The "Fundamental 4" Leadership Skills for Leaders

 SELF-AWARENESS - understand your behavior’s impact on organizational outcomes

 COMMUNICATION - effectively communicate goals and inspire trust
 INFLUENCE - be comfortable persuading, promoting, and delegating
 LEARNING AGILITY - know when to change course, and help others to do so

 Self-Awareness
- Understanding your strengths and weaknesses, but gaining self-awareness is anything but
simple. Self-awareness is one of the critical leadership skills for ongoing and long-term
effectiveness as a leader.
Self-awareness has 4 facets that are most critical for leaders:
• Leadership Wisdom. These are insights from your experience that you can apply to the
challenges you face.
• Leadership Identity. This is who you are in your current professional and personal context.
• Leadership Reputation. This is how others perceive you as a leader based on your current
and previous behavior.
• Leadership Brand. This is what you aspire to and the actions you take to support that mission.
 Communication
- One of the most basic, across-the-board leadership skills all of us need to develop and
refine during our careers. “Communicating information and ideas” is consistently rated
among the most important skills for leaders to be successful. Communication is also
embedded in a number of other leadership skills and competencies, including “leading
employees,” “participative management” and “building and mending relationships.” Writing
clearly, speaking with clarity, and using active listening skills are all part of the equation.
 Influence
- Developing your influencing and leadership skills helps you to communicate your vision or
goals, align the efforts of others, and build commitment from people at all levels. Ultimately,
influence allows you to get things done and achieve desirable outcomes.
- Influence can vary greatly at different levels in the organization. Knowing your stakeholders,
or audience, is key. Do you need to influence your boss? Your peers? Direct reports?
Customers? Each stakeholder has special concerns and issues, so various groups and
individuals will require different approaches for influencing.

Master the 3 Ways to Influence People

Use the Head, Heart, or Hands (Logical, Emotional, or Cooperative Appeals)

LOGICAL APPEALS EMOTIONAL APPEALS COOPERATIVE APPEALS

-tap into people’s rational -connect your message, goal, or -involve a collaboration,
and intellectual position project to individual goals and consultation, and alliances
values

Influence is the ability to personally affect the actions, decisions, opinions, or thinking of others.
Ultimately, influence allows you to get things done and achieve desired outcomes.

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  Learning Agility
- You need the ability to constantly be in a learning mode, to value and seek out the
lessons of experience. To develop as leaders and as people, we need to be active
learners. This involves recognizing when new behaviors, leadership skills, or attitudes
are needed and accepting responsibility for developing them.
- Involves learning from mistakes, asking insightful questions, and being open to
feedback. It includes learning a new skill quickly, taking advantage of opportunities to
learn, and responding well to new situations. For senior leaders, learning agility is also
about inspiring learning in others and creating a culture of learning throughout the
organization. Developing your learning agility is a part of strengthening your leadership
skills, a necessary step to enjoy a long career.
Eagles are majestic creatures of the sky, the chief amidst all the winged beings.
The native Indians considered the eagle as a symbol of leadership, strength and vision.
Early Christians also considered eagles as a symbol of hope, strength and salvation.
Starting from Babylon to Egypt, from Rome to even USA, the eagle has graced many an empire’s
banners, becoming legendary symbol of power, strength and leadership.
Against this background, one may as well ask – What is the eagle’s symbolism in the present
generation?
1. Eagles fly alone and at High Altitudes - They don't fly with sparrows, ravens, and other small
birds.
MEANING - Stay away from narrow-minded people, those that bring you down. Eagle flies
with Eagles. Keep good company.
2. Eagles have an Accurate Vision - They have the ability to focus on something as far as 5km
away. No matter the obstacles, the eagle will not move his focus from the prey until he grabs it.
MEANING - Have a vision and remain focused no matter what the obstacles and you will
succeed.
3. Eagles do not Eat Dead things - They Feed only on Fresh Prey.
MEANING - Do not rely on your past success, keep looking for new frontiers to conquer.
Leave your past where it belongs, in the past.
4. Eagles Love the Storm - When clouds gather, the eagle gets excited, the eagle uses the
storm's wind to lift itself higher. Once it finds the wind of the storm, the eagle uses the raging
storm to lift itself above the clouds. This gives the eagle an opportunity to glide and rest its
wings. In the meantime, all the other birds hide in the branches and leaves of the tree.
MEANING - Face your challenges head on knowing that these will make you emerge
stronger and better than you were. We can use the storms of life to rise to greater heights.
Achievers are not afraid to rise to greater heights. Achievers are not afraid of challenges,
rather they relish them and use them profitably.
5. Eagles Prepare for Training - They remove the feathers and soft grass in the nest so that the
young ones get uncomfortable in preparation for flying and eventually flies/ when it becomes
unbearable to stay in the nest.
MEANING - Leave your Comfort Zone, there is No Growth there.
6. When the Eagle Grows Old - His feathers becomes weak and cannot take him as fast and as
high as it should. This makes him weak and could make him die. So he retires to a place far
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away in the mountains. While there, he plucks out the weak feathers on his body and breaks its
beaks and claws against the rocks until he is completely bare; a very bloody and painful
process. Then he stays in this hiding place until he has grown new feathers, new beaks, and
claws and then he comes out flying higher than before.
MEANING - We occasionally need to shed off old habit no matter how difficult, things that
burden us or add no value to our lives should be let go of.