The key to successful AI integration across the organization is helping leaders at all levels understand how their use of AI connects to the organization’s collective mission. One way to achieve this is by assisting leaders in understanding the soft skills required to thrive during AI transformation.

Why Soft Skills Are Important for AI Transformation

In the context of leadership, soft skills are key qualities like empathy, compassion, and authenticity that help us form strong connections with others. These skills are just as important, if not more so, than technical skills, such as the ability to use AI. It’s tempting for organizations to think leveraging AI and soft skills means helping all their employees understand how to use AI to work more efficiently in their roles. While AI advancements can significantly enhance operational efficiency and help individuals uncover new insights, they cannot replace the uniquely human aspects of leadership.

At CCL, we believe that human leadership will guide and shape the future. The true strength of leadership lies in the uniquely human qualities that AI cannot replicate, such as empathy, vision, curiosity, and the ability to inspire others. Understanding the relationship between AI and soft skills is crucial for leaders to effectively harness AI’s potential while maintaining a human-centered approach.

The value of leadership soft skills extends beyond individual interactions; they’re essential for navigating complex challenges, fostering innovation, and building resilient teams. Collectively leveraging these soft skills across the organization is an essential factor in successfully navigating AI transformation. While leaders at all levels require a foundational understanding of AI, and some soft skills are important regardless of level, the essential soft skills for leveraging AI look different at different levels.

Senior Leaders: Guiding Ethics, Innovation & Vision

Senior leaders are often charged with designing a strategy in alignment with their organization’s mission, vision, and values. They’re also guiding the organization through uncharted territory. AI transformation is causing rapid change, and senior leaders play a key role in helping their organizations both navigate this change and thrive amidst it. Here are 4 key soft skills senior leaders need to guide their organizations through AI transformation.

• Communication: Senior leaders must drive clear and transparent communication about AI initiatives, goals, and integration. Such transparency helps foster a culture of psychological safety and builds commitment throughout the organization by helping the employees (or everyone) understand the collective vision of why AI transformation is essential.
• Trust: Senior leaders build trust by explaining the benefits, limitations, and implications of AI to stakeholders. This vulnerability can signal to the rest of the organization that “we’re in this together” and build buy-in for key initiatives.
• Ethics: Senior leaders must champion ethical AI practices in their organizations, and they serve as the role models for the rest of the organization’s leaders to follow. Organizations that lack clear ethical guidelines for AI risk eroding trust, inviting bias or misuse, and undermining both employee and public confidence in their leadership and decisions.
• Learning Agility: Senior leaders must cultivate a culture of continuous learning and innovation within their organizations by modeling the traits and behaviors they seek. By creating opportunities for skill development and recognizing learning-oriented behaviors, they also influence others in the organization to experiment and innovate, further shifting organizational culture.

Managers: Translating Strategy & Execution

Managers bridge the gaps between strategic direction and operational reality. Middle managers often find themselves pulled in multiple directions — upward toward senior leaders, sideways toward peers, and downward toward direct reports — so interpersonal skills like clear communication, influence, and collaboration become as critical as technical competence. Here are the 4 skills managers need to best leverage AI transformation.

• Collaboration: Managers need to navigate organizational politics and structures to connect AI potential with strategic goals. To achieve this, they must lead with empathy and adaptability, understanding their organization’s AI strategy, how it will reshape workflows and operations, and foster collaborative and productive working relationships between and across teams and functions.
• Communication: Managers must ensure clear communication about AI’s role and implications to employees to build trust and psychological safety. Serving as the bridge between individual contributors and senior leadership, they help foster understanding and collaboration across organizational boundaries.
• Learning Agility: Managers must continually identify opportunities for their teams where AI can enhance efficiency and productivity. By being adaptable, and helping model that adaptability for their teams, they can quickly integrate AI into existing workflows or spot opportunities for creating new workflows.
• Influence: Managers must encourage teams to explore AI tools and foster a psychologically safe environment for innovation. They should leverage their influence to build consensus and drive commitment toward adopting AI technologies in an ethical and productive way.

Individual Contributors: Innovators Inspired by AI 

Individual contributors are at the frontline of AI transformation. They’re often the first to integrate AI into their everyday work, and they’re experimenting with ways to do more and do better with AI. Individual contributors play a vital role in shaping strategy and executing AI initiatives, yet they often lack the communication, influence, and self-awareness skills required to translate their expertise into broader impact. Here are the key soft skills individual contributors need to best navigate AI transformation:

• Learning Agility: Individual contributors need to invest in personal AI literacy — understanding AI’s capabilities, AI tools, and how to take full advantage of AI to enhance their current role. Embracing learning agility can give these contributors the versatility, adaptability, and growth mindset to best leverage AI.
• Creativity: Individual contributors can immediately leverage AI to enhance their creativity. For example, they can use AI to augment problem-solving, facilitate brainstorming, and spur innovative thinking by exploring new ideas (or working with AI to challenge existing thinking).
• Resilience: While AI can be empowering, it can also be a threat in terms of replacing roles. For individual contributors, building a resilient mindset can help navigate this uncertainty — they can do this by leveraging AI to amplify their own skills as well as helping others remain resilient and be ready for what AI trends emerge next. This requires individuals to challenge and refine AI-generated output to ensure relevance and reliability.
• Collaboration: Individual contributors can serve as educators in their organizations, helping others understand terminology, promote ethical usage, and identify when to and when not to best leverage AI in the flow of work. Turning AI into a collaborative tool in your organization can enhance impact at multiple levels: individuals, teams, and the organization.

Navigating AI Transformation — A Leadership Imperative

To thrive amid AI transformation, leaders must embrace AI as an essential tool while cultivating the soft skills that define effective leadership. AI can certainly provide productivity gains and organizational efficiencies, but it’s not a substitute for the essential human qualities that make up good leadership. Whether you are a senior leader, manager, or individual contributor, understanding and developing these skills will enable you to navigate AI transformation by bolstering both your own individual performance and your organizational impact.

When leaders at all levels leverage soft skills along with AI capabilities, their organizations can best harness AI’s potential. Embrace this opportunity to grow and lead with AI, ensuring you and your organization are ready for the future.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

We have a number of leadership solutions to help you upskill your talent with soft skill development, in the format that’s best for your unique situation.

The post Essential Soft Skills to Lead Through AI Transformation appeared first on CCL.

Here’s what our insights show: a single negative relational energy tie cancels out 4 positive relational energy ties. Before we unpack what this means for leaders and its impact on creating a positive work environment, let’s define what “relational energy” is.

What Is Relational Energy? 

Energy is an important individual resource. Personal energy can be conceptualized as physical energy (the objective energy that powers our body and comes from food, exercise, and sleep) and emotional energy (the subjective, affect-based energy related to emotional activation). Relational energy isn’t a third type; instead it represents the idea that social interactions are a source of positive or negative emotional energy. In essence, relational energy is the energy you get from others at work — it can boost your motivation and help you get more done or deplete you and negatively impact your work.

