SESSION 5
LEADERSHIP SKILLS
ANDTRAITS
Dr. R. Kiruba Nagini

Topics to discuss…
■ Leadership Skills andTraits - Leadership skills - A to Z of leadership Skills - How to
become a successful Leader. - LeadershipTraits of an ethical leader
Leadership in the ContemporaryWorld -Leadership in the ContemporaryWorld -
Challenges to Leadership in the ContemporaryWorld -Tips to Overcome Challenges in
Leadership - Role of Communication in Overcoming Leadership Challenges - Role of
Management in Overcoming Leadership Challenges - Leadership inTimes of Crisis in
Contemporary world - Managing in Chaos:A Necessary Skill for Managers and Leaders
-Women and Leadership in ContemporaryWorld

Leadership Skills
Source: Centre for Creative Leadership

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LeadershipWisdom
Surface reflection
Deep reflection
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Leadership Identity
Core Identity
Chosen Identity
Given Identity
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Leadership Reputation
Your leadership reputation is
what others think of you as a
leader.
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Leadership Brand
An aspirational set of
leadership traits and
behaviors.
Leadership brand should
identify your unique strengths,
communicate them to others,
provide a consistent experience
that meets others’
expectations of you, and make
explicit that which is implicit.
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Leadership Skills - Communication
■ Communication. It’s one of the most basic, across-the-board leadership skills all of us
need to develop and refine during our careers. “Communicating information and
ideas” is consistently rated among the most important skills for leaders to be
successful. Communication is also embedded in a number of other leadership skills
and competencies, including “leading employees,” “participative management” and
“building and mending relationships.”
Writing clearly, speaking with clarity, and using active listening skills are all part of the
equation. As you move up the career ladder, it expands to behaviors such as
encouraging discussion, building trust, conveying vision and strategic intent, and
pulling people along with you.That’s why communication is so important for leaders.

3 Facts about Communication for Leaders
■ 1. Authenticity counts — a lot. Be honest and sincere. Find your own voice; quit using corporate-speak or
sounding like someone you’re not. Let who you are, where you come from, and what you value come
through in your communication.
“Forget about eloquence — worry about being real,” says SusanTardanico, founder and CEO of
the Authentic Leadership Alliance. “People want real. People respect real. People follow real. Don’t
disguise who you are. People will never willingly follow a phony.”
■ 2.Visibility is a form of communication. If you want to communicate well, don’t be out of sight. Don’t be
known only by your emails and official missives. Show up. In person.As often as possible.
People need to see and feel who you are to feel connected to the work you want them to do.
Find ways to interact with all of your stakeholder groups.
■ 3. Listening is a powerful skill. Good communicators are also good listeners.When you listen well, you
gain a clear understanding of another’s perspective and knowledge. Listening fosters trust, respect, and
openness.
Allow people to air their gripes and complaints.Ask questions that open the door to what people
really think and feel.
And pay close, respectful attention to what is said — and what’s left unsaid

5Tips for Effective Communication

■ 1. Communicate relentlessly.Communicate information, thoughts, and ideas clearly — and
frequently — in different media. Keep processes open and transparent, and find ways to help
smooth the path of communication for your team or organization.
■ 2. Simplify and be direct. Say what you mean. Be direct. Don’t hide behind complexity or pile
on a ton of information. Simple communication can be smart communication.
■ 3. Listen and encourage input. Pause. Be okay with silence. Encourage the other person to
offer ideas and solutions before you give yours. Do 80% of the listening and 20% of the talking.
■ 4. Illustrate through stories. When you tell a good story, you give life to a vision, goal, or
objective.Telling good stories creates trust, captures hearts and minds, and serves as a
reminder of the vision. Plus, people find it easier to repeat a story or refer to an image or quote
than to talk about a vision statement, strategy document, or project plan.
■ 5. Affirm with actions. If people hear one thing from you and see another, your credibility is
shot. People need to trust you.Your behavior and actions communicate a world of information
— be clear on the messages you send when you aren’t speaking a word.
5Tips for Effective Communication

