Discover the essential leadership skills to have for career advancement. Learn which capabilities matter most and how to develop them effectively.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Fri 7th November 2025
Which leadership capabilities actually matter? Walk into any bookshop's business section and you'll find hundreds of volumes claiming to reveal the "secrets" of effective leadership. Meanwhile, organisations spend billions annually on leadership development, yet research from the Corporate Executive Board reveals that 75% of leadership programmes fail to produce measurable business impact. The disconnect stems from a fundamental problem: focusing on fashionable concepts rather than capabilities research consistently links to effectiveness.
The leadership skills to have are those competencies that research and practice demonstrate consistently predict superior outcomes: strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, communication and influence, decision-making under uncertainty, team development, adaptability, and execution excellence. These aren't the only leadership capabilities that matter, but they form the essential foundation upon which effective leadership builds.
This guide examines the specific competencies you should prioritise developing, explains why each capability drives results, and provides concrete approaches to building these skills. Whether you're preparing for your first leadership role or refining executive-level capabilities, understanding which skills genuinely matter focuses your development efforts where they'll deliver maximum impact.
Research across decades and contexts reveals several capabilities that consistently distinguish exceptional leaders from merely adequate ones.
What it is: The capacity to see beyond immediate tasks, identify patterns and opportunities others miss, anticipate future scenarios, and articulate compelling direction that energises people toward meaningful objectives.
Strategic thinking isn't reserved for executives—it's essential at every leadership level. Frontline supervisors who think strategically question whether current processes serve intended purposes and identify improvement opportunities. Mid-level managers connect departmental objectives to broader organisational strategy. Executives shape the organisation's direction within competitive and economic contexts.
Why it matters: Without strategic thinking, leaders become glorified administrators—managing existing activities efficiently whilst missing opportunities and threats shaping future success. Research from McKinsey demonstrates that organisations with strategically oriented leadership teams outperform peers by 25% on profitability measures.
How to develop it:
What it is: The ability to recognise and understand emotions—both your own and others'—and use this awareness to guide thinking, behaviour, and relationships. Daniel Goleman's framework identifies five components: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.
Emotional intelligence determines how effectively you navigate the inherently human dimensions of leadership: influencing people experiencing stress, anxiety, ambition, and uncertainty; building trust; resolving conflicts; and creating environments where people thrive.
Why it matters: Research consistently shows emotional intelligence accounts for 58-90% of what distinguishes top performers from peers with similar technical skills. Leaders lacking emotional intelligence create technically sound strategies that people resist implementing, make brilliant decisions that teams won't follow, and fail to build the coalitions necessary for complex organisational initiatives.
How to develop it:
What it is: The capability to articulate ideas clearly and persuasively, adapt messages to different audiences, build genuine buy-in rather than compliance, and inspire action through words and presence.
Effective leadership communication operates on three levels: clarity (distilling complex ideas into memorable messages), authenticity (communicating in ways that reflect genuine conviction), and adaptation (tailoring approach to different stakeholders without losing core meaning).
Why it matters: Brilliant strategies poorly communicated achieve nothing. Leadership fundamentally involves moving groups toward shared objectives—an impossibility without exceptional communication. Research from the Economist Intelligence Unit found that poor communication costs organisations with 100,000+ employees an average $62.4 million annually through lost productivity, failed projects, and reduced morale.
How to develop it:
What it is: Making sound choices when you lack complete information, time pressure constrains analysis, and consequences prove significant. This includes both analytical capability (gathering and interpreting relevant data) and judgement (knowing which information matters most and when further analysis yields diminishing returns).
Leadership decisions rarely offer certainty. You must choose strategic direction despite competitive uncertainty, allocate resources across compelling alternatives, address personnel issues affecting team dynamics, and respond to crises requiring immediate action.
Why it matters: Leadership effectiveness ultimately manifests through the accumulated quality of thousands of decisions large and small. Poor decision-making creates organisational chaos, wasted resources, damaged relationships, and strategic drift. Research from Bain & Company reveals that organisations with superior decision-making capabilities deliver returns 6% higher than peers.
How to develop it:
What it is: Building capable, motivated teams through effective hiring, creating psychological safety, delegating for development, providing coaching and feedback, and enabling autonomy that unleashes initiative rather than creating dependency.
Mediocre leaders accumulate personal accomplishments. Exceptional leaders build teams achieving what seemed impossible. This requires fundamentally shifting from "doing" to "enabling"—often the hardest transition new leaders face.