Past research shows that relational energy has an impact even after taking into account workplace social support and the quality of the relationship between a leader and team member. Prior work shows that positive relational energy with leaders is related to higher job engagement and better job performance. In workplace social networks research, de-energizing relational ties are related to reduced thriving, lower motivation, and increased turnover.

Relational Energy: What It’s Not 

Let’s clarify 2 key distinctions:

First, relational energy isn’t about the intrinsic emotional value of the topic — it’s about how people interact while discussing it. Two people can address a topic that may be perceived as negative, such as budget cuts, but still keep a high level of energy during the conversation. Similarly, 2 people can discuss a topic that may be perceived as positive, such as winning new business, but do so in a way that depletes energy.

Second, relational energy is distinct from employee voice, which is when employees speak up to leaders with ideas, concerns, suggestions, and process improvements. Employee voice is a proactive behavior motivated by a desire to improve the organization. Research shows that employee voice is positively related to work process improvements, organizational innovation and creativity, greater organizational learning, and better decision making.

Unfortunately, employee voice isn’t always well received, particularly by certain leaders. Past research shows that leaders with low self-efficacy (such as a low perceived ability to meet the high competence expectations associated with a leadership role) are much less receptive to employee voice. They’re more likely to negatively evaluate employees who speak up and are less likely to solicit input from employees due to their own ego defensiveness. Ironically, our research found that being more receptive to employee voice would likely make these individuals better leaders.

Although it may be tempting to dismiss employees who speak up as having “negative” relational energy, this misconstrues what relational energy really means. We encourage leaders to carefully rethink such judgments and reflect on whether these views are an ego defense mechanism.

Our Research on Relational Energy: What We Did & What We Found

In our Leadership at the Peak program, we collect data in our Team Vantage assessment. Team leaders and members rate how interactions with each person “typically affect” their energy level. This provides us with round-robin ratings of relational energy, which we analyze by rater source and link to team outcomes. We’ve collected data from more than 600 teams of 4–16 members each (an average of 7), totaling more than 34,000 relational ties.

First, the good news. More than 91% of relational ties were rated as either neutral or energizing. In contrast, de-energizing ties were rare — only 9% of all possible relationships.

Some teams had zero de-energizing ties, while others had more than a third of their relationships that drained energy. Overall, the proportion of de-energizing ties within a team ranged from 0% to 38%.

Now, the bad news. Those de-energizing ties tend to have outsized effects. Across the measures of team effectiveness that we examined, the standout finding is striking: removing a single negative energy tie is equivalent to adding 4 positive energy ties. (This is based on comparing the predictive effects of the total number of de-energizing and energizing ties within a team, then calculating the ratio of these 2 values.)

For team leaders aiming to foster a positive work environment, this underscores the significant challenge of counteracting the impact of even one negative energy tie in the team. That’s why a crucial metric is the team’s ratio of energizing to de-energizing relational ties.

Overall, our results reveal that a team’s relational energy is linked to multiple team outcomes. For example, when predicting psychological safety, having more strongly de-energizing relationships affects the team about 4 times more than having more strongly energizing ties. Put another way, as a team leader you would need to cultivate 4 strongly energizing connections among team members to neutralize the impact of one strongly de-energizing relationship — and that only brings the team back to neutral. To propel the team toward positive energy, you’d need to foster even more strongly energizing relationships.

You might wonder whether the impact of negative relational energy depends on someone’s role. Unfortunately, it does, and strongly. A negative energy tie with a team leader has 3 times more impact on team outcomes like psychological safety than a negative energy tie with a team member.

Recognizing Negative Relational Energy 

Before we get to practical advice for leaders, let’s identify what negative relational energy looks like. And, yes, there is some agreement about who brings the negative energy to the team. Below are some behaviors and attitudes that consistently drain the team’s energy and enthusiasm.

Some red flags are:

• Frequent complaining, with a focus on problems rather than solutions
• Viewing most situations in a negative light — win-lose or lose-lose scenarios rather than win-win scenarios
• Stirring up conflict by escalating minor issues and drawing others into the fray
• Often critiquing or blaming others, without taking personal accountability
• Showing little empathy for others’ needs, feelings, or situations
• Unnecessarily taking up significant time, attention, and energy to meet excessive demands

Given this list, you might wonder (as we often do) why anyone would choose to dwell in this negative energy space. While we can’t fully answer that, it may be because even though it doesn’t feel good, it may feel comfortable because it’s familiar. People often prefer comfort over the discomfort that comes with change.

Managing Energy at Work

Tips for Team Leaders

Frustration with others is one of the top leadership challenges, and managing negative relational energy on your team can be difficult. It’s important to be aware of the positive and negative impacts among your team members and look for significant changes in energy dynamics when certain team members are present or absent.

Pay attention to changes in conversational contributions; collaboration rates among team members; and conflict, disengagement, and team morale. Be wary of the inclination to downplay or dismiss the impact of negative relational energy, and realize that it takes significant effort and valuable emotional energy for team members to recover from negative relational interactions.

Although it’s good to have compassion for team members who bring negative relational energy, you also have a responsibility to limit their ability to negatively impact the team and its outcomes. Choosing to do nothing signals acceptance of the behavior.

Here are 3 strategies you can use:

1. Set clear expectations for behavior. Clearly communicate and model the positive, solution-focused behavior and attitudes you expect. Address behavior that doesn’t align with these expectations.
2. Offer support and development. In addition to giving feedback, provide opportunities for team members to develop new skills and strategies for managing problematic behavior. This may include training, mentoring, or coaching. If a team member shows no interest in changing their behavior, this is a clear signal about their self-focused intentions.
3. Take firm action when needed. These decisions are never easy, but if there’s no progress despite coaching and support, protecting the team becomes the priority. Consider structural changes (such as reassignment to a different role or limiting group interactions) to safeguard team psychological safety while continuing to work with the individual.

We recognize that one of the reasons negative relational energy can be so challenging to address is because it’s not clear bad behavior like sexism, racism, or abuse. Instead, it’s like the small, steady drip of acidic water on a rock. Over time, those tiny drops create fissures that can fracture a team and drive valuable members away.

Tips for Team Members

We often have no choice about who we work with, but we can influence how we work with others. If you have an energy vampire dynamic with someone on your team, here are actions you can take (no garlic required):

• Maintain your own positive energy. Keep an upbeat attitude and focus on solutions rather than problems to avoid getting drawn into negativity. When possible, choose to work with teammates who are an energetic match with you.
• Practice self-care and identify practices that recharge you. Ensure you’re mindful of your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing and regularly engage in practices that replenish your energy at home (time in nature, exercise, hobbies) and at work (conversations with high-energy teammates).
• Focus your time. Managing energy at work includes managing your time effectively. If you must interact with negative relational energy, keep interactions brief. Refuse to spend time listening to complaints, blame, or unnecessary drama. When possible, communicate in ways that work best for you, like email, rather than synchronous interactions. Schedule meetings for when your energy is highest.
• Set personal boundaries. Be clear about what behaviors you will not tolerate, and communicate those boundaries directly. Be assertive in holding your boundaries and use “I” statements to explain the impact of someone’s behavior or attitudes on you and your work. If necessary, bring your team leader into the mix.
• Reflect and learn. Rather than ruminating about negative interactions, reflect on them productively to see what you can improve. Try new behaviors such as redirecting conversations to be more productive, seeking support from positive relational energy peers, and finding the humor in such interactions. The strategies you learn at work can likely be useful in your personal life, too. Recognize that the only things you have control over are your own behaviors and attitudes. 

