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Colorado State University Global
Undergraduate
Graduate
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Teaching and Learning
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Effective leaders are critical to an organization’s success. While developing strong leadership traits is essential for team leaders, showing leadership potential in any position can help you positively impact your company, coworkers, and community. Below are eight leadership skills that can boost your career growth.
Self-awareness means understanding your personality, strengths, and weaknesses. It’s a key leadership trait because it lets you appreciate how you affect those around you and helps prevent personal emotions from impacting your judgment.
Research shows that self-aware leaders are more effective. Employees who work for self-aware managers report higher job satisfaction than their peers. A 2021 study also found that managers with both personal self-awareness and collective awareness (awareness of their identities as group members) are perceived as more authentic and receive more support from their teams.
Reflecting on your actions and their impact is the first step toward becoming a self-aware leader. Consider seeking feedback from your team and other experienced managers to identify areas for improvement. Some leaders also find self-awareness training helps them better understand their motivations, unconscious biases, and core personality traits.
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to understand and manage your own feelings and perceive the emotions of others. High EQ is often linked to strong leadership potential, as it helps individuals manage reactions in high-pressure situations and fosters mentorship, feedback delivery, and collaboration.
A 2023 review found that leaders with high emotional intelligence improve team performance and boost business outcomes. Employers increasingly value EQ during hiring decisions— it ranks among the top 15 in-demand skills, according to the World Economic Forum 2020 Future of Jobs Report.
Many leaders find journaling helpful for developing their EQ. Noting when you or a colleague displays a strong emotional response, reflecting on the triggers, and considering how to manage these feelings in the future is an effective way to improve your emotional understanding.
Whatever your leadership style, strong communication skills should be a cornerstone of your practice. Effective communication lets you:
Adapting your communication style to suit different situations and audiences is essential to getting your message across effectively. For instance, some employees prefer written instructions, while others appreciate regular in-person check-ins. You could also watch videos of your presentations or ask a mentor to observe you to identify your strengths and weaknesses and set goals.
Many leadership courses, such as CSU Global’s Online Bachelor’s in Organizational Leadership, include communication training.
Adaptability lets you respond effectively to challenges in an ever-changing business environment. Adaptable leaders adjust rapidly to shifting circumstances and generate innovative solutions to problems.
Accepting the need to adapt can be challenging, especially for established leaders with a successful record of managing teams in a particular way. However, changing consumer trends, emerging technologies, and market disruptions can impact the status quo, so pivoting to a new approach is essential for success.
To improve your adaptability, reframe your mindset to recognize the benefits of change. Upgrading your problem-solving skills through professional development training can also enhance your confidence in managing change.
According to research by McKinsey & Company, more than half of middle and senior managers and C-suite executives spend over 30% of their working lives making decisions. In pressurized environments, managers must balance logical reasoning with speed to make timely, high-quality decisions. Because of this, leaders require analytical thinking and intuition to become effective decision-makers.
Making decisions that fit your organization’s goals and time constraints requires experience, so finding a mentor can help you observe excellent decision-making in action. Ask your mentor to walk you through their decision-making process and apply what you’ve learned to your own skill set to build your confidence.
Vision and strategic thinking allow you to set long- and short-term goals in line with your company’s mission. Understanding the big picture is crucial to making better decisions, navigating tricky situations, and adapting to evolving circumstances.
The following exercises can help you develop your visionary and strategic skills:
Management education programs often include courses on strategic leadership. For example, CSU Global’s Online Master’s in Project Management features courses designed to hone your strategic innovation abilities.
Acting honestly and adhering to moral principles are essential leadership traits. Employees working for leaders who show personal integrity typically display increased work engagement and report higher trust in leadership.
Being accountable for both good and bad outcomes is vital. Demonstrating accountability and leading by example shows commitment to your company’s ethical values and performance standards, which can help keep your team on track. Welcoming feedback, admitting mistakes, and defining your values to your team are effective ways to establish an ethical, accountable workplace culture.
In the past, being empathetic and supportive have often been ignored as key leadership traits. However, the benefits of supportive leadership are now better understood, and many companies actively look for managers with strong interpersonal skills. Examples include:
Unsurprisingly, empathetic leadership is strongly associated with employee well-being. However, research also shows that cultivating empathy can make leaders more effective by enhancing their self-awareness and listening skills.
Developing key leadership traits such as communication, strategic thinking, and emotional intelligence boosts your opportunities as an emerging or established leader. Explore our online degrees and certification courses to learn how CSU Global can help you build your leadership potential.
