around how you want to be treated in the workplace - what you will tolerate and what you won't - where you'll express flexibility and where you'll be rigid. Healthy boundaries ensure you, as a leader, don't become the path of least resistance for others...for example, that last-minute meeting you get invited to at 6pm on a Friday - because the person hosting the meeting wasn't organised enough to schedule something earlier and now it's urgent. Boundaries ensure you're making yourself a priority so you can be your best and encourage others to do the same.
2. Remain flexible and continually adapt - To build high performing teams a leader needs to be proactive and have the ability to approach situations in a myriad of ways. When an outcome is less than desirable, it's not a matter of giving up, it's a matter of looking at how to do it differently. This might be exploring different styles of leading (i.e. coaching, democratic, affiliative, visionary, etc) or it might simply be to do nothing (if you're prone to stepping in a taking over). Amplify what works and adjust what doesn't...become aware of HOW you're achieving results and replicate your approach.
3. Increase capability and reduce dependency - I feel like this is the one skill I've had hundreds of conversations about over the past few years...and will probably continue to have over the next few! If you're a leader who has no time, is always busy, is stressed out, overloaded, overwhelmed, putting out fires, constantly dealing with issues, issues, issues...then it's likely you've created a team that is dependent on you to be the solution. Reducing dependency is one of my favourite talking points because I get to offer leaders the suggestion that they're part of the problem...and watch them squirm awkwardly in their chair for a few seconds before agreeing. And once they acknowledge they're part of the problem then the solution is actually quite simple - empower them!
4. Understand the strategy and connect to the vision - What are we doing this for? Why am I working on this project? How is this making a difference? Are my efforts moving us forward? Etc, etc...are all questions we might ask ourselves about the work we do. Too often we don't fully understand the answer or struggle to connect the dots between what we're doing and why. By understanding your businesses strategy and how it connects with the longer term vision you are better informed to make decisions, prioritise, and adjust your focus to the competing demands that are placed on leaders. If you don't know the vision for your business, find out! If you don't intimately understand the strategy and how it connects with the vision, find out! Help your team to connect the dots and enable them to be more effective in the work they do.
5. Build proficiency in abstract reasoning and problem solving - Despite those annoying tests you are required to endure when applying for a role, abstract reasoning is a skill that is beneficial in most roles to varying degrees. It refers to the ability to analyse information, detect patterns and relationships, and solve problems on a complex, intangible level. A perfect solution to the complex world we're now living in right! Abstract Reasoning is important where we are required to think on our feet, rapidly learn new information and acquire new skills, form new strategies, and solve new problems on a regular basis. There are plenty of online activities and practice tests to get better at solving problems in this way if you're a little rusty.

This concludes the 20 skills to be future ready!

As always I'd love to hear your thoughts and, of course, if there's anything I can do to support your own transition to becoming 'future ready' please reach out.

Shelley Flett is a leadership development & team performance expert with over 15 years working as, for and with leaders to build capability, increase effectiveness and create high-performance team cultures. She has a rich leadership, operations and customer service background with people being central to everything she’s done in her career. Find out more by visiting shelleyflett.com.