Highlighting Relational Energy Awareness

Our recommendations focus on managing negative, rather than positive, relational energy. This is intentional, given the outsized impact it has in teams.

We hope this work raises awareness of relational energy and inspires a kind of energy consciousness: a habit of noticing what or who energizes or depletes you.

Above all, relational energy is authentic. This isn’t about faking positivity or forcing team members to display energy that they don’t feel. To do so would be merely performative (not to mention exhausting) and requires surface acting, which is related to higher stress and lower job satisfaction.

We’ve all experienced the impact of relational energy at work. Many of us understand it intuitively, even if it’s hard to explain. We hope that our research can help you name and claim your experiences and provide legitimacy for them. These insights and suggestions can help you recognize — and better manage — the profound impact relational energy has on your workplace experience.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Shifting relational energy on your team starts with better conversations. Develop the coaching skills to listen deeply, give effective feedback, and create psychological safety with our Better Conversations Every Day program.

The post Power Cord or Power Drain? How Relational Energy Shapes Your Team appeared first on CCL.

Anyone guiding a group toward a shared result will encounter challenges along the way — but what’s most challenging about leading organizations today? What are the top challenges of leadership, and have they shifted since the pandemic?

Our research team has been exploring such questions for decades now to stay abreast of the challenges and issues most commonly faced by leaders at every level. (See our 2023 research brief, 2021 technical report, and 2013 white paper for more information.)

Our Research Into the Challenges of Leadership

Based on the collective challenges reported in over 7,000 organizations around the world, and using anonymized data on individuals collected through our global 360 assessments, our research team has examined what over 48,000 leaders have identified as their most critical leadership challenges over the past several years.

Using an AI-powered language processing model to review and analyze their responses, we identified the most consistent challenges of leadership across many industries and sectors around the world. We further analyzed the data to determine how these challenges evolved in the wake of the pandemic.

The Most Common Challenges of Leadership at Every Level

Here we present what our research has found are today’s biggest challenges of leadership — the top 5 challenges faced by leaders at each of level of the organization — ranked by their relevance post-pandemic. And because development is more effective when it uses data to support the challenges of leaders at different levels, this list of leadership issues can be the focus for training & development efforts in all organizations, everywhere in the world.

For Frontline Managers

1. Frustrations with people and time

2. First time managing people

3. Deficient operational processes

4. Team performance

5. Personal improvement

For Mid-Level Managers

6. Personal limitations

7. Challenging business context

8. Ineffective interpersonal style

9. Cross-functional influence

10. Competing people and project priorities

For Senior Leaders

11. Credibility gaps

12. Limited market / sales growth

13. Process improvement across groups

14. Limited self-awareness

15. Transitioning into a new role

For Executives

16. Dynamic business environment

17. Strategic responsibilities

18. Interpersonal rigidity

19. Organizational readiness

20. Lack of cooperation

The Top Leadership Challenges of Frontline Managers

Regardless of where they live or work, those managing others in supervisory roles reported that their most common leadership challenge is frustrations with people and time — and this issue has only increased in frequency since the pandemic. Here are the top 5 most common challenges for frontline leaders, based on our research:

Frustrations With People and Time

Many frontline managers reported that their top leadership issue is feeling overwhelmed with inefficiencies and frustrated with others. This includes challenges with offering guidance to direct reports, overcoming resistance to change, dealing with difficult employees, and adjusting communication and feedback styles to collaborate more effectively with different people. And again, this appears to have become an even bigger concern for leaders at this level since the pandemic.

First Time Managing People

Another common leadership challenge among new managers is learning to juggle day-to-day challenges — such as managing others who were formerly peers, or employees who are older than they are — and just generally gaining respect as a new, first-time people leader.

Deficient Operational Processes

Needing stronger operational processes to address organizational problems was another frequently cited leadership challenge for this group.

Team Performance

First-level leaders also reported challenges with developing teams, giving effective feedback, providing direction, holding coaching conversations, and dealing with resistance from direct reports.

Personal Improvement

Learning to be better at active listening to understand the perspectives of others, improving flexibility, and being less reactive in pursuit of an “ideal self” are other commonly reported challenges for leaders on the front lines, our research found.

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges of Mid-Level Managers

Managers who are leading from the middle — with senior leaders above them and direct reports below — face many similar challenges of leadership as well. Our research found that the most common issues for mid-level managers were:

Personal Limitations

A top challenge for leaders at this level is their own personal limitations and feelings of inadequacy, as they often must overcome their own doubts about their abilities and readiness to lead — as well as the doubts of their peers or supervisors. Dealing with the challenge of personal limitations requires overcoming impostor syndrome, humility to seek the input of others, courage to do the right thing, and projecting confidence while communicating effectively.

Since the pandemic, mid-level managers have reported this as an issue even more frequently. With new cultures brought on by remote and hybrid workplaces, overcoming common limitations in order to make an impact as a leader has become even more challenging.

Business Challenges

In a tumultuous work environment, managers (particularly mid-level leaders) may struggle to deliver results. Leading within a challenging business context requires the careful deployment of limited resources, improved processes, and keeping employees engaged and motivated.

Ineffectiveness

When a mid-level leader has an ineffective interpersonal style, they struggle with relationships. This can play out on a spectrum, from dominating interactions to lacking the self-confidence to be assertive. On the other hand, effective interpersonal styles and embodying the characteristics of a good leader allow for open and honest conversations.

Influence

Successful leadership requires the ability to influence others beyond one’s group — often without formal authority. For those leading from the middle, the challenge of influencing others across functions includes building credibility, developing cross-organizational networks, and building and bridging partnerships.

Competing Priorities

Mid-level leaders report that they often find it difficult to balance competing people and project priorities, especially when they’re sandwiched between project-based deadlines and their employees’ engagement. It’s an important paradox that leaders must manage both relationships and tasks effectively. When resources are limited, motivating team members who vary in personality, abilities, and experience can feel at odds with effective project management.

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges for Senior Leaders

We noticed that the pandemic shifted the top leadership challenges for this group somewhat. Before COVID, limited self-awareness was cited as the most frequent leadership issue among senior leaders who head up functions, business units, departments, divisions, and regions, but the frequency of this challenge dropped significantly more recently. The challenge of overcoming credibility gaps, on the other hand, has become more pressing after the pandemic.