Why it matters: Your leadership impact scales through others. Individual contribution has natural limits; developing capable teams multiplies your effectiveness exponentially. Google's Project Aristotle research identified psychological safety—created through leadership behaviour—as the single most important factor determining team effectiveness.
How to develop it:
What it is: Flexibility responding to changing circumstances, learning from failure without being derailed by it, adjusting strategies when evidence suggests current approaches aren't working, and maintaining equilibrium under pressure.
Business environments shift constantly through technological change, competitive moves, regulatory shifts, and economic fluctuations. Leaders must adjust whilst maintaining sight of core principles—distinguishing between values that remain stable and tactics that must evolve.
Why it matters: Rigid leaders become obsolete. The strategies that delivered yesterday's success often prove inadequate for tomorrow's challenges. Research during the COVID pandemic revealed that organisations whose leaders demonstrated adaptability navigated disruption 40% more effectively than peers led by individuals who struggled adjusting to new realities.
How to develop it:
What it is: Translating strategy into delivered results through effective planning, resource allocation, progress monitoring, obstacle removal, and accountability for outcomes. The capability to bridge the notorious gap between strategic intent and operational reality.
Vision without execution creates cynicism. Teams quickly recognise leaders who articulate compelling direction but fail to deliver tangible progress. Execution excellence involves both systems thinking (understanding how organisational pieces interconnect) and relentless follow-through.
Why it matters: Organisations don't reward good intentions—they reward results. The most strategically brilliant leader who cannot execute delivers less value than a moderately strategic leader with exceptional execution capability. Research from the Harvard Business Review found that execution gaps cost organisations up to 40% of their strategies' potential value.
How to develop it:
Beyond the core seven, several additional capabilities significantly enhance leadership effectiveness.
Disagreement emerges wherever people collaborate. Weak leaders avoid conflict or suppress it. Strong leaders recognise productive conflict (about ideas and approaches) as valuable whilst addressing destructive conflict (personal attacks, passive aggression) directly and quickly.
Development approach: Practice distinguishing conflict types, learn mediation frameworks, and develop comfort with difficult conversations through regular practice.
Markets reward innovation, yet organisational structures often stifle it. Leaders must create spaces where experimentation is encouraged, intelligent failures are examined rather than punished, and unconventional ideas receive fair hearing.
Development approach: Study innovation frameworks (design thinking, lean startup), protect time for exploratory work, and consciously counteract risk-aversion that bureaucracies naturally develop.
Globalised business demands understanding how cultural contexts shape communication, decision-making, and relationships. What constitutes persuasive evidence, appropriate directness, or proper consultation varies dramatically across cultures.
Development approach: Seek international assignments or cross-cultural project experience, study cultural frameworks (Hofstede, Meyer), and develop genuine curiosity about different perspectives.
Organisations are inherently political—different stakeholders hold competing interests, priorities, and perspectives. Effective leaders build coalitions, manage upward and laterally, and navigate organisational dynamics without compromising integrity.
Development approach: Map stakeholder interests and influence, develop relationship-building skills, learn negotiation frameworks, and find mentors who demonstrate political effectiveness with integrity.
You cannot simultaneously develop every capability. Focus produces results; scattered effort achieves nothing. Use this framework to prioritise:
Use multiple data sources:
Look for patterns across sources—capabilities multiple people identify as strengths or development needs deserve attention.
Which capabilities matter most for your current and target roles? A frontline supervisor needs execution excellence and team development more urgently than strategic vision. A senior executive requires strategic thinking and stakeholder management capabilities less critical for mid-level managers.
Research job descriptions for positions you aspire to—which capabilities appear consistently? These signal market expectations.
Ask: "Which 2-3 capabilities, if significantly improved, would most dramatically increase my leadership effectiveness?"
Consider:
Select development areas offering disproportionate returns. Improving delegation might free 10 hours weekly for strategic work. Developing emotional intelligence could transform difficult stakeholder relationships.
Transform abstract capabilities into concrete behaviours:
Effective development plans specify observable, schedulable actions you can practice consistently.
Leadership capabilities develop primarily through challenging experiences (70%), supplemented by developmental relationships like coaching and mentoring (20%), with formal training providing frameworks and tools (10%).
Volunteer for projects requiring your development capabilities, seek assignments outside your expertise, and request regular feedback on specific behaviours you're working to change.
