The Essentials of an Excellent Leader
Hey Heroes!
How to become an excellent Leader? When it comes to leadership,
What sets you apart from the rest of the pack?
Is it your ability to make decisions quickly and effectively?
Your knack for inspiring others to achieve great things?
While these are important leadership qualities, they're not the only ones that matter. In order to be an effective leader, you need both skills and competencies. Today, we are going to start building your vocabulary to make sure we are in line with the information to come.
A lot of people use terms interchangeably: skill, ability, talent, competency. It is extremely important to understand what the difference is between all of them and most importantly how they are related, so you can use the concept in the right way, and also understand what you have and what you need to develop. Here are some concepts you might have heard before, and it is very important to understand what they are and how they are different.
Let's start
Strength: in Positive Psychology, strength is a collection of positive traits a person has and how much those traits are present compared to others. An example would be being creative.
Talent: is a natural aptitude to perform a task or to engage in a situation in a particular way with positive results. The effort is involuntary. An example would be having a talent for communication.
Ability: capacity to perform a task either faster or more efficiently (with fewer resources or higher output). An example would be having the ability to type fast.
Skill: specific learned abilities that you will require to perform a given job or task successfully. The efforts need to be voluntary, systematic and sustained. An example would be simplifying in writing complex instructions.
Competency: the capability to apply or use a set of related knowledge, skills, and abilities required to successfully perform "critical work functions" or tasks in a defined work setting. An example would be the competency of writing SOP (Standard Operating Procedures)
What does that mean?
Naturally, we have strengths and talents. They are involuntary and ever-present. We can develop our abilities through practice and repetition. We can learn skills and become competent or develop competencies based on our skills by powering them through our talents, skills, and strengths.
Knowing your natural strengths is a great way to start the journey of self-knowledge.
A great example to understand this concept would be this:
Charlie is extremely competent (Competency) in writing Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). To write a good SOP you need to be skillful in simplifying complex routines (skill), be very organized, and have a process-driven thought pattern (abilities) to understand the process and write it down. You also have to be very good at asking questions and have a keen eye for detail (talent), while at the same time being very open-minded and curious (strengths).
And in your case, are you aware of what are your more prominent strengths, talents, abilities, skills, and competencies?
which ones would you say are your top 3 in each category?
If you want to get the fast track to develop your leadership skills, no matter where in your journey you are at, check out the programs we offer at P3 or start by downloading our Masterclasses.
Remember: Feel good. Do good. Be good.
