Developing leadership skills throughout your workforce helps you create a sustainable pipeline of talent and ensure employees remain engaged and invested. For more content like this, check out Acorn Labs: https://acornlms.com/enterprise-learning-management

1. The Value of
Developing
Leadership
Skills
And best practices

2. What are leadership skills?
Leadership skills are the abilities and traits needed to influence
and guide other individuals, teams and organisations towards a
common goal.
As leadership is usually driven by soft skills and personality
traits, not all leaders possess the same core leadership skills.
The goals of an organisation determine the exact skills needed
in business leaders.

4. Why do leadership skills matter?
On the one hand, leaders translate strategy into action, set
goals and direction, give focus to long-term activities, and root
daily work in the bigger picture.
On the other hand, leaders set the tone. They shape workplace
culture, create safe spaces (or toxic ones) and demonstrate
how others are expected to work.

5. Replacing subject matter
experts and their niche
capabilities
Retaining and transferring
mission-critical knowledge
to new employees
Avoiding the impacts of
vacant roles and neglected
strategic responsibilities
Identifying and filling skills
and capability gaps
Developing leadership skills where they are only burgeoning or
non-existent is important for effective succession planning,
which in turn is key for:

6. What’s changing?
As companies become flatter, formal sources of knowledge and
authority are harder to distinguish.
This means you shouldn’t think of an effective leader as a rare
commodity or one that takes years to develop. In fact,
leadership development should be a constant process in your
organisation.

7. If You Don’t
Develop
Leadership Skills?

8. Productivity Lags
Leaders play a crucial role in translating strategy into
measurable objectives and gaining buy-in from employees.
Without strong leadership skills, strategy remains secret,
causing resentment and a disconnect between tasks and
company outcomes.

9. Ill-Fit Promotions
Promoting high-performers without assessing their
leadership skills can lead to problems. The lack of key
management skills in individuals transitioning to
leadership roles can create inefficiencies and challenges
in managing others.

10. Top Talent Passed Over
Relying solely on job level or performance as indicators of
future leaders can result in overlooking individuals with high
potential. Leadership skills such as adaptability and
situational awareness are often intangible qualities that
contribute significantly to an employee's value and
productivity.

11. How To Improve
Leadership
Skills?

12. Offer Inclusive Development
Recognise that leadership potential can be found in
various roles, not just traditional hierarchical positions.
Personalise leadership skills development based on
individual capabilities and provide eLearning content to
help employees advance their skills.

13. Encourage Specialisation
Good leaders possess self-awareness and understand
the complexities of their specific areas of the business.
Develop leaders throughout specialised functions to
avoid overburdening a select few and enable effective
leadership development within teams.

14. On-The-Job Training
Connect leadership development to the realities of daily
work. On-the-job training ensures real-time correction of
performance issues, immediate feedback, and
contextual understanding of leadership skills such as
communication and strategy execution.

15. Leadership Team
Maintain a central network of leadership roles in the
organisation to facilitate collaboration, provide feedback
and support for emerging leaders, and align key roles
around business strategy. This helps gauge leadership
potential and readiness.

16. You can learn more about this
topic by checking out the full
article:
https://acornlms.com/enterprise-learning-
management/developing-leadership-skills