At the highest level, leaders help us collectively reach or work toward our (or their) goals.

Different leaders will take different approaches to this, but the end goal is pretty much the same. Get a group of people to follow your lead and accomplish something. While that vastly simplifies what goes into being a leader, in general terms that is what they all set out to do.

As we know from our political and business history, some accomplish this beVer than others.

What is it that separates the successful leaders from the failures? To get to this answer, let’s ask another question.

Who are the leaders that inspire you?

I am sure every single one of us, can think of a handful of leaders who inspire us. Take a second to think about it.

What made these leaders different?

Can you pinpoint any skills or traits that these leaders possessed? I am sure a couple of things popped into your mind. You might reflect on your parents, an old teacher that ignited something deep within you, a slick-talking CEO, or maybe that rare politician that connected with people in an inspiring and authentic way.

These are the exact kind of “leadership skills” we will be examining.

Now, naturally, this course isn’t large enough to do a deep dive into every single skill, that each great leader possessed.

However, through careful analysis and research, we have a pretty good idea of what made the best leaders Sck. We have come up with ten leadership skills that repeatedly show up when looking at great leaders.

We focus on skills that aren’t just integral to great leadership, but skills which each one of us should adopt in our daily lives. Keep that in mind! We are not presenting an exhaustive list of traits every leader has. What we have is a list of leadership qualities that every one of us should adopt into our daily lives.

Honestly, it doesn’t even matter if you want to lead or not.

If you do want to be a leader, then great - these ten skills will be indispensable. However, even if you don’t want to lead, you can use these powerful skills to help yourself succeed in anything that you want.

The ten skills below were specifically chosen because they are leadership traits we believe everyone should possess:

1. Vision
2. Passion
3. Positive Attitude
4. Persistence
5. Communication
6. Creativity/Innovation
7. Independence
8. Integrity
9. Ability to Delegate

Think about the first question we asked in this lesson. We asked you who the leaders are that inspire you.

Now think about those leaders that popped into your mind, and cross-reference them with the list above. I think it is a safe bet that your chosen leaders checked off most of those skills above. If they didn’t, then you can be sure that they excelled at a number of them.

More importantly, though, think about your own life. How could each of these skills help you along your way?

In the next section, we will examine each skill, share an example of a leader who possessed the skill – and most importantly – teach you how you can adopt this skill into your daily life.