How to Improve Organisational Leadership Skills (With Tips)

By Indeed Editorial Team

Published 7 June 2022

The Indeed Editorial Team comprises a diverse and talented team of writers, researchers and subject matter experts equipped with Indeed's data and insights to deliver useful tips to help guide your career journey.

Organisational leadership is a management approach where leaders can guide other employees towards achieving strategic goals. These leaders typically possess skills that allow them to motivate and inspire others within the team to complete tasks. Learning about these skills and how to improve them can help you effectively guide a team and create a work structure that promotes productivity. In this article, we outline steps on how to improve organisational leadership skills, discuss the importance of organisational leadership skills, share tips on how to improve these skills and provide examples.

How to improve organisational leadership skills

These are steps that can help you learn how to improve organisational leadership skills in the workplace:

1. Evaluate yourself

Understanding your strengths and the areas you can improve on is important for building your skills and abilities. Improving your leadership skills can make it easier to guide other team members to achieve set goals. To evaluate your skills, you can think about your abilities and current tendencies. This can help you highlight areas in need of improvement.

2. Take leadership and management courses

Following this evaluation, you can take leadership courses that can help you build on these areas. With structured learning and courses, you can increase your behaviour awareness and unlock your leadership potential over time. These leadership courses can help you understand the theory behind different leadership styles and how to incorporate them. You can also refine your skills by reading extensively and attending relevant seminars. It's also possible to earn graduate degrees in management and leadership to build your skills.

3. Build your hard skills

Even though leadership skills are typically soft skills, leading a team can be more effective with relevant hard skills. Soft skills are personality traits and attributes that can ease interactions with others in the workplace. In contrast, hard skills are abilities you can acquire and enhance through education, practice and repetition. Employees may readily approach a leader for help with technical issues based on the leader's knowledge and expertise. With adequate knowledge and hard skills, helping team members resolve these challenges can be more manageable. This can also help you prove your competencies and earn your team members' trust.

4. Get a mentor

You can seek leadership advice from leaders or managers. These people may have the expertise, knowledge and experience to guide you towards improving your skills. You can also get relevant feedback from them on your growth and improvement.

5. Practise and apply your skills

Using every opportunity to exercise your knowledge of organisational leadership can be effective in maintaining relevant skills. Activities in the workplace, such as discussing a project with a team, hosting public speaking events and making contributions at meetings, can help develop and maintain leadership skills. Becoming aware of these routines and proactively participating in them can eventually build your skills.

The importance of organisational leadership skills

Organisational leadership skills can influence the performance and productivity of a company. They're important because they:

help you maximise your strengths, such as transparency and knowledge, and that of other employees
urge you to initiate actions when necessary
help you build morale among your team
guide you towards instilling confidence and inspiring team members, which can promote organisational growth
increase the overall performance at work, which can improve the work environment
foster loyalty and communication
encourage you to support and motivate team members to work more productively

Tips on developing organisational leadership skills

Best practices that can help you build and maintain leadership skills include:

Take initiative

Employers typically give employees tasks they know they can manage. You can improve your leadership skills by offering to handle more responsibilities in which you're confident. Learning competencies within and outside your primary knowledge area can increase your expertise. You can challenge yourself to take the initiative in the workplace and offer to lead projects or even volunteer to work with a different team. This can help you expand your knowledge and eventually move up to a leadership position.

Ask for feedback

Feedback and reviews are effective ways to identify and understand areas of improvement. You can ask a mentor, employer or colleague for feedback on your performance at work. Having a discussion and asking open-ended questions can be effective ways of requesting feedback. You can use this information to change your work approach and adopt more effective strategies to facilitate improvement.

Learn to follow

You can build your leadership skills by observing and recognising the value of other employees and leaders. This can help you gather knowledge and information from people within and outside your specialisations. You can ask questions, when necessary, which can help expand your knowledge and expertise.

Practise discipline

Leaders can be role models for other employees and exhibit exemplary behaviour. An employer can judge your capacity to lead by the level of discipline you show at work. You can build your leadership skills by maintaining focus when handling tasks and completing them on time. Dress appropriately and be punctual. Ensure you effectively manage your time and build habits that can help you improve your skills, such as reading.

Set clear goals

You can outline your goals and the steps you intend to take towards achieving these goals. Clearly defining your goals can make them easier to accomplish, as you can draft a plan to guide you. This can inspire you to challenge yourself into meeting objectives and completing tasks on time. You can also increase your level of discipline with this strategy. Adding a time frame for attaining your goals can make the process more practical. This can help develop and improve your leadership skills.

Examples of organisational leadership skills

These are examples of popular skills leaders in the workplace use to achieve set goals:

Communication

This is a core leadership skill, as it can help you motivate and inspire your team members. Communication skills include active listening, interpersonal relationships and verbal and written skills. These skills are necessary to build trust and inspire positive changes. You can improve these skills by observing and trying to understand the different attributes and personalities of team members. This can help you effectively relate to them according to their different traits. With communication skills, a leader can seek members' opinions on strategies and return constructive feedback that can help a company advance.

Problem solving

With practical problem-solving skills, leaders can reduce the need for amendments and foster constant improvements for a business. Leaders can typically identify a challenge, evaluate its variables and use the data to develop a lasting solution to the issue. An effective way to develop this skill includes consulting with team members to get their opinions or ideas on the best strategy to resolve issues. Problem-solving skills can help leaders devise creative solutions and reduce the occurrence of issues.

Delegation

A leader can improve productivity by assigning tasks to competent team members. Delegation skills can help leaders recognise the capabilities and strengths of their team members and assign tasks to them according to these criteria. They can empower their team members and assist them with professional development through delegation. This skill is important for improving the team's performance and organisation growth as it can help save time. It also generates a sense of responsibility in team members, as everyone has a specific task.

Logical reasoning

Logical reasoning skills guide leaders when resolving challenges and discerning facts in drawing relevant conclusions about a situation. This skill can aid organisational leadership as it helps set an achievable goal. With this skill, it can be easier to make connections between ideas, verify theories and interpret information. Constant research and learning can help improve this skill.

Attention to detail

It's important to be thorough and ensure accuracy when completing or inspecting tasks. Attention to detail enables leaders to efficiently allocate their cognitive resources to achieve this. With this skill, they can improve productivity, efficiency and employee performance. Attention to detail can significantly increase the quality of work for an organisation. An effective strategy for developing and improving this skill includes reading documents thoroughly before sending them out or signing them.

Flexibility

This skill helps leaders adapt to change and modify their approach in response to unpredictable circumstances. With this skill, leaders can change their plans to match the reality of a situation. This can help them maintain productivity during transitions. A flexible leader can typically work with a broad spectrum of people as they're open to new ideas and strategies. This skill is beneficial, as leaders can adopt new technology and work more productively.