Developing Your Leadership Skills

As we’ve already learned, leaders share traits; successful leaders are not simply “born leaders” – they develop and refine leadership skills and behaviors. Since much of leadership is skill and behavior-based, it is never too early to start developing yourself as a leader. Whether you are planning to start your first career path fresh out of college, you’ve returned to college to switch career paths, or you’re in college to help you advance more quickly in your current career path, you should have already been working on your leadership skills for years; it’s not something you want to start your first day on the new job. Since leaders must be able to draw from a wealth of personal experience to solve problems, relate to others, and motivate others to achieve a task, you should seek leadership positions in school and/or community groups.

Since you may not yet be sure of your exact career path, consider securing a variety of positions over a few years that are generally transferable to professional contexts. In these roles, I work on building a reputation as an ethical leader and one who takes responsibility. Once you’re on your career path, you can draw on this previous leadership experience and volunteer or step up when needed, which can help you get noticed. Hopefully, your previous leadership experience will give you confidence that your group members will see.

People are attracted to confidence and want to follow people who exhibit it. Aside from confidence, good leaders also develop dynamism, a set of communication behaviors that conveys enthusiasm and creates an energetic and favorable climate. Once confidence and dynamism have attracted a good team of people, good leaders facilitate quality interaction among group members, build cohesion, and capitalize on the synergy of group communication to devise forward-thinking solutions to problems.

Good leaders also continue to develop their skills to become even better leaders. Leaders are excellent observers of human behavior and can assess situations using contextual clues and nonverbal communication. They can then use this knowledge to adapt their communication to the problem. Leaders also possess a high degree of emotional intelligence, which enables them to sense others’ emotions more effectively, understand and respond to them, and manage their emotional displays. Last, good leaders further their careers by being reflexive and regularly evaluating their strengths and weaknesses as leaders. Since our perceptions are often skewed, it’s also beneficial to have colleagues and mentors/supervisors provide formal evaluations of your job performance, making explicit comments about leadership behaviors.

As you can see, a leader’s work only grows more complex as one moves further along a career path. However, with the skills gained through many years of increasingly challenging leadership roles, a leader can adapt to and manage this increasing complexity.

This section will give tips to help you develop your charismatic, servant, and authentic leadership skills. Each of these contemporary approaches to leadership is believed to be related to employee attitudes and a healthy work environment.

Leaders Emerge Based on Communication Skills and Competence

One final approach to the study of leadership is considered a functional approach because it focuses on how particular communication behaviors function to create leadership conditions. This last approach is the most useful for communication scholars and for individuals seeking to enhance their leadership skills, as leadership behaviors (which are learnable and adaptable) rather than traits or situations (which are often beyond our control) are the primary focus of study. We’ve learned that group members can exhibit leadership behaviors, not just a designated or emergent leader. Therefore, understanding leadership behaviors is essential, even if we don’t anticipate serving in leadership positions (Cragen & Wright, 1991). The communication behaviors that facilitate effective leadership encompass three main areas of group communication, including task, procedural, and relational functions. Although any group member can exhibit leadership behaviors, groups typically develop patterns of and expectations for behaviors as they progress through the norming and performing stages of group development. Many groups only meet once or twice; in this case, a designated leader will likely perform many of the functions to get the group started and then step in to facilitate as needed.

Leadership behaviors contributing to a group’s task-related functions include providing, seeking, and evaluating information. Leaders may want to be cautious about contributing ideas before soliciting them from group members, as the leader’s contribution may sway or influence others in the group, thereby diminishing the importance of diverse perspectives. Likewise, a leader may want to solicit feedback on ideas from members before providing their judgment. In group situations where creativity is needed to generate ideas or solutions to a problem, the task leader may be wise to facilitate brainstorming and discussion. This allows the leader to keep their eye on the “big picture” and challenge group members to make their ideas more concrete or discuss their implications beyond the group without adding their own opinion. To review, some of the key leadership behaviors that contribute to the task-related functions of a group include the following list (Cragen & Wright, 1991).

Leadership behaviors contributing to a group’s procedural-related functions help guide the group from idea generation to implementation. Some leaders are better at facilitating and managing ideas than managing a group’s administrative functions. While a group leader may help establish the group’s goals and set the agenda, another group member with more experience in group operations may periodically revisit and assess progress toward goal completion, comparing the group’s performance against its agenda. It’s also important to check in between idea-generating sessions to clarify, summarize, and gauge the level of agreement among group members. A skilled and experienced leader may take primary responsibility for all these behaviors, but sharing them with group members is often beneficial to avoid overburdening them. To review, some of the key leadership behaviors that contribute to the procedural functions of a group include the following suggestions from Cragan & Wright (1991):

Leadership behaviors that contribute to a group’s relational functions include creating a participative and inclusive climate, establishing norms of reflection and self-analysis, and managing conflict effectively. By encouraging participation among group members, a leader can help prevent individuals from monopolizing the discussion and foster a climate of openness and equality overall. Leaders want to ensure that people don’t feel personally judged for their ideas and that criticism remains idea-centered, rather than person-centered. A safe and positive climate typically leads to higher-quality idea generation and decision making. Leaders also encourage group members to metacommunicate, or talk about the group’s communication. This can help the group identify and address any interpersonal or communication issues before they escalate, diverting the group from accomplishing its goal. A group with a well-established participative and inclusive climate will be better prepared to handle conflict when it emerges. Remember that conflict, when handled competently, can enhance group performance. Leaders may even instigate productive conflict by playing devil’s advocate or facilitating civil debate of ideas. To review, some of the key leadership behaviors that contribute to the relational functions of a group include the following: