Important Leadership Skills for Workplace Success

People are more critical than ever to the success of a business. But to get people to perform, they need to be inspired by a leader. But what are the skills that every great leader possesses? Are they different now than they used to be? And, can these skills be taught and learned?

Hi – I teach humanistic leadership and management skills through my company – Humanist LearningSystems.

I think there are 7 principles of humanistic leadership – and yes – they can be learned and practice. In fact, practicing these skills is key to success.

These principles are:

•             Dignity – carry yourself with dignity – treat everyone you meet with dignity

•             Compassion – for yourself and others. Compassion – actively practiced – acts as a moral compass and helps us to not only determine what is right and wrong, it helps remind us – to act with dignity and to treat people with dignity.

•             Ethics – Leaders who act ethically are leaders people want to follow.  Ethics based in human compassion yields the best results.

•             Responsibility – the role of a leader is to help a teach coordinate the work. Not to dictate the work, but to encourage staff to collaborate effectively to get the work done.  The manager can also step in to make decisions when the team is having trouble reaching consensus.  They act as a tie breaker for the team so the team can keep moving forward.  This is a philosophic tweak to how we think of our role as leaders and can be practiced.

•             Reason – a leader who does not understand how to think through difficult problems and help their teams use reason and science to solve their problems, is worthless to the team.  The leader should be the person asking for information and using reason and logic to help the team come to the best most effective decisions possible.

•             Strategic Thinking – understanding how small actions impact the larger bigger picture – is also something a good leader does.

•             Service to Others – the role of leader is of lead collaborator.  If you are not oriented to being of service to your team, you won’t be leading them.  You will instate be acting as a dictator. Dictating to them what they should be doing. Leaders – encourage, enable and support. They serve their team – not the other way around.

All of these are mindsets – that have to be actively practiced in order to become habits of mind.  As people start approaching their work with dignity, compassion, ethics, responsibility, reason, strategic thinking as a way to be of service to their team – they will naturally emerge as a leader.

If you want to learn more - consider taking my online course:
https://humanistlearning.com/principles-of-humanistic-management/