Twelve Skills

The Guide to Becoming a Stronger Leader

and Accelerating Your Career
Ed Barrows and Laura M. Downing
©2023 by Ed Barrows and Laura M. Downing
Adapted by permission of Rethink Press
ISBN: 978-1-781-33772-1
Estimated reading time of summary: 7 minutes

Key Takeaways
• Regardless of the expertise, talents, and technical or other skills you possess, to be an effective lead-
er you must develop competence in 12 essential leadership skills. Together, these skills encompass
every aspect of good leadership.
• There are specific techniques, processes, and best practices to apply to improve your competence
in this skill set.
• By diligently and regularly applying and practicing the 12 leadership skills, you can become a more
effective leader and a role model for others who aspire to leadership.

Overview
No matter what stage of leadership you’re in or what personal attributes you bring to your role, to deliver
stellar results you must possess a specific set of leadership skills. In Twelve Skills, leadership experts Ed
Barrows and Laura M. Downing describe these essential leadership skills and explain how anyone at any
leadership level can develop them to achieve their full leadership potential.

Why Twelve Skills?

The workplace is changing rapidly. There’s a critical need for strong leadership. However, organizations
are falling behind in investing in leadership development. If you want to be the best leader you can be,,
you must be competent in a distinct set of 12 leadership skills. As a leader, you’ll be setting direction for
your team, building crucial alliances, influencing others, and delivering results. The 12 leadership skills
will equip you to excel in these efforts. They represent time-tested fundamentals that can help you be a
more effective leader in any circumstance.

Business Book Summaries® • Copyright © 2024 EBSCO Information Services • www.ebsco.com • All Rights Reserved 1
Twelve Skills Ed Barrows and Laura M. Downing

Skill 1: Mastering Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinkers analyze situations from a broad perspective and recognize the impact of potential
interactions. This capability is essential to visionary leadership, particularly in a disruptive environment.
Build your strategic thinking skills using the four-step GAPS process:

1. Gather. Garner a complete view of what’s taking place both inside and outside your organization.
Use a variety of resources to acquire rich information. Examine trends and their potential impact.
2. Analyze. Scan the data you’ve gathered for key insights about the future. Look for relationships and
patterns that might yield opportunities. Focus your analysis on what’s most important to your business.
3. Project. Begin projecting how what you’ve discovered could shape your future business. Create sce-
narios for different points in time.
4. Strategize. Craft a strategy for the near and far term. Chart a future direction and define the steps
that will get you there. Your strategy statement should be brief and cover your primary goal, scope,
and business advantage.

Skill 2: Unlocking Problem Solving

Consistent problem solving is a hallmark of strong leadership. The D2A2 problem-solving process offers
four steps to help you solve problems:

1. Define. Frame and reframe the problem until you have a clear definition of what the issue is. Create
your problem statement.
2. Decompose. Deconstruct the problem using a logic tree until you’ve identified all potential causes.
Your tree must be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive for it to address every potential
cause.
3. Analyze. Examine each cause to find the root cause of the problem. The Toyota five whys method is
an effective way to identify root cause.
4. Act. Choose the best way to solve the problem. Test your solution and refine it. Communicate your
plan.
Boost your problem-solving skills by thinking before acting, applying a process, and welcoming differ-
ent perspectives. Make problem solving a habit.

Skill 3: Enhancing Executive Presence

Your executive presence stems from your core values. It’s up to you to decide what type of leader you’ll
be. By expressing yourself in an authentic way that inspires others to follow you, you’ll develop a per-
sonal leadership brand and demonstrate that you have what it takes to lead.

Build your executive presence with the ABC process:

• Appearance. Pay close attention to and curate how you appear physically, including grooming.
• Boldness. Demonstrate calm, courage, confidence, and credibility in any situation.
• Communication. Express yourself clearly and with confidence.
To get started, perform an honest self-assessment and solicit feedback from others on how they view
you. Make a prioritized list of ideas for building your personal brand. Cultivate a presence that aligns

Business Book Summaries® • Copyright © 2024 EBSCO Information Services • www.ebsco.com • All Rights Reserved 2
Twelve Skills Ed Barrows and Laura M. Downing

with what you’re doing now and what you want to do in the future. Leave no doubt in others’ minds
that you’re the leader they need.

