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Being a Great Leader | 14 Effective Leadership Skills

Last updated: 7th October 2024

Rhys Mackenzie

What makes a great leader? 

Unfortunately, there isn't just one answer to this question. 

Exceptional leadership encompasses a range of skills, making individuals with such abilities highly sought after in academic settings, universities, and by employers. The influence of effective leaders extends beyond the teams they lead, positively affecting the broader community.

Working with these leaders tends to enhance happiness, productivity, and motivation, creating a ripple effect that impacts everyone in the surrounding environment.

Mainly, this comes down to the ability to organise, delegate, and ensure projects get completed on time. 

However leadership goes beyond just being able to delegate with great authority. In fact, many of the most effective leadership skills you’ll see on this list focus on building trust, empathy and clear communication amongst teams. After all, you need to rely on those around you to be able to meet your goals. 

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14 Effective Leadership Skills

Take a look below at 14 of the most effective leadership skills to have. With a combination of interpersonal and great organisational skills, being able to master these skills will make you one of the strongest future leaders.

1. Great communication

Effective leadership begins with excellent communication skills. Leaders, whether managing projects or running organizations, engage in regular communication that profoundly influences project and business success. Clarity is crucial in conveying ideas and visions during constant dialogues with team members, ensuring projects are completed on time.

This need for clear communication extends to CEOs inspiring employees and even to students leading small projects, emphasizing the importance of expressing ideas clearly for accurate and timely completion.

 

2. Excellent organisation 

Having excellent organisational skills is imperative to being a great leader.

While it’s important to be personally organised and self-motivated to complete your work and other projects on time, this skill is perhaps even more important for you to be able to plan and deliver group work.

Managing a group project, whether at home, school, or work, involves considering numerous factors. As the leader, the responsibility rests on your shoulders to thoroughly assess and address these factors before the deadline.

While having support is beneficial, you must be organized enough to communicate all necessary information to those assisting you. If they fall short of meeting the deadline, the ultimate responsibility often still rests with you for not staying abreast of the project's timeline.

3. Efficient delegation

A valuable leadership skill for the future is the ability to delegate tasks and manage your time efficiently. This doesn't merely involve assigning tasks randomly but requires a strategic approach.

A proficient leader selects the most suitable team members, offering clear instructions for swift and high-quality task completion. The key is understanding the skills of your team members and leveraging them to your advantage.

Not only will this ensure your projects are completed on time, but you’ll be making the most out of the skills on your team - leading to a happier, more fulfilled team.

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4. Establishing trust

Establishing trust amongst your team is one of the most effective leadership skills to have. Without it, you and your team will be less productive, less efficient, but ultimately, less satisfied. 

Aside from just being honest with your team and giving them complete transparency over a project, it also means holding up your end of any deals you make. If you commit to helping someone complete a task for example, sticking with this commitment will go a long way to building trust with the team.

Over time, and as you build this trust, your team and wider members of your school, organisation or workplace will be more inclined to let you adopt more leadership roles, as you will have demonstrated your ability to manage projects with success.

5. Being knowledge-hungry

All great leaders are inspiring. And what makes someone more inspiring than to see their desire to learn more and expand their knowledge as much as possible?

Great leaders usually know what they’re talking about (of course, it’s also okay to make mistakes from time-to-time). But, having a strong base of knowledge about your industry, project and team can go a long way. After all, who will your team be turning to when they have questions about the project?

Even those in the highest leadership positions are always educating themselves. To make sure you’re the very best for the job, you need to make sure that your level of knowledge is above the rest. And that means always continuing to train and educate yourself. 

6. Empathy

Empathy, according to research, is one of the most overlooked soft skills amongst teams and organisations. But, it’s also one of the most important skills for success.

Being an empathetic leader means having the ability to read and understand the needs of others, and being aware of their thoughts and feelings. Those with high levels of empathy will be skilled to understand a situation from another person’s perspective and act with compassion. 

If you can step into the shoes of someone else in your team and really understand how they’re feeling, you’ll form more trusting relationships with your team members - leading to a more productive team. 

Remember, empathy is different from sympathy. Sympathy is typically defined as the ability to feel pity and emotion for another person, without really understanding what it’s like to be their situation. However, empathy refers to the ability to imagine oneself in the situation of another, experience emotions and opinions of that person. 

