Take your team to the next level by discovering and acquiring leadership skills. Leadership is more than just initiating actions and managing activities. It also means looking out for your team members’ well-being and continuously devising strategies that will improve work performance as well as innovative positive changes.

As a manager, it is inescapable to be caught in the middle of office politics sometimes, often to your disadvantage. When you find yourself in such a sticky situation, it is important to know what to do in order to handle it tactfully or, if possible, get out of it completely.

New managers are faced with a new position that requires leadership skills. This could be overwhelming for them at first as they get used to commanding a number of people at work. Training new managers will help them prepare for heavier responsibilities at work and take on tasks that are out of their comfort zones.

Advocating for a change that will be effective relies on a lot of factors: the people implementing it, the change management strategies, and the leader. To lead an effective change in the workplace, a person has to have a complete grasp of the whole change project from conceptualizing, planning, implementing, and sustaining it.

Becoming a leader is not an overnight quest. Though some seemed to be born for the role, some aspirants can learn to be one through a continuous process of acquiring skills and enhancing attributes. Learning to lead people is an experience that will enhance one’s personal and professional development.

The fast-paced world of business calls for constant changes—in technology, in strategies, and in governance, to name just a few. There are many things today that a leader did not need ten or twenty years ago and there are also obsolete practices that do not work anymore today.

Presence is more than just being physically visible. A committed leader is one who knows that being present is an important factor in driving productivity and encouraging better performance. But how do you move from “just being there” to having a presence that stands out and commands respect and attention?

Effective leaders are those who can lead themselves first, meaning that they can influence themselves in achieving the goals they set. Having self-leadership is akin to motivating the whole body to cooperate. To attain self-leadership, one must master being able to control negative reactions and being confident through developing more skills.

“A servant leader is one who is a servant first and who has a natural feeling to serve first,” said Robert Greenleaf who coined the term “servant leadership”. This is a whole new perspective to being a traditional leader who wants to lead first. Servant leaders are remarkable in their ability to put others first.

The adaptive leader operates based on how to keep up with constantly changing environments and in turn, the corresponding problems. Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky, conceptualizers of this leadership framework, define it as assisting groups or individuals to cope up withchallenges and unpredictable changes in the workplace.

A willingness to share in the experiences of your subordinates is a sign of a compassionate leader. Compassionate leaders have a deeper understanding of what others are experiencing and with that ability, they are able to make better decisions, build strong relationships, and inspire others to do good as well.

What makes an effective leader is a numerous concoction of hard and soft skills, a high EQ, a desire to lead, and more. Why it’s important to have an effective leader is simple: so that the goals will be achieved using the best ways. With an effective leader, there is guidance and a clear vision of what’s ahead.

When faced with inevitable change, people respond more favorably through positive motivation. Transformational leadership is leading through inspirations, motivating people to go through changes in a positive way and to a positive result. Those who follow a transformational leader has a renewed and energized vigor to meet the changes with a clear vision.

How do you transform a mere manager into a leader with skills? Managers are leaders in their own rights but to be a true leader requires more than just management skills. Having had experience in being in charge of a group of people, managers can most likely easily gain leadership skills to turn them into leaders.

It is not uncommon anymore to find women in positions of power, such as being a leader. Women possess a unique and undeniable touch in their leadership styles, ones that should also be shared with the opposite sex. Acknowledging and adapting women’s skills in leadership will contribute to one’s personal and professional development, male and female alike.