If forced to choose only three capabilities, prioritise: (1) Emotional intelligence—the foundation enabling effective relationships, self-awareness, and interpersonal influence; (2) Communication and influence—essential for articulating vision, building buy-in, and inspiring action; and (3) Strategic thinking—distinguishing leaders who shape direction from managers who optimise existing operations. These three capabilities consistently appear in research on leadership effectiveness across contexts and enable development of other competencies. However, genuinely effective leadership requires broader capability sets including decision-making, team development, adaptability, and execution excellence. The "top three" provides a starting point, not a complete solution.
New leaders should prioritise: emotional intelligence (especially self-awareness and empathy), communication clarity, delegation and team development, and execution excellence. Early leadership roles demand transitioning from individual contribution to achieving results through others—requiring different capabilities than technical expertise. New leaders often struggle with delegation (doing work themselves rather than developing team capability), communication (assumptions about what's obvious), and emotional self-management under new pressures. Focus on building trust, establishing credibility through consistent delivery, seeking feedback actively, and developing your team's capabilities. Strategic thinking matters but becomes more critical as you progress; foundational interpersonal and execution skills matter most initially.
Leadership development spans careers, not weeks. You can demonstrate meaningful improvement in specific skills within 6-12 months through focused practice and feedback. Building truly exceptional capability across multiple dimensions typically requires 5-10 years of deliberate development. Research shows the 10,000-hour principle applies to leadership—genuine expertise demands extensive, focused practice. However, improvement compounds: each capability you develop makes acquiring others easier because leadership skills interconnect and reinforce each other. Start immediately, maintain patience about timelines, and focus on consistent progress rather than overnight transformation. Celebrate incremental gains whilst recognising that leadership mastery is a journey without a finish line. The most effective leaders maintain developmental mindsets throughout their careers.
Leadership skills are overwhelmingly learned, not innate. Whilst certain personality traits (extraversion, emotional stability, openness to experience) correlate with leadership emergence, the specific capabilities determining effectiveness—strategic thinking, communication, decision-making, emotional intelligence—develop through practice, feedback, and experience. Extensive research from institutions including the Center for Creative Leadership and Harvard Business School demonstrates that structured development programmes produce measurable capability improvements. The belief that "leaders are born" often becomes a convenient excuse for avoiding the hard work development requires. Some people start with advantages, but deliberate practice matters far more than initial endowment. If leadership were purely innate, organisations wouldn't invest billions in development programmes—they'd simply hire people born with the right traits.
Employer priorities vary by industry and role level, but research consistently identifies several highly valued capabilities: strategic thinking (seeing beyond immediate tasks to shape direction), communication and influence (articulating vision and building buy-in), emotional intelligence (navigating interpersonal dynamics effectively), decision-making under uncertainty (making sound choices with imperfect information), adaptability (responding effectively to change), and results orientation (translating strategy into delivered outcomes). Review job descriptions for positions you target—which capabilities appear repeatedly? These signal market expectations. Generally, technical expertise matters for establishing credibility whilst broader leadership capabilities determine who progresses into senior roles. The balance shifts as you advance: early-career roles emphasise execution and team collaboration; mid-career demands strategic contribution and cross-functional influence; senior positions require vision-setting and organisational transformation.
The most effective approach combines both: maintain adequacy across critical capabilities whilst investing disproportionately in developing distinctive strengths. Research from Gallup and others demonstrates that the best leaders excel through unique strengths rather than well-rounded adequacy across all dimensions. However, severe deficiencies in foundational capabilities (emotional intelligence, communication, integrity) will undermine you regardless of other strengths. Therefore: identify genuine gaps requiring attention—deficiencies in core capabilities that actively limit your effectiveness—and address these to adequate levels. Then focus development primarily on maximising natural strengths that could become distinctive capabilities. Build teams whose strengths complement yours rather than trying to excel equally across all dimensions. This approach produces more effective leadership than obsessively fixing every weakness whilst neglecting strength development.
Use multiple assessment methods: (1) Formal assessments—360-degree feedback, leadership competency evaluations, personality inventories providing structured frameworks; (2) Performance feedback—review patterns in performance evaluations, promotion decisions, and project outcomes; (3) Trusted colleagues—ask peers, managers, and direct reports about your leadership strengths and development areas; (4) Self-reflection—note which situations you handle confidently versus struggle with, which tasks energise versus drain you; (5) Role analysis—compare your current capabilities against requirements for roles you aspire to. Look for convergent themes across sources—capabilities multiple people or methods identify deserve attention. Pay particular attention to gaps between self-perception and others' experience of your leadership—these blind spots often represent highest-priority development areas.