Credibility Gaps

This includes the challenge of building credibility as an organizational leader. Examples include gaining the trust of stakeholders and enhancing visibility within an organization. Senior leaders may also need to strengthen their leadership image or presence to be most effective.

Limited Market / Sales Growth

Making strategic shifts to maximize market growth and sales is another top challenge of senior leaders. This may include expanding the organization beyond core products, extending market reach, shifting to a market / customer orientation, and better aligning of sales.

Process Improvement Across Groups

Another key challenge for senior leaders is influencing the organization to improve and accept new processes, which requires being a strategic leader, effective boundary spanning leadership, and developing a broader perspective by taking a systemic view.

Limited Self-Awareness

Understanding how others perceive them and recognizing their impact on others — along with improving their confidence, approachability, and communication style (particularly when delivering difficult messages) — can be especially challenging for leaders at the senior level.

Transitioning Into a New Role

Adapting to changes in responsibilities and managing new people or former peers is a final key leadership issue at this level. This challenge may be brought on by a promotion, a new role, a functional shift, or a geographic move, or simply through preparing for the C-suite.

The Top 5 Leadership Challenges for Executives

Finally, senior executives leading the enterprise told us that their top 5 leadership challenges are as follows.

Dynamic Business Environment

For C-level leaders, the challenge of working in a dynamic business environment topped their list of leadership issues. This challenge can be brought about by new regulations, market and economic conditions, competition, or growth. To be effective, leaders must be able to develop and keep the talent needed to support change and revise their organization’s models and systems as required.

Notably, this challenge experienced the biggest rise in the wake of the pandemic. Even before the pandemic, senior executives were already used to leading their organizations in adapting to ever-changing circumstances, but COVID and its fallout accelerated that need even more.

Strategic Responsibilities

Developing strategy for an organization is another top leadership challenge for senior executives. This includes aligning priorities and initiatives across groups and developing teams to support strategic efforts. It’s helpful when senior leaders are able to link business strategy to leadership strategy.

Interpersonal Rigidity

For many senior leaders, shifting the way they interact with others to be more effective and the ability to adapt their style for varying situations or stakeholders is an important challenge. Leaders in C-suite need to have different techniques for flexing their approach, including in how they communicate the vision, manage or influence others, or leverage power over others to get things done.

Organizational Readiness Amid Uncertainty

Preparing their organizations for a turbulent future is an ongoing issue for senior executives. This challenge of leadership is experienced most often when there are organizational mission shifts, significant resource constraints, technology changes, or when new ways of working are needed.

Lack of Cooperation

Lastly, influencing others toward collaboration is a key leadership challenge for senior executives. This is especially common when they’re new to a role, managing former peers or more experienced colleagues, or collaborating with others on the senior team.

How to Respond to These Top Leadership Challenges

Tips to Help Leaders Address the Most Common Leadership Issues

Now that you know the most common challenges of leadership, how do you begin addressing them? One way is by looking at the larger themes that emerged from our leadership challenge research. Across all levels of the organization, we found that the challenges of leadership generally fall into 3 high-level themes, related to:

• Challenges of personal growth,

• Challenges related to managing people and getting work done, and 

• Challenges in managing across the organization and within a larger system.

Here are some recommended ways to respond to these 3 common themes in our overall leadership challenges research.  Many of these suggestions are part of developing the core leadership skills needed in every role, at every stage of a career.

1. To respond to leadership challenges related to your personal growth, work to maximize personal value.

Personal shortcomings and the aspiration to become a better leader define our first theme. Challenges here include learning to be more assertive during interactions, developing confidence, and understanding how others perceive you.

Individuals overcome leadership issues and create value for their organizations by focusing on the unique contributions that only they can make. Understanding what those unique values are, and delegating everything else (or as close to everything else as possible), allows leaders to maximize their value.

It’s important to recognize your own characteristics, behaviors, and habits in order to know what may be triggering challenges for you in your career. This way, you can work toward increasing your self-awareness and strengthening specific skills and growing as an individual leader.

Some internal challenges that many leaders face include a lack of confidence, a fear of failure, maintaining authenticity during self-promotion, impatience, resistance in responding to new ideas, or struggling to manage conflict in the workplace. All of these can be potential roadblocks to leadership success.

Understanding your own strengths and weaknesses and maximizing your unique value are part of improving your personal leadership brand.

2. To respond to leadership challenges around managing people and getting work done, focus on delegating more to others.

Our second leadership challenge theme involves the demands of managing both people and tasks. Specific challenges include managing for the first time, building cooperation between people, and overseeing multiple projects that compete for importance and resources.

You’ll be more productive, give your colleagues a greater sense of ownership, and build more trust on your team if you delegate, as well. But effective delegation requires more than just getting a task off your desk — it involves a repeating cycle of 4 key steps:

1. Understanding your preferences. Effective delegators prioritize their workload and decide which tasks to keep and which to give to someone else. They also understand how much feedback they want while the person they’ve delegated to works on the task.
2. Knowing your people. To delegate effectively, you must assign tasks to others with the necessary knowledge and skills. That means that you have to understand people’s preferences and abilities, using delegation to help direct reports develop, and coach people while allowing them to learn as they take on new tasks.
3. Being clear about the purpose of the task. A task’s purpose gives it meaning. By aligning this purpose with team or individual beliefs and goals, delegation can become part of purpose-driven leadership and an opportunity for personal growth.
4. Assessing and rewarding. You should engage in collaboration and work with your direct reports to develop ways to help them, and you, decide if a task has been completed properly, and to reward them appropriately.

3. To respond to leadership challenges related to managing across the organization, work to increase boundary spanning and build high-performing teams.

Working within the larger system of an organization is our third high-level leadership challenge. Examples include working in a dynamic business environment, needing stronger operational processes, and creating cross-functional influence.

As a leader, you must be able to create and lead teams effectively. To build high-performing teams, use our team effectiveness framework, which has 4 components:

• Core: Communicate a team’s reason for being so that all team members understand their core purpose and value. (A team charter can help with this.)
• Collective Mindset: Be sure everybody on the team knows what it takes to be a good team member. Teams adopt a collective mindset when they understand all members’ roles and responsibilities, as well as team norms for how team members work together.
• Cohesive Relationships: Ensure team members relate interpersonally by fostering a psychologically safe work environment where everybody feels a sense of belonging, is treated with respect, and communicates effectively.
• Connection: Teams can have a broader organizational impact when collaborating across boundaries. In other words, when colleagues who have different backgrounds and experiences connect, innovation and collaboration are enhanced.

A Final Word for HR Leaders on Our Leadership Challenges Research

Focus Development Efforts to Address the Top Challenges of Leaders

Developmental initiatives are more effective when they align with the real challenges that leaders are facing. For those who work in HR or Learning & Development, understanding these common leadership issues can be the catalyst for creating initiatives that truly address real-world needs, growing needed leadership capabilities for your organization’s talent pipeline.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Build your team’s capacity for overcoming common leadership challenges. Our array of leadership development programs are carefully designed to address the leadership challenges faced by leaders at every level. 

