Can you learn to lead?

Can you learn to lead? This week we’re looking at how leaders are made, what successful ones have in common and how to boost your leadership skills.

Ordinary people becoming extraordinary

The term CEO can invoke a vague sense of superhuman. It’s easy to think successful leaders are just made up of different stuff than you. But the book The CEO Next Door brings an encouraging sense of realism and accessibility to leadership — in a study of over 2,600 leaders:?

• Only 7% attended an elite university
• Most did not plan to become a CEO early in life
• 45% had at least one major career catastrophe
• Over a third described themselves as introverted

These stats highlight the fact that leaders are created, not born. But what all leaders have in common are these 4 key, learnable behaviours:

• They are decisive
• They are relentlessly reliable
• They adapt boldly
• They engage with stakeholders without shying away from conflict

In order to develop these skills in your people, leadership training needs to be a central part of your company culture. The CEO Next Door is an ideal starting point for those looking to develop essential leadership behaviours, offering lessons from real-life stories of the world's top business leaders.

Boosting leadership skills with emotional intelligence

To be an effective leader, you need emotional intelligence (EQ). EQ isn't just a buzzword — it’s key to helping managers master stress, communicate effectively, deeply connect with their teams and create an unstoppable work environment. Spearheaded by the visionary Daniel Goleman, the five key EQ components — empathy, communication, self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation — are the pillars for transformative leadership. This article breaks down these components further, complete with practical suggestions on how to implement them.?

Women tend to have higher EQs than men do, making decisions more often from a place of empathy. This implies a leadership advantage in fostering strong, resilient teams that are adaptive to change and supportive of each other. All the more reason to get women in the C-suite!

The transformative power of self-confidence?

“You kind of have to be delusional if you want to be successful” is pithy advice from Danielle Belton, Editor-in-Chief at HuffPost. In this inspiring article, she shares how her career has been about failing upwards, and to be a leader, you have to get comfortable with failure, treating each one as a lesson that can be applied to future success. She also highlights that leadership requires persistence through all the unknowns. It’s an uplifting read that will boost your own self-confidence to reach for what you want.

Leadership advice from Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek has been talking about successful leadership for years. He's the author of the classic "Start With Why" and his TED Talk on how great leaders inspire action has over 63 million views. In this episode of The Diary of a CEO, Steven Bartlett interviews Simon on how leaders can run their businesses successfully. Here are some of our key takeaways:?

• The importance of teaching leaders how to have uncomfortable conversations. Sinek emphasises the social nature of humans, and how we need each other to learn and grow.?
• Empathy and curiosity are the best ways to lead our multigenerational workforce. Each generation in the workforce has their strengths and weaknesses, depending on the context. Skill deficits often underlie issues, so insightful questioning and empathy can make all ages thrive at work.
• Be aware of work trappings vs. culture. Work culture becomes powerful when people are given the chance to contribute to something greater than themselves. Having a slide in the office might be cool, but it doesn’t serve the need for employees to build together and serve a common goal.