Essential Leadership Skills for Career and Personal Growth

Key Takeaways

• Leadership skills are practical abilities that allow someone to influence, motivate, and guide others.
• Important leadership skills include communication, emotional intelligence, adaptability, strategic thinking, accountability, team building, delegation, self-awareness, and resilience.
• Leadership skills develop through consistent practice, formal education, mentorship, feedback, and real-world opportunities to apply what you learn.

Leadership is often associated with seniority or job titles. However, though leadership can involve authority, it isn't defined by it. Leadership is influence. It is the ability to guide conversations, to help a group move forward with purpose. That influence develops through everyday behavior long before someone reaches an executive role.

Leadership becomes clearer when you look at the behaviors that make someone's influence visible. These behaviors reflect the leadership skills a person relies on when communicating, making decisions, collaborating with others, or stepping in to provide direction.

What Are Leadership Skills?

Aristotle argued in "Rhetoric" that influence grows from three sources: how clearly a person thinks, how well they understand others, and the character they project. People follow not because they must, but because the leader shows a way of thinking and relating that earns attention and trust. That insight remains strikingly relevant.

Leadership skills are the abilities that translate those principles into everyday behavior. They are the tools people use to communicate with purpose, read situations carefully, and help a group move toward shared aims. These abilities make leadership something observable rather than abstract.

At Santa Clara University, leadership is approached as a learnable practice. Much of that approach is shaped by "The Leadership Challenge", the globally recognized framework co-developed by Santa Clara's own Barry Posner along with Jim Kouzes (former director of the Leavey Executive Center). Their research identifies the behaviors people rely on most when they are at their best as leaders. These behaviors form the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership©:

• Model the Way
• Inspire a Shared Vision
• Challenge the Process
• Enable Others to Act
• Encourage the Heart

Top Leadership Skills to Develop

The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership provide a structure that can be used to explain why certain leadership skills matter and how they support real-world influence. Each ability serves a deeper behavioral purpose. These core skills include:

Communication

Leaders communicate their values through the clarity of their words and the consistency of their actions. They also use communication to help others see what the future could look like and why it matters.

At the Leavey School of Business, communication is taught as a deliberate practice: leaders must learn how to express expectations clearly, listen with intention, and adapt their message depending on the situation. People commit more fully when they understand the purpose behind the work and feel included in the conversation.

Decision-making

Leaders rarely have perfect information. They must accept ambiguity and evaluate the trade-offs that come with any course of action. Effective leaders avoid decision paralysis by focusing on progress rather than perfection.

Decision-making is not isolated from collaboration. Leaders gather input, consider different viewpoints, and leverage the expertise around them. This approach strengthens accountability: when people understand how decisions are made, they trust the process and remain committed to the outcome. Leaders who decide with transparency also model the courage required to experiment, learn, and adjust when needed.

Emotional intelligence

Leadership is fundamentally relational. Leaders must understand how people respond to stress and how to support them.

Enabling others does not mean stepping back entirely. It means actively shaping an environment where people feel heard, respected, and trusted.

Leaders who remain aware of their own emotions communicate more clearly and respond to situations with steadiness rather than reactivity. They also help others navigate conflict by recognizing tensions early and addressing them constructively.

Adaptability

Change is built into the work of leadership. Leaders must adjust when plans shift, when obstacles appear, or when the world outside the organization demands new approaches.

Adaptable leaders remain curious rather than defensive. They understand that uncertainty is not a sign of failure but a space where creativity can emerge. Adaptable leaders help people maintain momentum during disruption and demonstrate that learning is always possible.

Strategic thinking

Strategic thinking requires leaders to step beyond immediate tasks and see the broader context.

In practice, this means pausing to ask deeper questions about direction and purpose. Leaders who think strategically help teams understand how their work contributes to something larger. They connect goals to values, clarify priorities, and show how small steps build toward meaningful outcomes.

Accountability

Accountability demonstrates integrity. Leaders take responsibility for results, acknowledge mistakes, and stay focused on solutions instead of blame.

This practice builds trust. When leaders follow through on commitments and take ownership of outcomes, they show others that standards matter. Accountability reinforces credibility and encourages teams to pursue excellence not out of pressure, but purpose.

Team building

Team building promotes cooperation, trust, and shared ownership. Leaders help individuals understand one another's strengths, build confidence, and work in ways that support collective success.

In the Five Practices framework, enabling others requires leaders to invest in relationships. This could involve creating opportunities for people to collaborate, shaping norms that encourage open discussion, or removing barriers that limit participation.

Delegation

Leaders empower individuals by trusting them with meaningful responsibilities and giving them the guidance they need to succeed.

Judy Bruner, a Santa Clara University alumna and now a board member for several major public companies, has spoken with our students about how her view of delegation changed over time. Early in her career, she often kept work for herself because she could finish it faster or wanted to protect her team from added pressure. As her responsibilities grew, she realized that holding on to tasks limited the team's potential. Involving others brought a wider range of perspectives and strengthened how the group approached decisions.