Skill 4: Developing Clear Messaging

Great communication is a combination of achieving credibility with your audience, creating an emo-
tional connection with them, and presenting the logic that helps them understand your vision. Use the
5C messaging process to create clear and compelling messages consistently:

1. Clarify. Know why you’re sharing a specific message. Are you looking to inform or persuade?
2. Consider. Understand your audience’s needs. Anticipate how they might receive your message.
3. Create. Craft your message using the basic elements of credibility, connection, and logic. Lead with
fascination. Use simple language. Ensure your message flows logically. Include a strong ending.
4. Choose. Select the right medium for your message. You have many options and channels.
5. Convey. Share your message with your audience and be ready to address any questions.
Remember to take different perspectives into account as you’re crafting your messages. Eliminate any
confusing or ambiguous words. Keep it simple. Don’t overload your audience with information.

Skill 5: Expanding Relationship Building

The workplace is interdependent. Good leadership is a team effort. Nurturing meaningful relationships
at every level of the organization is time well spent.

Build strong relationships with others and grow your network using the elements of the 3E relationship-
building process:

1. Express. Be self-aware and self-regulating in how you manage your emotions and interact with oth-
ers.
2. Engage. Workplace connections are vital but are constantly changing. Continually assess and seek
to maximize your network to your best strategic advantage.
3. Expand. Make an equal investment in nurturing your existing relationships and developing new
ones. Be generous and reciprocal in how you relate to others.
Strengthen your existing relationships by reframing them as strategic opportunities. Value the unique-
ness of each of your relationships. Champion relationship building by encouraging others to make a
similar investment in it.

Skill 6: Strengthening Talent Development

The strength of your team affects the strength of your leadership. Finding, developing, and retaining
good talent is crucial to your success. Acquire and keep top-tier team members through the HDCM
talent development process:

• Hire. Seek out strong talent that aligns with organizational goals. Craft thoughtful and comprehen-
sive job descriptions. Remove bias from the interview process.
• Develop. Set the right expectations and ensure you provide development opportunities for every
employee. Don’t overlook the value of untapped resources that exist within your employee base.

Business Book Summaries® • Copyright © 2024 EBSCO Information Services • www.ebsco.com • All Rights Reserved 3
Twelve Skills Ed Barrows and Laura M. Downing

• Coach. Supply guidance and support that helps direct employees along their best career paths. Give
thoughtful, candid feedback to accelerate positive and productive change and boost employee mo-
rale. Promote independent thinking and autonomy.
• Manage. Abandon old-style annual performance reviews for ongoing, continuous performance
management. Base performance management on a process of plan, monitor, review, and reward.

Skill 7: Invigorating Team Building

Collaborative, high-functioning teams help ensure organizational success. Your job is to elicit the great-
est contribution from each of your team members and focus those contributions on a common goal.

Turn your team into a cohesive, high-performing group using the 3D team-building process principles:

1. Design. Identify the skills needed to meet your goals, then design your team around those attri-
butes. Right-size your team. Create a team charter to set expectations and keep the team on task.
Clearly communicate roles and responsibilities.
2. Direction. Keep your focus on the path ahead. Establish a team purpose and goals, then provide
guidance all along the way. Build camaraderie and commitment by celebrating milestones.
3. Dynamics. Encourage positive relationships between team members. Foster an environment of trust
and efficiency. Offer feedback and coaching. Operate under a model of continuous improvement.
Avoid team dysfunction such as skill mismatches, information overload, or overdominance.

Skill 8: Improving Group Collaboration

Collaborative leaders can engage and inspire diverse groups of people to achieve common goals. Boost
your skills as a collaborative leader by applying the elements in the 3P collaboration process:

1. People. Develop a reputation as a collaborator, then seek out the right mix of people to meet your
needs. Look for creative, open-minded thinkers who enjoy sharing ideas with others. Your goal is to
create a harmonious, trusting community of diverse individuals.
2. Process. Clearly establish a common purpose and agree on a method. Build your process on an ethic
of contribution and an infrastructure capable of managing interdependencies.
3. Performance. Inspire creative thinking that leads to a breakthrough. Unleash creativity by inviting
team members to wildly brainstorm. Push the boundaries to unearth new possibilities. Assess the
team’s performance multi-dimensionally.

Skill 9: Revamping Change Leadership

Ongoing organizational change is redefining change leadership. Your team will be looking to you for
guidance, vision, and leadership through change. Empower them to engage in and support ongoing
change through the PTS change leadership process:

• Prepare. Build the case for change by signaling that it’s coming, explaining why it’s needed, and shar-
ing how the organization will benefit from it. Listen to employees, consider their concerns, and work
to dispel their fears.
• Transition. Craft an easy-to-understand implementation plan and enlist the right people to execute
it. Communicate clearly and consistently. Celebrate milestones to keep people engaged and mov-
ing forward with conviction.

