Leadership is the skill to inspire a team to achieve a specific goal. Leadership is about influencing, encouraging and helping others become their best selves, building their skills and achieving goals along the way.

Since leadership is about empowering others to become influential leaders, it means when you exercise your valuable leadership skills, you strengthen the leadership opportunities of others. Efficient leadership is based upon ideas that are communicated effectively to others to engage them adequately to act as the leader intends for them to act. A leader inspires others to act while at the same time directing the way that they act. A leader must be personable enough for others to follow their orders, and they must have the critical thinking skills to know the best way to use the resources available to them.

Numerous research shows that  the best leaders consistently possess these 10 essential leadership qualities:

INTEGRITY: Integrity is an essential leadership trait. It is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values.

ABILITY TO DELEGATE: The best leaders build trust with employees to delegate more effectively. Delegation is the assignment of authority to another person to carry out specific activities. It is the process of distributing and entrusting work to another person.

COMMUNICATION: The best leaders are skilled communicators who can communicate in various ways, from transmitting information to inspiring others to become influencers and motivators. Communication is the act of giving, receiving, and sharing information. Communication is talking or writing and listening or reading. Effective communicators listen carefully, speak or write clearly, and respect different opinions.

SELF-AWARENESS: The better you understand yourself and recognise your own strengths and weaknesses, the more effective you can be as a leader. Self-awareness is about better understanding why you feel what you feel and why you behave in a particular way.

GRATITUDE: The best leaders know how to demonstrate sincere gratitude. Gratitude is the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.

LEARNING AGILITY: Learning agility is to know what to do when you don't know what to do. If you're a "quick study" or can excel in unfamiliar circumstances, you might already be learning agile. But anybody can foster learning agility through practice, experience, and effort.

INFLUENCE: Influence is the capacity to affect the character, development, or behaviour of someone or something, or the effect itself. There can be no leadership without influence because influencing is how leaders lead.

EMPATHY: Leadership is about empathy about relating to and connecting with people to inspire and empower them in their lives. Empathy is a critical leadership skill because people want to be understood, especially by their boss.

COURAGE: Rather than avoiding problems or allowing conflicts to fester, courage enables leaders to step up and move things in the right direction. Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the silent voice at the end of the day that says, 'I will try again tomorrow."

RESPECT: Respect from a leader will ease tensions and conflict, create trust, and improve effectiveness. Respect goes a long way.

THE SERVANT-LEADER

There are numerous leadership management styles, but one that caught my attention is the 'Servant Leader.' Servant leadership is a management style that can help you build strong teams with satisfied personally and professionally members that contribute high-quality work that helps your company succeed.

Servant leadership is a management style in which you lead by putting the needs of your team first. Servant leaders believe that when their team members feel personally and professionally fulfilled, they produce higher quality work more efficiently and productively. Employee satisfaction and collaboration are essential concepts in servant leadership. You can use this leadership style in any type of business, but it is trendy within nonprofit organisations.

Servant leadership is essential in business because it creates a work environment where employees feel respected, appreciated, and valued at all levels of your organisation. Companies that follow a servant-leadership philosophy have more substantial work cultures with high employee morale and engagement.

The term 'servant-leader was first coined by Robert Greenleaf, who was known as a 'servant leader' in 1970 in an essay called – "The Servant as a Leader."

CHARACTERISTICS OF SERVANT LEADERSHIP

Here Greenleaf states that the following to be the main characteristics of a servant leader.

Listens – Pay attention to enhancing interpersonal communication, which helps solve conflict situations and improve the relationship within the organisation.

Stewardship – Stewardship is about taking responsibility for the actions and performance of your team and being accountable for the role team members play in your organisation.

Empathy – Servant leaders strive to understand other people's intentions and perspectives. You can be more empathetic by putting aside your viewpoint temporarily, valuing others' perspectives, and approaching situations with an open mind.

Commitment to the team growth – Servant Leaders take responsibility to develop the organisation and fellow members' development.

Persuasive – To develop the organisation welfare, one should influence the customers, partners and members with favourable negotiation.

Strong commitment to developing team interests

Self-awareness leads to understanding personal bias, which helps avoid the ignorant situation and understand the other's weaknesses, emotions, and values to positively guide them.

Conceptualisation – Develop the ability to predict future trends and make the possibilities in the present.

Foresight – Deep study of past and present records of the organisation helps to plan a better future and guide us to avoid tragedy.

Healing – Create a strong, trusted bond with co-workers and give them the confidence to support them from their failure / emotional issues, which help to create emotional attachment.

The servant-leader first serves the needs of their team and helping them in finding growth and accomplishments by helping each other.

The following is the passage quoted in the essay of Mr Greenleaf, "A servant can only become a leader if the leader remains the servant."

This quote can be explained like this: A great leader can reach great heights of success and goodwill if they take care of their subordinates and start seeing things on their eye level and help them grow.

Servant leaders pay attention to the growth and development of those they work with, including partners, employees, and customers. Outstanding leadership is about service. One of the most central ideologies of servant leadership is listening to the people around you and listening well. The servant-leader believes in the greatness of each individual as much as the greater power and impact of their collective excellence. The servant-leader engages in the act of building communities.

You will never stop leading if you refused to stop serving. The servant-leader must help ensure that a unique strategy exists for every team member to grow individually to improve their team. Servant leadership is all about making the goals clear and rolling your sleeves up, and doing whatever it takes to help people win. Weak leaders expect service. Strong leaders give service. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

"The greatest among you should be like the youngest and the one who rules like the one who serves." Luke 22:26.