Manager Tips: Build Your Leadership Skills
Regardless of age, role or life experience, we all have the ability to learn something new every day and broaden our perspective. In fact, learning new skills can improve our cognitive functioning and memory, increase our happiness and protect our brains from ageing. As managers, there are specific skills you can learn – and continue to improve – to make you more successful in your role.
Enhance your capabilities and working relationships with your team by committing to building one or more of these five leadership skills:
- Equity and Inclusion.
Get to know employees on a personal level, recognize your conscious and unconscious biases and build your cultural competence by getting to know people from different cultural backgrounds. Make an effort to connect one-on-one with individuals on your team, and participate in discussions on the Community Feed to get to know employees around the world. By doing so, you’ll have a better grasp on the individual needs of your team members and you’ll be able to provide them with the tools they need to succeed both personally and professionally. - Communication.
Become a more effective communicator by being transparent, direct and authentic, practicing active listening, being open to feedback and providing your team members with regular business updates. - Problem Solving.
Drive team collaboration, innovation and performance by bringing your team together to solve complex problems. Your role is to help define the root issue and opportunities, guide the discussion, manage conflict and help document and track the team’s action plan. - Emotional intelligence.
Effective leaders have high emotional intelligence, the ability to motivate and drive productive behaviors by understanding their own and others’ emotions. - Delegation.
Great leaders don’t try to do it all. They inspire others to take action by matching employees to the right projects, providing them with the guidelines and resources to succeed and providing regular feedback on their progress.
Take a manager course or create a pathway through AECOM’s Degreed Program, which provides free content and access to a variety of manager courses.