The post The Top 20 Leadership Challenges appeared first on CCL.

A lot of effort, time, money, and attention go into developing leadership training programs, retreats, classes, webinars, and other formal learning opportunities.

Program designers usually focus on meeting the learning needs of participants and aligning content with corporate strategy and goals. And they should.

But what happens before and after those formal programs has a major impact on the return on training investment — and could be the key to ensuring success: boss support.

Our research on what makes leadership development programs successful has found that people who have support from their bosses get significantly more out of these types of training. In fact, it’s the primary predictor of a leadership development program’s success.

When bosses are more engaged and actively show clear support of their direct reports’ development, participants report they get more value from the training.

To better understand a supervisor’s impact on their participants’ success, we conducted a research study. Our findings revealed that when bosses are involved and supportive of training, participants experience the following outcomes:

• Leaders’ self-awareness, leadership capability, and leadership effectiveness significantly improve.
• Leaders have a greater impact on the teams they lead.
• Leaders receive more favorable ratings on organizational effectiveness, management capabilities, and employee empowerment.

Boss Support for Development Drives Better Organizational Outcomes

We also found that greater boss support drives better organizational outcomes. The data show that bosses rated most leaders participating in our Leadership Development Program (LDP)® with high marks for organizational impact:

• 79% showed increased or significantly increased organizational effectiveness.
• 64% showed increased or significantly increased employee empowerment.
• 75% showed increased or significantly increased management capabilities.

Although the average impact of the program was high, leaders who exhibited the most change in key leadership parameters were more likely to have strong support from their bosses. Those who exhibited no change after their leadership course were more likely to lack boss support. For example, there was a 16% gap in boss support between leaders who made significant improvements in their organizational effectiveness and those who made no improvement. There were similar gaps of 8% and 13% in empowerment and management capabilities, respectively.

So bosses can literally make — or break — the effectiveness of an organization’s leadership development program.

How to Be a Supportive Boss Before & After Your Direct Reports’ Training

So, are your direct reports preparing to take part in an in-person or virtual leadership development program?

If so, plan to have a couple of conversations with them. Meeting with your employees both before and after they attend a leadership training program is a great way to maximize their success and communicate your buy-in. It needn’t require a large investment of your time, but it helps convey you’re a supportive boss and adds considerable accountability to the process.

These types of conversations can happen in person, of course, but can be just as effective if they happen remotely. (Just keep in mind how to craft your persona for effective virtual communication.)

Before the Training: How to Be a Supportive Boss

Ideally, participants would take a 360-degree feedback evaluation tool, like one of our Benchmarks® 360 assessments, that includes input from their boss, which provides further fuel for the leadership development experience. At this stage, a supportive boss will also help their direct reports choose a strategic challenge to work on during or after the program.

During your pre-meeting, plan to ask questions for 20% of the meeting and then listen to each direct report’s responses for the remaining 80% of the time. Don’t feel like you need to memorize these questions — we recommend that you have the questions and topics you plan to cover in front of you. It will keep the conversation flowing and can serve as a checklist.

5 Questions to Ask Employees Before Training

1. What do you hope to get out of the training? Have them articulate their goal, and follow up by asking, “What else?”
2. What developmental areas do you want to work on as you go through the program? This will allow them to admit what they think they aren’t great at. Ideally, participants also take a 360 evaluation that includes input from you. Encourage them to consider that feedback when choosing a strategic challenge to work on after the program.
3. What do you believe are your strengths, and how might you improve upon them? Our research shows that great leaders are known for their towering strengths rather than the absence of weaknesses, so improving strengths is still crucial. Most people over-focus on weaknesses.
4. What sort of support and help do you need in order to apply the learning back at work? You may be surprised what they actually need from you as a manager to keep it growing.
5. During training, what support do you need so that you can fully disconnect from your daily responsibilities? You want participants to soak up the learning in the program so they can implement real changes when they return. If you skip this step, expect them to be distracted during the training.

Before your conversation ends, schedule a follow-up meeting for after they complete their development program. This will help ensure that a follow-up discussion occurs, and it also lets your direct reports know that they have boss support, that you’re committed to their success, and that you’ll be checking in again after the training is complete.

After the Training: How to Be a Supportive Boss

Once your direct reports are done with leadership training, your goal is to help them turn their learning into action items. After all, the new insights and skills gained in a leadership development program are only valuable if they’re applied.

After the program, participants ideally would apply their new skills and insights to the strategic challenge they agreed to with their bosses during the preparation phase. In addition, organizations can provide resources to the bosses of program participants so they understand what the participant learned and how to support ongoing development.

The post-training meeting reinforces boss support for development and creates an opportunity for direct reports to publicly commit to personal goals and allows them to capitalize on their enthusiasm coming out of the training before too much time passes and their interest wanes.

Similar to the pre-meeting, we recommend that bosses spend 20% of the meeting talking — mostly asking questions — and 80% of the time in active listening and coaching mode. Again, some good questions to ask are outlined below.

5 Questions to Ask Employees After Training

1. How was the program? This general question will help the conversation start off on a casual note.
2. What did you learn? Move into discussing both the content and personal insights they came away with. How do they plan to apply their new skills and insights to the strategic challenge you discussed during the preparation phase?
3. How are you going to bring this back to work? Next, discuss implementation. How will they convey what they learned to their team, or talk about their identified strengths and weaknesses? Team members who didn’t attend the leadership development experience are often curious to hear about it and can benefit from your reports’ experience. Encourage them to share insights with colleagues.
4. How can we work together to expand your network? In many leadership development programs, participants have opportunities to build relationships with other people in their organization — often in other functions or “silos.” In open-enrollment programs, participants may meet other professionals from their industry or even different industries. This often develops into a formal or informal support network and sometimes includes peer coaching and accountability. Express your support for these relationships, which can help both employees and their teams.
5. How can I support you? Similar to the pre-meeting, it’s important to ask how you can support them in implementing changes. Not only does it illustrate your commitment, but you may learn something about how you can be more effective, too.

You’ll notice that there’s some overlap between these questions and the topics you covered in the pre-meeting, which is intentional. The first meeting sets the tone and helps prepare your direct reports, while the follow-up is designed to see it through and reiterate your support. You can even turn it into a coaching conversation, reinforcing lessons learned and helping your employees take responsibility for their actions and their development. This is sure to help them see you as a supportive boss.

If your post-training meeting comes fairly soon after the training, you’ll be able to help your direct reports focus on applying what they learned and execute a plan that will make their training — and your time — well worth it.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Be a supportive boss by showing your direct reports that you’re invested in their professional development. Explore our leadership programs, available for leaders at every level, and we can show you how to provide boss support at every stage of their learning journeys.

The post How to Show Boss Support for Your Employees’ Development (& Why Boss Support Matters) appeared first on CCL.