1. Pay attention.
One goal of active listening and being an effective listener is
to set a comfortable tone that gives your coachee an
opportunity to think and speak. Allow “wait time” before
responding. Don’t cut coachees off, finish their sentences, or
start formulating your answer before they’ve finished. Pay
attention to your body language as well as your frame of mind.
Be focused on the moment, and operate from a place of
respect as the listener.
2. Withhold judgment.
Active listening requires an open mind. As a listener and
a leader, be open to new ideas, new perspectives, and
new possibilities when practicing active listening. Even
when good listeners have strong views, they suspend
judgment, hold any criticisms, and avoid arguing or
selling their point right away.
3. Reflect.
When you’re the listener, don’t assume that you
understand your coachee correctly — or that they know
you’ve heard them. Mirror your coachee’s information
and emotions by periodically paraphrasing key points.
Reflecting is an active listening technique that indicates
that you and your counterpart are on the same page.
4. Clarify.
Don’t be shy to ask questions about any issue that is
ambiguous or unclear. As the listener, if you have doubt or
confusion about what your coachee has said, say something
like, “Let me see if I’m clear. Are you talking about
…?” or “Wait a minute. I didn’t follow you.”
The emphasis is on asking rather than telling. It invites a thoughtful
response and maintains a spirit of collaboration.
Restating key themes as the conversation proceeds
confirms and solidifies your grasp of the other person’s
point of view.
It also helps both parties to be clear on mutual
responsibilities and follow-up. Briefly summarize what
you have understood while practicing active listening,
and ask the other person to do the same.
6. Share.
Active listening is first about understanding the other
person, then about being understood as the listener. As
you gain a clearer understanding of the other person’s
perspective, you can begin to introduce your ideas,
feelings, and suggestions. You might talk about a similar
experience you had or share an idea that was triggered
by a comment made previously in the conversation.

INFLUENCE
■ 3. Influence. Developing your influencing and leadership skills helps you to
communicate your vision or goals, align the efforts of others, and build commitment
from people at all levels. Ultimately, influence allows you to get things done and
achieve desirable outcomes.
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 various groups and individuals will require different approaches for
influencing.You’ll want to master the 3 ways to influence people.

Tap into people’s rational and intellectual positions. You present
an argument for the best choice of action based on
organizational benefits, personal benefits, or both, appealing to
people’s minds.
Connect your message, goal, or project to individual goals and
values. An idea that promotes a person’s feelings of well-being,
service, or sense of belonging tugs at the heart and has a good
chance of gaining support.
Involve collaboration (what will you do together?), consultation (what
ideas do other people have?), and alliances (who already supports
you or has the credibility you need?).
Working together to accomplish a mutually important goal extends a
hand to others in the organization and is an extremely effective way
of influencing.

Influencing Skills
No leader is an
island. They are
empowered by
their connections
with others.
They understand
how to get things
done and embrace
the reality of working
within organizational
politics to move
teams and important
initiatives forward.
Leaders cut
through the noise
to authentically
but credibly
promote
themselves —
while also
promoting what’s
good for the entire
organization.
Because leadership
often involves
guiding people
through risk and
change, trust is
essential.

Learning Agility
■ Learning agility involves learning from mistakes, asking insightful
questions, and being open to feedback. It includes learning a new
skill quickly, taking advantage of opportunities to learn, and
responding well to new situations. For senior leaders, learning
agility is also about inspiring learning in others and creating a
culture of learning throughout the organization
■ Learning-agile superstars engage in these 4 behaviors at a
significantly higher level of skill and commitment than everyone
else — and get great results over and over again.
■ “We also know that it’s never too soon or too late to boost your
learning agility,” says Hallenbeck.

1. Be a Seeker. To boost your learning agility, you need to seek out new and diverse experiences.
■ Immerse yourself in situations that broaden your skills and perspective. Explore new pathways.
■ But don’t just go through the motions. Embrace the challenge of the unfamiliar. If you react to
the new learning opportunity by staying close to your comfort zone, you minimize struggle and
discomfort — and you also miss out on the corresponding rebound in growth and performance.
■ The end result is that you’re pretty much the way you were before, and the full power of the
new experience is lost.
2. HoneYour Sense-making. In today’s high-stakes, complex, ambiguous, and fast-moving
situations, you don’t have the luxury of time.You need to dive in and start making things happen.
■ This means you need to take an active approach to making sense of the new challenges you
face. Be curious and willing to experiment.Ask “Why?” “How?” and “Why not?”
■ Find another way to understand a problem. Utilize multiple techniques, engage different
senses, and tap into your emotions to wrest understanding, insight, and meaning from the
experience.
Learning Agility

