The 3 most important leadership skills according to me


As part of a recruitment process last week I was asked to do a video interview – one where I have a set of questions to answer, then sit in front of a computer awkwardly talking to, and hearing from myself at the same time. A videoconference with an echo, if you will.

To my surprise, I enjoyed the process, especially taking time to compose my answers to a couple of the questions. I didn’t enjoy being asked ‘what is your greatest weakness’ – I think that question should never come up. It is performative at best and damaging at worst.

The question I enjoyed the most was this:

Name your three top skills for leaders, and which one out of those three you consider yourself best at.

This short story is about the top three I picked. I’m not going to talk about which I think I’m best at! The winners were:

  1. Listening
  2. Audacity
  3. Humility

I chose to present these as ‘skills buckets’ – with three minutes to talk I had some space to explain further, so here are the buckets and a bit about what can fit inside them.

Listening

Of the three I think this is the one a lot of people would choose. As a leader, it is absolutely essential to listen, gather information, drag the whispers from the wind. Understand contexts and scenarios – hear what people are saying. It isn’t about us doing the talking, we are gatherers and collators and advocates. Understanding the needs of our teams, and providing a focal point to act on them. I also think this one – listening – implies adaptability, responsiveness.

Listening is an essential precursor to decision-making. We need to be across the landscape in order to guide the correct path. This doesn’t mean making everyone happy all the time. We cannot. We are going to make people unhappy. We can do that in a way that shows that we have heard!

In summary for this one, listening is the skill / capacity bucket that helps us understand the landscape we work in, guides us to better strategic and tactical decisions, helps us communicate with our teams and co workers and line managers about what we are doing; and why.

Audacity

This is my favourite bucket. Audacity is the capacity to act with courage. To make decisions. To own decisions. To own past decisions. Importantly as leaders we become the owner of all decisions made up until the point we stepped in – and we need the audacity to move comfortably into that space.

It also means the capacity to work as a fierce advocate, actively working to ensure our team is resourced and supported. We seek all opportunities, however slim, to make change for the better. We use our powers however we can to build a strong and resilient group which works well with everyone around.

Sometimes we need to set a boundary and hold it. Stand our ground. With our teams, with external parties, and sometimes pushing upward. An audacious approach gives us the power to do that, without negativity – again, having the audacity to step into that space and do what is needed. Decide. Move.

Audacity implies boldness, confidence, assertion when needed. Importantly, audacity doesn’t need to be assertive or brash. It’s the perfect space for an introvert-leader to thrive; and I believe you’ll see this quite often, if it is allowed.

Humility

A leader must be humble. A leader must recognise success as the success of the team. Own their mistakes openly, put ego aside, be open. To step into a leadership role you become responsible for the lives or careers or both of many people. Your bad day can have a wide ranging impact, it’s incredibly important to recognise that, understand yourself, understand that you too can break.

There are probably many books on this, usually servant leadership or similar. It’s a good approach – as the person with the biggest bucket of power, we have the most capacity to help. It isn’t our job to make our own bucket bigger. In this way humility also implies listening, empathy, care. Caring about more than ourselves.

We also need to set aside our own ambitions at times for the good of the team. To use an anecdote from the mountains, if one person is unsafe then we are all unsafe. What this means is that a person may become uncomfortable with crossing some terrain; or may become tired. In this case, we all stop. Discuss, take stock, come to a collective solution. There’s no ego and no guilt – the mountains are always there, and we risk the whole team by forcing one person into an unsafe place. This applies equally well in the workplace – and simply means ‘be humble, put your ego in the bin outside’.

Summary

That’s quite a bit more detail than I got into in three minutes of video!

I hope those three top picks resonate with you – they are qualities I have admired in my mentors, which I have tried to develop and pass on.

Will they be convincing to a HR team in 2024? Especially delivered in a virus-fever-haze? Of that I am not sure…

As an endnote, I want to tell you about my all time favourite leadership book. It is Mountaineering, the freedom of the hills (ISBN: 9781680516074). There’s a short and profound section on expedition leadership, and the qualities of leaders, distilled from probably millions of hours of experience now, which applies everywhere. Few words, big impact.

Update

After some time (a month), I received a standardised do-not-reply rejection letter by email. If you’re applying for leadership roles, you may want to choose a different strategy.

If you find yourself travelling with me in a decision making role which impacts you – well, I stand by what I’ve said here. It works. It keeps people sane. Happy. Alive.