It’s critical for companies to hire and develop more effective managers and leaders capable of moving their organization forward during both good and challenging times. That requires looking beyond traditional strategies for management development and cultivating the skills most important for success.

One of those skills, perhaps unexpectedly, is empathy — a vital leadership competency.

Empathetic leadership means having the ability to understand the needs of others, and being aware of their feelings and thoughts. Unfortunately, empathy in the workplace has long been a soft skill that’s overlooked as a performance indicator. Our research, however, has shown that today’s successful leaders must be more “person-focused” and able to work well with people from varying teams, departments, countries, cultures, and backgrounds.

To determine if empathy influences a manager’s job performance, our research team analyzed data from 6,731 mid- to upper-middle-level managers in 38 countries. The leaders in our study were rated by their peers, direct reports, and superiors on their level of empathy through a Benchmarks® 360-degree feedback assessment.

As noted in our white paper, we found that empathetic leadership is positively related to job performance, particularly among mid-level managers and above.

In other words, our research found that managers who practiced empathetic leadership toward direct reports were viewed as better performers by their bosses. The findings were consistent across the sample: those managers who were rated as empathetic by subordinates were also rated as high performing by their own boss.

The ability to be compassionate and connect with others is critical to our lives, both personally and professionally. Demonstrating empathy in the workplace — a key part of emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness — also improves human interactions in general and can lead to more effective communication and positive outcomes, in both work and home settings.

Defining Empathy in the Workplace

Empathy is the ability to perceive and relate to the thoughts, emotions, or experiences of others. Those with high levels of empathy are skilled at understanding a situation from another person’s perspective and lead with compassion.

Empathetic leadership in the context of the workplace simply means that people leaders are able to establish true connections with one another that enhance relationships and performance.

It’s important to remember the difference between sympathy and empathy, as the 2 are often confused.

• Sympathy is typically defined by feelings of pity for another person, without really understanding what it’s like to be in their situation.
• Empathy, on the other hand, refers to the capacity or ability to imagine oneself in the situation of another, experiencing the emotions, ideas, or opinions of that person.

Both in and out of the workplace, empathy is often more productive and supportive than sympathy.

How to Show More Empathetic Leadership

4 Ways to Increase Your Empathy in the Workplace

Displaying empathetic leadership can take many shapes and forms. We recommend leaders take the following 4 steps to show greater empathy in the workplace and with their colleagues and direct reports.

1. Watch for signs of burnout in others.

Work burnout is a real problem today, and it comes at greater risk during times of intense stress and pressure. Many people are stressed, putting in more work hours than ever before and finding it difficult to separate work and home life.

Managers who are skilled at empathetic leadership are able to recognize signs of overwork in others before burnout becomes an issue that results in disengagement or turnover. This might mean taking a few extra minutes each week to check in with team members and gauge how they’re handling their current workload and helping them to recover from overwork.

2. Show sincere interest in the needs, hopes, and dreams of other people.

Part of leading with empathy involves working to understand the unique needs and goals of each team member and how to best match work assignments to contribute to both performance and employee satisfaction. Team members who see that their manager recognizes them in this way are more engaged and willing to go the extra mile. Showing kindness in the workplace can boost performance and culture.

3. Demonstrate a willingness to help an employee with personal problems.

Lines between work and personal life are becoming increasingly blurred. Empathetic leaders understand that their team members are dynamic individuals who are shouldering personal problems while having to maintain their professional responsibilities. They recognize that it’s part of their role to lead and support those team members when they need it most.

Keeping open lines of communication and encouraging transparency is a good way to foster psychological safety and help team members feel comfortable sharing.

4. Show compassion when other people disclose a personal loss.

Real connections and friendships at work matter, and empathetic leadership is a tool that managers can use to establish bonds with those they’re privileged to lead. We’ve all been through personal loss, so even if we can’t relate to the specific loss our team member experiences, we can act empathetically and let them know they’re supported. This is key for compassionate leadership.

How Organizations Can Encourage Empathetic Leadership

Some leaders naturally show more empathy at work than others and will have an advantage over their peers who have difficulty expressing empathy. Most leaders fall in the middle and are sometimes or somewhat empathetic.

Fortunately, it’s not a fixed trait. Empathetic leadership can be learned. If given enough time and support, leaders can develop and enhance their empathy skills through coaching, training, or developmental opportunities and initiatives.

Organizations and HR leaders can encourage a more empathetic workplace and help managers improve their empathy skills in a number of simple ways.

5 Ways to Encourage Empathy in the Workplace

1. Talk about empathy at work to signal its value.

Let leaders know that empathy matters. Many managers consider task-oriented skills such as monitoring and planning to be more important in controlling the performance of their team members. But research shows that understanding, caring, and developing others is just as important, if not more important, particularly in today’s workforce.

Your organization should put an emphasis on leadership soft skills needed at every leader level, and explain that giving time and attention to others fosters empathy, which in turn enhances team performance and improves perceived managerial effectiveness.

2. Teach listening skills.

To understand others and sense what they’re feeling, managers must be good listeners, skilled in active listening techniques, who let others know that they’re being heard and express understanding of concerns and problems.

When a manager is a good listener, people feel respected, and critical trust on the team can grow. To show the highest levels of empathy in the workplace, managers should focus on listening to hear the meaning behind what others are saying by paying attention to not only the words being said, but also the feelings and values being shown, through nonverbal cues such as tone, pace of speech, facial expressions, and gestures.

3. Encourage genuine perspective-taking.

Leaders should consistently put themselves in the other person’s place. For managers, this includes taking into account the personal lived experiences or perspectives of their employees. It also can be applied to solving problems, managing conflicts, or driving innovation. It’s very helpful for individuals to understand the role social identity plays as well.

4. Cultivate compassion.

Support managers who care about how others feel, and consider the effects that business decisions have on employees, customers, and communities. Go beyond the standard-issue values statement and allow time for compassionate reflection and response. Remember, your employees care about social responsibility; your organization should too.

5. Support global managers.

The ability of your middle managers to be empathetic leaders who can collaborate across boundaries is especially important for those working in global or cross-cultural organizations. Leading a multicultural team requires cultural intelligence and the ability to understand people who have very different perspectives and experiences.

A Closing Thought on Empathy in the Workplace

And as the data we shared above shows, when managers hone their empathetic leadership skills, they improve their effectiveness and increase their chances of success in the job. Empathetic leaders are assets to organizations, in part because they are able to effectively build and maintain relationships and retain talent — a critical part of leading organizations anywhere in the world.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Model empathetic leadership and help your people develop greater empathy in the workplace with a customized learning journey for your leaders using our research-backed modules. Available leadership topics include Boundary Spanning Leadership, Communication, Emotional Intelligence Training for Leaders, Listening to Understand, Psychological Safety & Trust, and more.

The post The Importance of Empathy in the Workplace appeared first on CCL.