Learning Agility
3. Internalize Experiences and Lessons Learned.This process is needed to solidify
insights and lessons learned for recall and application later.
■ Ask for feedback, be open to criticism, and take time to think about what happened
and what you’re learning.Talk about what’s currently working well and what isn’t — or
debrief what’s already happened. Step back from the busyness and figure out what
you’re learning from a project, from an interaction, from a new experience. Reflect on
feedback so you can see patterns (and changes) over time.
■ If you don’t process the learning, you may miss important clues to next steps.
4. Adapt andApply.Through your experiences, you’ve created principles and rules of
thumb to guide you. Over time, you get better at applying them to navigate new and
challenging situations. Use your intuition, be flexible, and don’t shy away from
experimentation as you venture into new territory.

A to Z of LeadershipTraits
■ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbODvtb-beA

■ Audacious: boldness or daring, especially with confident disregard for personal safety,
conventional thought, or other restrictions.
■ Brave: possessing or exhibiting courage or courageous endurance.
■ Compassionate: a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by
misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.
■ Driven: being under compulsion, as to succeed or excel.
■ Encouraging: to inspire with courage, spirit, or confidence; to promote, advance.
■ Fearless: without fear; courageous, bold; intrepid.
■ Generous: liberal in giving or sharing; unselfish. Free from meanness or smallness of
mind or character.
■ Honest: truthful, candid.
■ Inspirational: creating a state or quality of being stimulated or aroused.
LeadershipTraits
Source: Forbes: Excellence FromATo Z: 26 Qualities to Strive For, Margaret M. Perlis,Apr 17, 2013.

■ Just: guided by truth, reason, and fairness.
■ Kind: generous, good, beneficent.
■ Loyal: Faithful, dependable.
■ Magnanimous: generous in forgiving an insult or injury; free from petty resentfulness or
vindictiveness.
■ Nobel: of an exalted moral or mental character or excellence; high-minded, principled.
■ Optimistic: disposed to take a favorable view of events or conditions and to expect the most
favorable outcome.
■ Perseverant: persistence in a course of action or purpose, especially in spite of difficulties,
obstacles, or discouragement.
■ Quiet: free from disturbance or tumult; tranquil; peaceful.
■ Resilient: springing back; rebounding; returning to the original form or position after being
bent, compressed, or stretched, buoyant.
LeadershipTraits
Source: Forbes: Excellence FromATo Z: 26 Qualities to Strive For, Margaret M. Perlis,Apr 17, 2013.

■ Stalwart: strong and brave; valiant; firm, steadfast.
■ Team player: a person who willingly works in cooperation with others.
■ Undaunted: undismayed; not discouraged; not forced to abandon purpose or effort.
■ Visionary: given to or characterized by fanciful, or unpractical ideas, views, purely
idealistic or speculative; impractical.
■ Wise: having the power of discerning and judging properly as to what is true or right;
possessing discernment, judgment, or discretion.
■ X-Factor: a quality that someone or something is attributed to have; regarded as
mysterious and difficult to describe or isolate.
■ Youthful: characterized by youth; freshness, vigor.
■ Zealous: ardently active, devoted, or diligent; enthusiastic, passionate.
LeadershipTraits
Source: Forbes: Excellence FromATo Z: 26 Qualities to Strive For, Margaret M. Perlis,Apr 17, 2013.

Leadership in the ContemporaryWorld
Telling Style of Leadership
■ The telling style of leadership is characterized by a one-way communication between the leader and the
followers wherein the former sets the context and the expectations from the group. Some leaders in family
owned businesses have to deal with the legacy left behind by their forbearers as well as leave behind their
distinctive style of leadership.Towards this end, some family business leaders such as RatanTata of theTATA
group have ensured that they articulated their vision for their companies that had huge ambitions and plans
for global expansion.
Selling or Coaching Style
■ The literature on leadership and situational leadership in particular is clear that it is not enough to have a
vision without translating it into actionable strategies. Research has shown that this style is characterized by
a two-way communication between the leaders and the followers wherein both are influenced by each other
and buy-into each others’ strategies.
■ Further, this style also corresponds to the leader being comfortable in his or her role. In this respect, business
leaders such as Sir Richard Branson ofVirginAtlantic have ensured that the adoption of technology was done
in a big way to further their vision of their companies needing to build internal capabilities which are aligned
to the external drivers such as the imperative to expand globally.

