Good Leadership Skills Are Not Just For Leaders

You don't have to be in a leadership position to have good leadership skills!

Leadership is the skill of motivating individuals to have a common goal! The better you are at motivating them the more likely the goal is achieved!

That does not remove the fact that the individuals must have certain skills to perform the tasks necessary to accomplish that goal. But if all things are equal a person with good leadership skills will have a better performing group of individuals than a poor leader.

We see it in the sports world all the time. A coach is fired and a new one comes in and presto the team begins to win games, and in some cases world championships. All of this with the same group of individuals.

Did they implement some new magical system that instantly made them successful? Maybe, but the chances of that are slim.
The truth is that they have good leadership skills and using those skills are able to motivate their players to give more. The players are not any more talented than they were the day before. They are only more motivated to do their best! They are more focused on the goal because the coach has made that goal seem not only doable, but creates a hungry desire to achieve it.

A manager on the other hand manages the process along the way. The manager is the one that creates schedules and instructions to help make it all fall into place. Both are extremely important to achieving the goal but good leadership skills trump good management skills every day of the week.

I believe this is true because I am under the belief that good leadership skills are something someone is born with and management skills can be taught.

Although you can enhance your leadership skills you can't create a leader from someone that just doesn't have what it takes.

That is why most of the time people that may be great at doing something are not successful being a coach, or leader of a team. On the other hand those that are just so so at something can be great leaders because of that inbred skill that they have been born with.

Individuals that possess good leadership skills generally are people with good character. I would put integrity at the top of the list! I remember very clearly once when I was tasked with making several presentations to large groups of employees that were having their benefits changed. I told my boss that I would present any information to them provided it was true. Once you lie to your staff you will surely fail at some point in the future!