Feedback is sort of a necessary evil. No one particularly likes to listen to what they’re doing wrong, and often the words are difficult or confusing to hear. And giving feedback isn’t especially easy, either. But as a leader or coach, it’s your job to know how to give feedback, as constructive suggestions can help your direct reports and colleagues succeed. So make sure you understand what it takes to coach people.

Whatever your style or your company’s system, chances are that performance reviews are less-than-satisfying events for you and your direct reports. But learning how to give effective feedback and avoiding common feedback mistakes can make the difference between a meaningless (or disastrous) review and a constructive coaching conversation.

Feedback is one of the most important elements of successful performance reviews because it engages the employee in the conversation and puts the spotlight on key issues. In fact, we believe giving effective feedback is the key to improving your talent development.

If you understand the 4 types of feedback, and which one is most effective to start with, giving feedback will feel easier, and your reviews will improve.

What Is Effective Feedback?

The 4 Types of Feedback 

Which Seems Most Effective to You? 

Virtually all feedback can be classified as one of these 4 types:

1. Directive
2. Contingency
3. Attribution
4. Impact

1. Directive feedback tells someone what to do, even if you’re phrasing it “nicely.” For example, “I suggest that you make priorities clearer to your team.”
2. Contingency feedback gives a future consequence: “If you keep interrupting people in meetings, they’ll stop cooperating with you.”
3. Attribution feedback describes someone or their actions in terms of a quality or label, as in “You’re a good communicator” or “You’re undisciplined.”
4. Impact feedback informs the receiver about the effect their actions have had on other people or on the organization. Impact feedback is important in performance reviews because it can shed light on something your direct report never knew or thought about. It gets at why their behaviors are either working or not working. An example of impact feedback is: “Team members were confused, and I felt frustrated.”

You’ll be better at giving effective feedback if you’re skilled at using all 4 types of feedback for the right times and for the right reasons. You’ll be even better with lots of practice.

Why Impact Feedback Is the Most Effective Type of Feedback

It’s important to remember that you can’t control how someone feels about or reacts to feedback. Different people will perceive the same situation in different ways. You can’t “make” someone like or agree with what you’re saying, but you can increase the chances that your feedback will be well received and not rejected by learning how to give feedback effectively.

The recipient of feedback is more likely to take feedback well if it isn’t authoritative. If the feedback giver is perceived as leveraging positional power or as commanding, dominating, arrogant, or self-centered, the message will be lost. The recipient of the feedback is likely to be defensive or argumentative — or passively accept what you say, but resent the feedback and act in counterproductive ways later.

Among the 4 types of feedback, impact feedback is the most effective to start with because it informs a person about the results of their behavior without dissecting the details, assuming motivation, or placing blame. Try using our widely recognized Situation – Behavior – Impact model to give feedback and explore intentions, making the feedback a two-way discussion.

Impact feedback isn’t authoritative — you aren’t telling a person what to do, setting forth consequences, or judging. Instead, impact feedback informs the receiver, empowers them, and increases the chance they’ll decide to accept the message.

Impact feedback is a great way to start a conversation and set the stage for more authoritative feedback if it’s needed. Once the feedback receiver realizes the impact of their behavior, they’re more receptive to prescriptive aspects of authoritative forms of feedback.

Giving feedback to others about their performance is a key developmental experience. Learn how to make the feedback you give even more effective so that others are more likely to hear and benefit from your message.

How to Give Feedback: 10 Do’s & Don’ts

1. Discuss actions without judgment.

Do: Provide feedback that helps and supports employees. Feedback is about addressing specific actions — it’s not about fixing employees.

Don’t: Judge individuals. This can make people feel defensive by sending the message that only you know what’s right or wrong. 

2. Make sure the feedback is clear.

Do: Present clear and honest feedback, whether it’s negative or positive. If you want to encourage someone to repeat productive behaviors, also tell them what’s going well so they can keep doing it.

Don’t: Offer generalized, clichéd catchphrases that are vague.

3. Speak for yourself, not others.

Do: Deliver feedback based on the information that you know — and be clear that it’s coming from you.

Don’t: Drag a third party’s name into the mix. This can confuse the recipient, who then wonders why others are talking about them behind their back.

4. Embrace the value of negative feedback.

Do: Know that negative feedback can be a positive experience for employees. Our research (see below) suggests that most people actually prefer receiving more negative feedback than they’re getting.

Don’t: Sandwich negative feedback between positive messages. When you sandwich the feedback, employees will learn to ignore the first (positive) part because they know the bad news is coming next. And they won’t hear the last (positive) part because they will be focusing on the bad news. (See below for more advice on delivering negative feedback.)

5. Be intentional with the words you use.

Do: Think about what you’ll say before you say it. Like any skill, giving effective feedback requires practice — so plan time to rehearse the conversation if you need to.

Don’t: Use exaggerations such as “always” and “never.” Words like these can make people feel defensive because there’s usually that one time that was an exception.

6. Stick to feedback about behavior.

Do: Be specific about the behavior you observed.

Don’t: Psychoanalyze the motives behind behavior. It could be a divorce, resentment over a co-worker’s advancement, or burnout, but whatever you think you know about someone’s intents and motives is probably wrong.

7. Know the limits.

Do: Be concise and limit the number of examples and key points. People need time to process the information they’ve received.

Don’t: Go on too long or pile on with too many similar examples.

8. Deliver feedback with care.

Do: Show empathy. By showing that you genuinely care about their welfare, you’ll increase feedback recipients’ interest and enthusiasm for accepting and using the feedback.

Don’t: Imply a threat. Telling someone their job is in jeopardy doesn’t reinforce good behavior or illustrate bad behavior. It only creates animosity.

9. Keep snide comments to yourself.

Do: Deliver feedback with the tone appropriate for your team and culture.

Don’t: Use inappropriate humor and don’t substitute sarcasm for feedback.

10. Make declarative statements.

Do: Be direct, so the feedback conversation can be more effective.

Don’t: Phrase feedback as a question. It’s too indirect to be effective, and it may even be interpreted as sarcastic: Really?

How to Give Feedback That’s Negative

Based on Our Research to Help Employees Improve

Most of us like to give and receive positive feedback — it feels good, and it can be helpful to know what’s working. But negative feedback is just as important to help people improve what isn’t working. And, if done well, both kinds of feedback are motivating.

In fact, the employees we surveyed in past research reported that they’d actually prefer to get less positive feedback (65% as compared to the 77% they were getting) and more negative feedback (35% as compared to the 23% they were getting).

With careful thought and planning, negative feedback can be a valuable tool. In addition to the tips listed above, consider these best practices when offering negative feedback.

1. Aim to give feedback that’s 75% positive and 25% negative overall. When giving negative feedback, get straight to the point. It may seem like a good idea to lessen the blow of negative comments with positive ones, but the recipient is smart enough to read between the lines.
2. Give negative feedback as soon as possible after a key event, so the employee can accurately recall the event and avoid repeating the same behavior.
3. Create a favorable feedback environment. Within your team, and even your organization, valuing truth, courage, and a coaching culture along with psychological safety can pay off when employees are comfortable receiving, seeking out, and using feedback to improve their performance.

