Just like my last list about skills every worker should have, this list cover skills I think every single leader should have.

HOWEVER! There is a lot more variability in this list because there are so many different types of leaders, and some organizations or people prefer certain types of leaders. So these will be the skills that I personally have found most valuable in my own leadership experience, or those skills that I’ve most appreciated in the people that have lead me.

The first four are more “transitionary” skills — these are skills that I think are valuable for both leaders and workers. The last four are specific primarily to leaders (although it wouldn’t hurt for workers to have them as well).

Let’s make our list, and talk a little about it’s construction.

1. Stress Management
2. Empathetic Understanding (Active Listening)
3. Project Management
4. Cultural Cultivation
5. Alignment
6. Strategy
7. Employee Development
8. Conflict Resolution

You’ll note first that several of these skills are expansions or refinements of “worker” skills. “Empathetic Understanding” is an extension of “Communication.” In communication we would concern ourselves with making ourselves understood, and in Empathetic Understanding we would concern ourselves with understanding others.

Likewise “Employee Development” extends “Self Development” and “Project Management” extends “Personal Productivity.” If we re-arranged these skills to better demonstrate their relationship we could do it thus:

Beginner	Intermediate	Advanced
Self Development	Employee Development	Cultural Cultivation (Team development)
Communication	Empathetic Understanding	Conflict Resolution
Continuous Improvement	Alignment	Strategy
Personal Productivity	Project Management

Oh man! It’s hard for me to leave that last spot blank, but I’m still working through these skills and I think I have some more pondering to do (although this post has been very helpful).

You’ll notice “Stress Management” isn’t in that box, because it wouldn’t really make sense, but I don’t want to remove it from the plan either. Stress management is a pretty key skill for both workers and managers to have, and many people uh … aren’t great at it (myself included).

But it doesn’t fit super well within this three tiered model I’ve found myself creating which is also OK. Maybe the three tiered model is too artificial a construct to withstand impact with reality.

Were I to fill in that last box … I’m not sure. When I think about it the last line is all about building on productive individuals to create productive teams — teams that know what needs to be done, can prioritize, and effectively use their time. Project management obviously goes in that row. Strategy or alignment could as well, honestly, but I like them extending “continuous improvement” because strategy and alignment are both key ingredients in continuous improvement — you can’t improve if you don’t know the direction you’re improving in, which comes from strategy and alignment.

Something about prioritization should go in that bottom row, though. If you think about it, the next step after someone can do tasks, then a team can do projects, is to make sure the most important and valuable projects are being done.

I’m going to think on this some more.