Business Book Summaries® • Copyright © 2024 EBSCO Information Services • www.ebsco.com • All Rights Reserved 4
Twelve Skills Ed Barrows and Laura M. Downing

• Sustain. Institutionalize the change as a new organizational standard. Be vigilant in monitoring and
correcting any backsliding. Thwart resistance with a positive attitude. Model and reward behavior
that aligns with the change.

Skill 10: Increasing Persuasion and Influence

Whether you consider it organizational politics or motivational speech, influencing and persuading
others is part of being an effective leader. Present information and make a convincing argument that
moves people to take the right action.

Use the P3 framework to expand your sphere of influence and exert more authoritative power over
others:

1. Politics. Build political proficiency by emulating those who are skilled at it. Become more assertive
in your speech. Look for individuals who can help you be more influential. Let go of dysfunctional
behaviors and predictability.
2. Pillars of persuasion. Weave together the triad of your character, logic, and ability to connect with
others emotionally to become more persuasive. All three elements are necessary.
3. Principles of influence. Reciprocity, likability, social proof, commitment and consistency, scarcity, and
authority are all principles that others apply to sway us to an idea or behavior. Learn to leverage
them.

Skill 11: Driving Focused Execution

If you can’t execute your strategy, all the other leadership skills lose their value. Use the 4M execution pro-
cess to create a virtuous cycle of focused execution that transforms your strategy into tangible results:

1. Model performance. Visually map out your objectives and performance expectations so everyone
understands your plan and how your organization is creating value.
2. Manage projects. Identify and align projects and ensure oversight so your execution stays on track.
Jettison any projects that aren’t contributing to achieving your goals.
3. Measure progress. Performance metrics are essential. Establish quantifiable metrics, then monitor
and measure your performance to know if you’re achieving milestones and meeting your targets.
4. Make decisions. Regularly review your progress in team meetings and make any necessary course
corrections. Avoid common decision traps such as anchoring, status quo, sunk cost, confirming evi-
dence, framing, and erroneous estimating and forecasting.

Skill 12: Achieving Top-Tier Performance

Successful companies consistently outperform the competition. The 4+2 formula for business success
features four must-focus areas of organizational excellence:

1. Focused strategy.
2. Flawless execution.
3. Performance-oriented culture.
4. Fast, flexible, flat organization.
Additionally, there are four practices, from which you can choose two areas of focus:

Business Book Summaries® • Copyright © 2024 EBSCO Information Services • www.ebsco.com • All Rights Reserved 5
Twelve Skills Ed Barrows and Laura M. Downing

1. Attract and retain key talent.

2. Build committed leaders.
3. Innovate with enthusiasm.
4. Grow through mergers and partnerships.
Influence your organization’s competitive position by becoming skilled in these areas and practices. To
begin, internalize the model, gather support for your effort, and pick one focus area. Take a disciplined
approach and watch the results unfold.

About the Authors

Ed Barrows, president of CLIR Coaching, has over 25 years of hands-on experience helping corpo-
rate and government executives become better strategic leaders. His professional services experience
includes Deloitte, General Electric, PwC, Palladium Group, and Duke Corporate Education. Barrows has
served on the faculties of Boston College and Babson College and currently teaches at Harvard’s Divi-
sion of Continuing Education. He’s coauthor of Managing Performance in Turbulent Times: Analytics and
Insight. A retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel, Barrows holds a BS in Business Administration from
Boston University, an MBA from Georgetown University, a DBA from Cranfield School of Management,
and a certificate in Evidence-Based Coaching from Fielding Graduate University.

Management consultant and leadership coach Laura M. Downing has over 30 years of experience
working with senior executives from for-profit and not-for-profit organizations, as well as government
agencies, as they strive to execute their strategy, strengthen their leadership teams, and maximize their
own impact as leaders. She’s the founder and CEO of CLIR Coaching and has founded and led several
professional services firms, including Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, Palladium, and Ascendant.
Downing teaches strategy, performance management, and business problem solving to a range of cor-
porate leaders and is an instructor at Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education. She holds a BS in
Business Administration from Georgetown University, an MBA from Harvard School of Business Admin-
istration, and a certificate in Evidence-Based Coaching from Fielding Graduate University.

Purchase the Book

Copyright of Business Book Summaries, Business Book Review, and BusinessSummaries is property of EBSCO Information Services and its content may not be 6
copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or
email summaries for individual use. Business Book Summaries® is a service of EBSCO Information Services. For more information, to subscribe, or to send us
feedback, visit www.ebsco.com
www.ebsco.com.. EBSCO Information Services, 10 Estes Street, Ipswich, MA 01938 USA
Copyright of Twelve Skills is the property of Great Neck Publishing and its content may not
be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use. For reprints and permission requests, contact
proprietarypublishing@ebsco.com.