Her experience demonstrates the purpose behind delegation in leadership: it is not only about distributing work, but about inviting others into the process so they can contribute, learn, and take ownership. By trusting people with meaningful tasks, leaders expand what the team can accomplish and create conditions where future leaders can emerge.

Self-awareness

Self-awareness influences every one of the Five Practices because leaders who understand their motivations, blind spots, and behavioral patterns are better prepared to lead with intention. It is foundational to Modeling the Way, since leaders cannot demonstrate clear values until they understand what those values are.

Santa Clara University integrates self-awareness into its leadership development approach through coaching conversations, structured reflection, and personalized feedback. These experiences help individuals understand how their habits influence the people they work with and give them space to consider what adjustments would make them more effective.

Resilience

Leaders encounter setbacks, periods of uncertainty, and high-pressure situations. Their response to these moments shapes how teams feel about their own ability to overcome obstacles.

Resilient leaders maintain perspective during difficulty and model the mindset that challenges can be navigated with patience and effort. They encourage others during stressful periods and help teams stay connected to their purpose. This kind of steadiness reinforces trust, strengthens morale, and promotes long-term commitment.

How to Develop Leadership Skills

People grow into leadership. The leaders who seem confident and clear today usually describe a long period of practice, mistakes, and adjustment behind that confidence. Santa Clara University alumna Betsy Rafael '83, who has held senior roles at Apple, Cisco, and GoDaddy, spoke candidly to our students about what shaped her path. Her advice was simple and direct: "Focus and work hard. There is no shortcut in working hard."

If effort is the foundation, the next question is where to direct it. Hard work is more effective when it is guided, reflected on, and applied in situations that stretch your current abilities. Leadership skills tend to develop fastest when people focus on a few concrete areas: structured learning, mentoring and coaching, reflection and feedback, and real-world practice.

Therefore, to develop your leadership skills, you should:

Engage in structured learning

Courses, workshops, and degree programs give leadership development a clear framework. They introduce ideas such as ethical reasoning, strategic thinking, communication approaches, and models like The Leadership Challenge. This kind of structure helps you understand why certain behaviors build trust and influence instead of relying only on instinct.

At Santa Clara University, leadership is taught as a set of learnable practices backed by research. Faculty guide students through cases, discussions, and projects that mirror situations they will face in their careers. Learning in this way turns leadership from a vague aspiration into something you can study, question, and apply with intention.

Seek mentors and coaching

Mentors and coaches help translate concepts into personal growth. They offer perspective on how you are showing up, where you are effective, and where your habits are getting in the way. Honest feedback from someone who has led teams or navigated complex roles can reveal patterns that are hard to see on your own.

When you have someone who will listen, challenge you, and offer specific suggestions, it becomes easier to adjust your approach and build confidence in how you lead.

Build a habit of reflection and feedback

Leadership skills deepen when you pause to look at what actually happened. After a project, a difficult conversation, or a team decision, reflection helps you ask: What worked? What caused friction? What did the situation need that I did or did not provide?

Reflection can take many forms: brief notes at the end of the week, a conversation with a peer, or more formal assessments. The key is consistency. Over time, you begin to notice patterns in how you communicate, decide, or respond under stress. That awareness makes it easier to choose different actions next time instead of repeating the same reactions.

Look for real opportunities to practice

Leadership grows when you put yourself in situations that require it. This does not have to mean managing a large team. It can mean coordinating a group assignment, organizing a club event, helping a colleague through a challenge, or taking responsibility for a small project at work.

Each time you step into these roles, you practice communication, accountability, and collaboration in real conditions. Even when things feel messy, those experiences create the raw material that education, mentoring, and reflection can build on.

Measuring and Improving Leadership Effectiveness

Leaders who want to improve need ways to assess their current effectiveness and track progress over time. A few practical approaches to doing so include:

• Gathering 360-degree feedback to understand how people at every level experience your leadership.
• Monitoring team performance metrics to see how your influence contributes to outcomes over time.
• Setting measurable leadership goals so your growth becomes specific, focused, and accountable.
• Conducting regular self-assessments to reflect on recent situations and identify the habits shaping your behavior.

Turning Leadership Skills into Lasting Success

No matter where you are in your professional life, developing your leadership skills is one of the most meaningful investments you can make.

Education plays an important part in strengthening those abilities. Within Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business programs, students learn to connect self-awareness with practical leadership tools, supported by faculty, mentorship, and a community that takes ethical influence seriously.

Joe Allanson '85, Executive Vice President of Finance ESG at Salesforce, expressed the impact this kind of environment can have. Reflecting on his time as a student, he shared:

No one leaves college with leadership fully formed—it's a lifelong process. What Santa Clara University provides is a strong grounding in self-awareness, opportunities to practice real skills, and a supportive community that helps students understand the kind of leader they hope to become.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between leadership skills and soft skills?

Leadership skills are a subset of soft skills focused specifically on influencing, motivating, and guiding others, while soft skills encompass a broader range of interpersonal abilities.

Can introverts develop strong leadership skills?

Of course! Introverts often excel at leadership through deep listening, thoughtful decision-making, and one-on-one relationship building.