Leadership Skills

Behavioural indicators include:-

• Offering support
• Taking ownership
• Accepting responsibility on issues and being prepared to be judged on them
• Not passing the buck
• Shaping outcomes
• Inspiring trust and confidence
• Motivating others
• Building rapport and trust
• Working with minimal guidance and supervision
• Making quick/tough decisions when necessary
• Delegating
• Mentoring others
• Seeing the big picture
• Giving clear guidelines

 

Work ready graduates have produced an free online training course to help you improve your leadership skills.

Do I Have This Skill?

You'll need to be able to prove to employers that you actually have the skills they want for the job. In applications and interviews they will ask 'competency questions' that begin with phrases such as 'tell me a time when ............. ' or 'give me an example of .............. ' Your answers are the evidence that you have what it takes.

To find out how well developed your skills are already you could try this simple exercise:

Rate yourself on each of the behaviours:

• 1 = I do this very well. I am consistent and successful in it
• 2 = I am good at this. With some practice I can make it perfect!
• 3 = I am getting better, but still need to work on this a bit more.
• 4 = I am not particularly good at this - yet!

Revisit this exercise several times through your years of study - you'll want to have as many skills as possible at 1 and 2 before you apply for graduate jobs.

And, think about all the life situations you've been in - university, work, leisure, travel, social - and identify incidents and examples from them that show that you have already used the skill.