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7. Taking accountability

Being accountable in your role as team leader is one of the greatest and most effective leadership skills you can exhibit. But what does taking responsibility in this way look like? 

Depending on your team and the task at hand, accountability can mean many different things. From doing exactly what you say you’re going to do and following it through on-time, to owning up to any mistakes you allow your team to make, accountability really means to be as transparent, honest, and committed to the team and project as possible.

If you can show accountability and responsibility to your team and wider members of school or an organisation, they’ll be far more likely to trust your word and believe in any future projects you may take forward. It’s all about cultivating yourself as a capable leader by being honest, transparent and reliable.

8. Being generous

Good leaders don’t just delegate and manage projects. But they go above and beyond to give something back to their team.

Now, this doesn’t just mean buying a thank you gift for everyone’s hard work at the end of a project. In fact, an effective team leader will ‘act generously’ throughout a project to demonstrate their appreciation to the teams’ efforts. 

Whether it be training someone how to perform a task, giving advice or guidance for the future, or even offering to help share the workload - you can do so much to inspire and motivate your team by being a little bit generous. 

9. Demonstrating your passion

Demonstrating your passion for a project, cause, or organisation is another good leadership skill to have in your arsenal. Enthusiasm is contagious. And you should use this to your advantage. 

If your team members, friends, and colleagues see that you really care about a project or business you’re working towards, they’ll be even more excited to work hard and support your mission.

Whether it be leading meetings with vigour, sending motivational emails and messages celebrating your team’s work, or simply staying late to help out a teammate on their side of the project - doing everything you can to show your commitment to a project will help keep your team motivated throughout. 

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10. Ability to manage difficult decision-making

Often, being a leader can be an extremely rewarding experience, especially when you can complete projects with great success. However, it’s also important to remember that the role doesn’t come without its difficulties.

Sometimes, being a leader means needing to make fast, but difficult decisions, often with limited information. Whether it’s asking a team member to step down from their role or simply needing to find a quick solution to an issue that arises within a project, it’s likely that you’ll face one or two of these during your school years and future career. 

If you do have to face a tough decision, start by thinking about what you need to achieve and balance this out with the likely consequences of any decision you make. Make your final decision with conviction, take accountability and follow it through. 

Being a resolute and confident decision-maker will earn you the respect of your team and make it easier for you to deal with any difficult scenarios. Ultimately, your team will be more motivated, and you’ll find it easier to manage any future difficulties.

11. Empower others

Great leaders understand that  for people to give their best efforts, they need to have a sense of ownership over their work and believe that what they’re doing is impacting the wider group for the better. 

When it comes to delegating work, you can empower others by allowing them to take accountability over the tasks which are assigned to them. Communicate clear goals and deadlines to your team, and then give them the autonomy to decide how this gets done. 

But this also goes beyond just allowing your team to take ownership over their own work. Remember to recognise their hard work and determination when tasks are complete to encourage them to continue to work hard. It will lead to a happier, more productive working environment.

12. Ability to teach and mentor others

A distinguishing leadership skill is the ability to teach and mentor others, often overlooked but highly beneficial for your team's success. Consider your favorite school subject—what makes it enjoyable? Perhaps it's a teacher who inspires and presents new information in a way that resonates with you.

Mastering the skill of teaching and mentoring requires focusing less on yourself and more on making the entire team successful. This involves instructing junior members, providing personalized guidance, and organizing team training sessions to enhance overall skills and motivation.

Just remember, the better mentor you can be, the more inspired your team will be, the more they will trust you, and the more satisfied they will be with the overall running of a project, team, or workplace. 

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13. Recognise success

Frequently and consistently recognising the achievements of your team is one of the most powerful and effective leadership skills you can adopt. 

To encourage your team to stretch themselves and continue to contribute their best efforts, they need to know that their hard work will be valued and appreciated. Not only will this help to boost morale, but it will also strengthen the wider team and their motivations to earn their own recognition.

As a leader, you should find ways to celebrate the achievements of your team members, even if it’s just a simple pat on the back with a ‘well done.’ Only you will know what works best amongst your team; some will appreciate a larger, more public celebration, while others will prefer a low-key praising for their efforts.