Trying to balance feedback — positive and negative — can feel uncomfortable. But with the right technique and plenty of practice, it can go more smoothly.

How to Customize Feedback to Avoid Resistance

Lastly, it’s natural that people will react differently to information about their behavior and performance. Although you can’t force someone to agree with the feedback you give, it may help to consider changing the way you deliver the message to maximize understanding and acceptance. When you’re considering how to give feedback, particularly negative feedback, keeping these things in mind can reduce resistance. 

1. Consider the specific situation.

Giving feedback to a new employee who’s anxious about their first presentation is different from giving feedback to a confident, long-term employee who’s eager for more visibility.

2. Remember that people process information differently.

Some people understand your message quickly, while others need time to absorb it. Some will want to focus on decisions, actions, and implications. Others will want to ponder and work out possible solutions on their own. Consider the different ways to influence people and choose the most effective tactic for your situation.

3. Factor in the recipient’s health, personal, and family problems.

Resistance to feedback or unexpected reactions may be connected to stresses and problems outside work. When you’re aware of a hardship or adversity, you may decide to adjust the timing and content of your feedback. But like we mentioned above, don’t assume you know what’s going on; be prepared to handle the unexpected.

4. Individualize your delivery — keep in mind your employee’s strengths and weaknesses.

For example, you may think a shoddy production report indicates disinterest or laziness. The recipient may agree the report was shoddy, but they may be embarrassed to admit they don’t understand the new method of calculation. So give feedback about the report, but allow the other person to offer their own reasons and possible solutions. Be sure you actively listen to understand their response.

And remember, there’s no need to psychoanalyze or judge the person. Just have a conversation, and avoid common feedback mistakes that leaders often make when giving different types of feedback.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Equip your leaders to know how to give feedback that helps others succeed. Partner with us to create a customized learning journey for your leaders using our research-based modules, including Feedback That Works, Psychological Safety, Talent Conversations, and Listening to Understand.

The post How to Give Feedback Most Effectively appeared first on CCL.

These are the timeless, fundamental skills that are needed by leaders throughout every organization — and they’re important regardless of role, industry, or location.

But the way you address each core leadership skill, and what you need to learn or emphasize around it, will shift and change as you move into higher levels in the organizational hierarchy and encounter new leadership challenges.

So what exactly are these foundational leadership skills? While there may not be a single definitive list of core leadership skills, at CCL, we call the core leadership skills needed in every role and career “The Fundamental 4.”

In the face of unrelenting disruption, effective leadership is what’s needed most. Download our new Talent Development report to learn how investing in talent development today will position your organization to succeed tomorrow.

Get the Report

The Fundamental Leadership Skills Needed in Every Career

The “Fundamental 4” Leadership Skills

At CCL, we see the 4 core leadership skills as:

1. Self-Awareness
2. Communication
3. Influence
4. Learning Agility

1. Self-Awareness.

Simply put, knowing and leading yourself is key to becoming as effective as possible at leading others. But gaining greater self-awareness is anything but simple. It takes intentional effort to assess your natural abilities and development opportunities; determine how to maximize your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses; and recognize your own values, biases, and perspectives.

Taking the time to reflect on these things and consider how you’ve been shaped by your background and social identity builds greater self-awareness. And ultimately, greater awareness about yourself as a person will make you a better leader. If you’re not sure where to start, here are 4 sure-fire ways to boost your self-awareness.

2. Communication.

Communication is one of the most basic, across-the-board leadership skills that all of us need to develop and refine during our careers. “Communicating information and ideas” is consistently rated among the most important leadership competencies for leaders to be successful. Communication is also embedded in a number of other core leadership skills, including “leading employees,” “participative management,” and “building and mending relationships.”

Writing clearly, speaking with clarity, and active listening skills are all part of the core leader competencies related to effective communication. And as you move up the career ladder, communication in leadership roles expands to behaviors such as encouraging discussion, building trust, conveying vision and strategic intent, and pulling people along with you. At every leader level, communication is a critically important skill.

3. Influence.

Developing your influencing and leadership skills helps you to communicate your vision and goals, align the efforts of others, and build commitment from people at all levels.  

Influence can vary greatly at different levels in the organization. Knowing your stakeholders, or audience, is key. Do you need to influence your boss? Your peers? Direct reports? Customers? Each stakeholder has special concerns and issues, so consider the most appropriate ways of influencing others for your particular situation.

Early in your career, or in individual contributor roles, influence is about working effectively with people over whom you have no authority. It requires being able to present logical and compelling arguments and engaging in give-and-take. Later on, or in more senior-level or executive roles, influential leadership skills are focused more on steering long-range objectives, inspiration, and motivation. But throughout your career, influence remains a core leadership skill. Ultimately, influence allows you to get to the business of getting things done and achieving desirable outcomes.

4. Learning Agility.

To develop as leaders and as people, we need to be active, agile learners. Leaders need to be in a mode of constant learning, valuing and seeking out experiences to fuel leadership development, and recognizing when new behaviors, leadership skills, or attitudes are required — and accepting responsibility for developing those.

Learning agility is critical for career longevity, and it involves learning from mistakes, asking insightful questions, and being open to feedback. It also includes learning new skills quickly, being open to learning from hardships and taking advantage of opportunities to learn from heat experiences, and responding well to new situations.

For senior leaders, learning agility is also about inspiring learning in others and creating a learning culture throughout the organization.

Set your development as a leader on the right track by learning and practicing core leader competencies and the 4 foundational leadership skills of self-awareness, communication, influence, and learning agility.

How to Grow the Core Leadership Skills

Developing Foundational Leadership Skills to Prepare for Every Role

If you’re thinking about adding the Fundamental 4 to your leadership skills list, keep in mind that each skill should be continuously improved, or “built on as you go.” To be effective, you must continue to develop, adapt, and strengthen these core leadership skills throughout your career — because the learning never ends. As you gain leadership skills in one area, you’ll find there’s even more to learn and practice in taking on new challenges and larger roles.

And if you think you’ve “skipped over” any of the Fundamental 4 core leadership skills during your career, you won’t be as effective, or fully develop your leadership potential. The good news is that, with concerted effort, you can still develop any skills you missed out on; it’s never too late for soft skill development!

If you can identify any leadership gaps or weaknesses in your leadership journey, you have the potential to learn, grow, and change. With the foundational leadership competencies of self-awareness, communication, influence, and learning agility as the core of your leadership skills development, you can be confident that you’re building capacity for new opportunities and the next level of responsibility — because these 4 are core leadership skills needed for everyone, and every career stage.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Partner with us to help your organization develop the4  fundamental leadership skills. Our leadership fundamentals course: Lead 4 Success®, helps grow core leader competencies for foundational leadership skills development.

The post The Core Leadership Skills You Need in Every Role appeared first on CCL.