Participating or Supporting Style
■ The situational leadership is evolutionary in nature meaning that it is based on the
progression of the leader through successive phases in his or her leadership. Having said
that, the theory also states that some leaders tend to conform to one or more styles better
than the other style(s).This is applicable in the case of the late Steve Jobs of Apple who is
known more for his transitional, transformative, and trailblazing leadership rather than his
participation in day to day running of the company.
The Delegating Style
■ The fourth style of leadership according to the model is that of a leader who does not direct
and monitor the day to day running of the company and is instead, engaged in higher value
adding processes. For instance, Bull Gates who delegated much of the work that he was
initially engaged in now began to focus on global plans for the company especially at a time
when the global macroeconomic environment was unfavourable.
Leadership in the ContemporaryWorld

Challenges in Leadership in the Contemporary Leadership
■ The biggest challenge in leadership is to listen to everyone’s opinions and come to a mutually beneficial
solution.
■ need to be impartial towards everyone.
■ Sit with your subordinates, listen to their grievances and always try to come up with innovative solutions.
■ Never ever loose your temper.
■ A leader has to win the trust of his/her subordinates.
■ Never feel bad about the sudden change in the behaviour of your colleagues.
■ Be empathetic
■ Making people work together is a big challenge
■ Lack of projects, scarcity of funds and lack of support from clients are some of the external challenges faced by a
leader.
■ Emergency situations are unpredictable.

Tips to overcome the challenges
■ A leader needs to inspire his/her subordinates
■ Encourage communication among team members
■ Extracting quality work from team mates
■ Planning intelligently

Role of Communication in overcoming challenges
■ Half of the problems disappear when discussed.
■ Discuss with your team members before reaching to any concrete strategy for the
team.
■ Every employee needs to have a say in major decisions.
■ Let employees talk, share their experiences, discuss work and also gain from each
other’s knowledge.
■ Initiate the concept of weekly meetings where all employees can come together on a
common platform to share their experiences, brainstorm and contribute in strategies
and policies.

Role of Management in overcoming challenges
■ Management plays an essential role in not only recruiting the right person
as a team leader but also overcoming the challenges faced in leadership.
Management needs to understand the importance of a leader.
■ Give the team leaders some freedom and authority.
■ Employees would never accept someone as their leader who has never
performed but is management’s favourite.

Managing Chaos: A necessary skill for leaders
■ Chaos is inevitable in such a landscape because of the confluence of all these factors.
■ Creating flexible organizational structures and adaptable cultures is mainly to deal with the
fast changing business environment where organizations and the leaders have to be agile
and nimble footed to take advantage of opportunities.
■ Only constant is change and that the only certainty is uncertainty in addition to the
unpredictability of the future means that chaos becomes an integral part of every
manager’s and leader’s life.
■ A case study of a Shipping company
■ What is Amazon/Ola/Uber doing now? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thdjOTclxis
■ How are the private taxi owners making their livelihood?
■ How are restaurants thriving?
https://www.hotstar.com/in/news/hotel-owner-sells-biryani-in-a-car/1902000079

Leadership during CrisisTimes
■ During tumultuous times, there is a scope for change as well as the
possibility of disasters happening that result in chaotic conditions
prevailing during these times. Hence, the leadership of a nation or an
organization must ensure that change is “managed” in an orderly and
structured manner to avoid the disasters from happening.
■ For instance, the carnage that happened in post-Invasion Iraq is an
example of disasters happening by intention or by accident when the
residents of a nation or the employees of a company are faced with the
prospect of rapid and discontinuous change.
■ The key terms here are “rapid” and “discontinuous” as the rapidity of
change and the non-linear way in which it happens leads to the “law of
unintended consequences” becoming operational and hence the
change must be managed in such a way that it is glacial and controlled.

Women and Leadership in the
ContemporaryWorld
■ Women Presidents https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaxcgezIqVs
■ Dr. Saundarya Rajesh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRnqsv293pw
■ Lijjad Papad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAhoeXylVk0
■ Mrs. Kavitha Mishra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-npuE2MpHgo

Meet you next week…