14. Self-assessment

Finally, to be the most effective leader possible, you should take some time to take stock of yourself, your own skills, and think about areas that you can improve for the future.

All great leaders periodically reflect on their own personal strengths and weaknesses and ask the question: “What makes me a great leader? And what can I do to improve?” 

Knowing your areas of weakness does not make you weak. In fact, it allows you to be a great delegator, giving those with better abilities than you to complete a task more effectively than you may have done. After all, you’re all working towards one common goal, so why not reach it in the most efficient way possible?

Working on your areas of self-development will improve your leadership ability - and even better, recognising them makes you more human - something your team will appreciate in the long-term. 

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How to Develop Leadership Skills

In leadership, one of the most popular sayings is; “great leaders are born, not made.” And to some extent, this is true. You do need to have an innate drive and desire to manage and care for others in your team. 

However, learning how to be a more effective leader is within everyone’s grasp - whether you’re leading a small group project at school, or planning to one day lead your very own enterprise. 

Take a look below at just three easy ways you can begin to develop your own effective leadership skills. 

1. Give yourself an opportunity to put them into action

When it comes to learning and your own self-development, one of the best ways to grow is to seek opportunities that allow you to challenge yourself and put your skills to the test. And the same goes with leadership. 

This is particularly important if you have ambitions of taking on a leadership role in the future. You want to be able to demonstrate on your personal statement and future CVs that you’ve been able to test your leadership skills out with success. So you need to seek the opportunity to do so.

If you have little experience in a leadership role, it’s best to start in a relatively low-risk environment, such as at school or at university. In these settings, you could look for extracurriculars that allow for a leadership role, such as captaining your sports team or chairing your school council or other clubs and societies. 

Anything you can do to go above the usual terms of a leader will help you to demonstrate your abilities and expand on them for the future.

2. Ask for feedback

Asking for feedback is a critical step in being able to improve your leadership skills. After all, how can you ever improve if you don’t know what it is you need to improve on?

Understandably, some of your team members may feel apprehensive to criticise your leadership style, especially if you are managing a school team voluntarily. This is where your skill at building trust as a leader is critical - your team needs the psychological safety to know that any feedback they give will be held in a professional manner, and will never affect any personal relationships you may have with them.

To seek honest feedback, it might be worth sending an anonymous survey around to the team or those who have been managed by you. Even better, if you have a close friend or colleague within your team, you could even pull them aside and ask for them to be honest with you - it’s much easier to go into detail and discuss their feedback when it’s face-to-face.

Aim to make this feedback actionable wherever possible. For example, if they say “you could have handled this situation better,” try to work out why? Is it because you weren’t organised enough? Was your communication ineffective which led to an error? Remember, your feedback is only helpful if it allows you to make improvements for the future. So try to seek practical guidance whenever you can. 

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3. Attend a Leadership summer school

Finally, what better way to improve your leadership skills than to attend a Leadership summer school?

Studying on a 2-week intensive summer course, you’ll learn crucial interpersonal and communication skills that translate to all industries and career paths. At Oxford Summer Courses, everything is taught by established, world-class tutors for an authentic, enriched experience. 

You’ll be joined by other students from around the world, who are all committed to taking future leadership roles and share similar passions to you. It’s a chance to learn from the masters, gain honest feedback from your peers, and find new ways to put your skills to the test. 

Not forgetting that your entire summer school experience will be rounded up with an enriching extracurricular timetable of activities. Expect thrilling extracurriculars, inspiring day trips, and the chance to explore a new city with friends from around the world. Is there a better way to spend your summer?

Apply for a Leadership summer course

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Build confidence, clarify your vision and feel empowered to influence people in business and life. All while learning from one of our expert tutors - many of whom have studied or taught at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

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About the author

Rhys Mackenzie is the Website Marketing Manager at Oxford Summer Courses. With extensive experience in SEO and digital content management, they are passionate about showcasing the best that Oxford has to offer. Their previous role at Experience Oxfordshire gave them a deep appreciation for the city's unique cultural and academic offerings. Learn more about Rhys here.

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Summary

Effective leaders possess great communication, organisation, delegation, trust-building, empathy, knowledge, accountability, generosity, passion, decision-making, empowerment, teaching, recognition, and self-assessment skills.

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