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Develop These 3 Leadership Skills Before You Really Need To Use Them

A little empathy and other “soft skills” can go a long way in high-level leadership positions. But why wait to start cultivating them?

Source | www.fastcompany.com | REVA SETH

Whether you spend it coding, sharpening your design skills, or getting an MBA, the start of your career is a crucial time to develop “hard” skills–the technical abilities that let you get a foot in the door and lead to your first few promotions. But further on, a shift happens: the skills that secured you those initial roles become progressively less important. Sure, you still need to broaden your knowledge base, but the higher up you go, the more your leadership abilities and management experience matter. The “soft,” or interpersonal, skills come to the fore.

As part of my current research, I’ve been interviewing successful founders, funders, and organizational leaders to understand how we can help more people learn the skills they’ll need to succeed in the future knowledge-economy–and not only that, but learn them more easily and earlier. These are a few skills that effective leaders need–but that younger professionals can (and should) start developing long before their first managerial roles.

1. LEARN TO TURN OFF YOUR MIND

“Operating at a senior level is highly stressful,” says Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, founder and Chairman of talent marketplace theBoardlist and Board Director at Urban Outfitters, TripAdvisor, and Ericsson. “Learning to turn off your mind is essential to preventing burnout and having the resilience required to achieve long-term success,” she explains. And since it’s hardly just leaders who need to be resilient, it’s smart to start getting the hang of mindfulness–or, short of that, just knowing how to unplug–early on.

Daniel Saks agrees, adding that this is an iterative learning process that takes time. “Finding this mental balance requires work,” says Saks, who is the President and Co-CEO of commerce platform AppDirect. “I used to be ‘always on,’ even taking support calls in the middle of the night,” he concedes. “Breaking this habit has required a real commitment.” Better to avoid getting into that habit than to have to break it later.

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Source
www.fastcompany.com
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