Developing Leadership Skills

By Doug Franklin March 22, 2012

When I train youth workers on developing their own leadership, their main focus is often character. Don’t get me wrong, for strong leadership we must have solid character. What I have noticed though, is that few youth workers want to work on leadership skills. Skills are often harder for us to approach. First, we are not even sure what many leadership skills are; and second we are not sure if we can grow in our skills. These are good questions, but they are also a cop-out. Every good leader needs to balance growing in their character and growing in their skills. You can improve in both, but only if you put the needed time into it. If you want to grow your leadership skills remember the following:

1. You must learn skill based leadership principles. Create a list of all the ones you find through various books, articles, and asking others around you.

2. Select 3 leadership skills you want to improve on. Research books, resources, trainings, or even a mentor who could teach you practical ways of putting these skills into action. Try to think of ways in which you can use those leadership skills in different aspects of your ministry.

3. You must practice, practice and practice. Keep using these skills and keep evaluating yourself. Try and sit down with another person and have them examine your progress periodically as well.

It’s hard work to improve in leadership skills, and while this is not complete fool proof way of improving, it’s a start. To improve your leadership skills, it takes a lot of work. But if you put the hard work into it, your ministry will improve.