Leadership Skills

Leadership is about guiding people or directing towards achieving a goal. It’s about helping people achieve their full potential and doing work for them but encourage them as well as showing them the path which would lead them towards their destination.

Leadership is not just about authority and recognition, instead it’s about creating a conducive and encouraging environment where all the members could work stress free and with interest. Leadership is both a quality and a skill. Some people are born leaders and the others become leaders through learning and experience.

During sessions on Leadership at Taghayyur, we learnt about the skills needed to become effective and efficient leaders. So some of key teachings and skills are as under we discussed during the sessions:

• Forgiveness
• Self-directed learning
• Creativity
• Critical thinking
• Decision-making
• Problem Solving
• Kindness

Let’s look at them one by one briefly.

Forgiveness:

“Forgive others as quickly as you expect Allah to forgive you.”

Forgiveness is about tolerance, it’s about freeing not only the others but also yourself from the burden. It’s hard to forgive someone but it’s not impossible. It’s a great value and trait one could ever have. We should forgive others not only because it will ease others’ lives but also it will give you more inner strength and give you more control over yourself and will let you free from unnecessary burden/stress you are carrying. Just forgive because it’s good and will also give you reward.

We expect Allah to forgive ourselves but we as His creature don’t forgive others. Why are we holding onto such an attitude, we need to forgive others so that we can contribute towards putting positive energy not only in our own selves but in the society as a whole. Leaders have the capacity to forgive.

Self-directed Learning: It may also be called just ‘Self-learning’. It is something we all do in our lives once or repeatedly sometimes knowingly and the other times may be unknowingly. It’s about learning something by your own effort without going to an institute i-e, learning through observation, learning through online resources like youtube, daily motion, Khan Academy, coursera, Udemy, etc.

Become self learner and lifelong learner. Big Leaders keep learning throughout their lives. There are some benefits of self-learning viz, stress free learning, Gain extra skill, Problem Solving, Independent learning mode, Learning through curiosity. We could add a range of skills to our skillset over time which is really demanding in this world now and also become great problem solvers.

If you want to learn something new, here are some tips which would help you grab that skill/topic more efficiently. So whenever you plan to learn something new, consider such points as

• Brainstorm for topics
• Select topic
• Make a plan in SMART Goals
• Medium of learning
• Assessing criteria.

Following these steps will help you grasp the material more efficiently and quickly.

Here is also a technique for reading something and grasping the material conceptually titled ‘Acquiring real Knowledge’ which states, to study conceptually or to gain real knowledge of the topic, we need to follow the four steps as,

• Identify the concept
• Explain in plain language/teach someone
• Identify the gap and go to source material
• Review and summarize.

Creativity: It’s about creating something with our own ability, creating something different from others, unique in nature. We all have creativity, but we all are not aware of this ability, just few of us are. We just keep thinking throughout our lives that we are not creative. But the fact is that we never try to bring that ability out.Sometimes some activity brings our creativity out and we are amazed to know that we are also creative.

We should try to perform such acts as could bring our creativity to the surface like, just take random 3 words from a dictionary and then make a short story based on those words , you will be surprised to know in the end that you have a story based on those words when you let your brain push towards that. You may ask someone to make a story by imagination by giving him an imaginary statement, he would also end up with a story. You may also ask someone to make something out of the raw material lying in his room, he would also end up making something with that raw material or waste material in that room. Then how can we say that we are not creative. You just need to give yourself space to let it flow.

There are some blocks which prevent our creativity come out, so there is a need to remove those blocks viz,

• Making assumptions
• Following the rules two strictly
• Being serious
• Avoiding risks or being wrong is bad
• Believing you are not creative.
• Always staying with your routine/habits
• Thinking there is only one solution.

How can we become creative: Here are some tips to become creative viz,

-Think out of box (Remember 9 dots, 4 lines problem) — Daydreaming

-Don’t stress about perfection (just start)

-Spend some time lonely.

Critical Thinking: Simply, we can say, critical thinking is logical thinking. It is done with logic instead of emotions. Emotions make us biased towards something but logic evaluates something objectively. Critical thinking is a skill which we all need to develop as it is hugely beneficial in every task , to solve some problem, in decision-making. It actually lets us see the things on basic levels by breaking them into parts so that we could see the actual connection among all the parts.

It really helps in a range of tasks like, managing less space with more purpose, arranging a low cost trip but with full entertainment, managing a big event with not much resources, understanding the actual problem while the car is giving noise, while taking crucial decisions of life, etc. So it is a must-have to be a valuable person and leader.

So, Let’s see what it actually is and what’s its importance in technical terms:

• Understand the logical connections between ideas.
• Identify, construce, and evaluate arguments.
• Detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning.
• Solve problems systematically.
• Identify the relevance and importance of ideas.
• Reflect on the justification of one’s own beliefs and values.

Decision-making: Decision-making is a power. Some people are super fine at taking decisions while others are abysmal at taking decisions and another lot is actually incapable of even taking decisions. Our decisions shape the course of life. Proper decision taken at the right time could bring a lot of success to us but despite being intelligent, if we are bad at taking decisions, we couldn’t achieve much in life.

Leaders are powerful in terms of taking brave and timely decisions. It encompasses every aspect of life. Every other moment, we need to make some decisions. We should be capable of quick decision making and take charge of our lives through our quick and proper decision-making faculty.here are some steps to follow for quick decision-making:

-Identify the decision that needs the decision.

-Brainstorm possible options.

-Identify the positive and negative outcome for each option.

-Choose the best option and make a decision.

-Reflect on the decision and analyze the outcome.

Problem-Solving: What Problem is? It is a difficulty we encounter. Problem-Solving is an important skill too. We usually solve many problems in our day to day life. But if we do it systematically, we can become better problem-solvers. The world needs great problem-solvers. Some people are really good at problem-solving, while others are just atrocious.

Most of us are bad problem-solvers because we forget ‘every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution’. Rather becoming the part of solution, we become the part of problem i-e, we don’t think about the solution, the possibilities of how we can overcome the problem and thus we get stressed out by repeatedly just thinking about the problem and not the solution. So, here are some steps in sequence to follow if we want to solve problems systematically:

- Identify the problem.

- Analyze problem.

- Growing opportunity.

- Find solution

- Choose best and take decision.

Kindness: It is the quality of being kind, friendly, gentle, generous and considerate. It is the universal language which every creature could feel and understand. Kindness is about humility, it is about giving respect. We can show kindness in many ways e.g, never looking down upon anyone, Passing a smile while greeting someone, opening the door for someone, giving donation, teaching someone for free, doing a chore for someone without him knowing, motivating someone, etc.

These acts seem to be small and worthless and seriously they hold great weight. If we do them on a frequent basis, soon we will notice a positive in our own selves and positivity is the key to be happy and more successful. True leaders are kind, they are not unfriendly, or unapproachable.

Lastly, we could conclude that if we want to be true leaders, to be highly demanded in the Job market and to be a celebrated business tycoon, we need to develop all the traits/skills mentioned above. life is about developing and evolving.