Some say leaders are born with the skills necessary to inspire and lead, but honestly, great leaders come from those who focus on development and continue building skills. If you’re running a business, coaching a team, teaching a class or managing employees, leadership skills are pivotal to your success.

How effective are you as a leader? Download our printable to assess your skills!

No one is perfect, but continually developing your leadership skills and putting them into practice will become a leader that everyone respects and wants to follow.

Take a look at these 4 actionable techniques to become a better leader:

Become a Great Communicator

First and foremost, quite possibly the most difficult part of being a good leader is mastering proper communication. You need this skill to get ideas out of your head and into the minds of your team. This is also a key skill during performance reviews when you are offering advice and guidance on employee skill development. Clearly articulating exactly subpar and exceptional performance is key to developing your employees and yourself. If reviews are confusing and too general, it will leave the employee uninspired and unable to perform to the standards you expect. Luckily, practice makes perfect. It’s better to over communicate than to be too vague.

“The best way to make a point is to be crystal clear and confident when delivering a message. Leaders should speak with intention and say exactly what they mean or need.” – Stephanie Chung, Executive coach, trainer & adviser

Invest in People

A leader can’t lead if they don’t have people to follow them. Your team is a direct reflection of your time and energy investments. Investing is more than just treating them well, though. It also means providing time and resources they need to grow. 58% of employees say that giving recognition is how leaders could do more to improve engagement. When you have invested in your employees they will be more happy, engaged and dedicated to you.

“By investing in our employees’ future, we get people not only willing to go the extra mile for us, but access to employees who have the tenacity to figure out how to solve problems. We lose really good talent, but a lot of the contracts we have right now are from companies that have our former employees in them.” – Nate Watson, President, Contemporary Analysis

Be Part of The Team

Being part of the team doesn’t mean just giving them direction. Being a leader means you’re willing to put in as much effort or, at times, even more than the people that rely on you. There’s no “I” in team and everyone needs to contribute to make a team successful. 75% of employees rate teamwork and collaboration as “very important.”

“Great leaders are three things; Someone who gets the absolute best from their team by remembering that it is less important to have the best idea, than getting to the best idea with their team. Creators of white space for creatively and elegantly addressing challenges and opportunities without mandating solutions. Examples of discipline, effort, creativity, intelligence, and innovation to their teams, inspiring them to achieve their very best.” – Steve Murray, SVP Retail, TicketLiquidator

Manage Your Emotions

Emotions are a fact of life. Everyone has them and everyone expresses them in different ways. The key to being an effective leader is to effectively manage your emotions, however, that can be a difficult undertaking. There are many leaders that disregard this crucial skill and their team suffers for it. If an employee is afraid to come to you with an issue thanks to a hot temper, or they are afraid their ideas won’t be validated because you always shoot them down, then you are turning those employees off and losing their trust. Not to mention, you miss out of the opportunity to better unite your workforce with understanding and innovation.

Feedback is a crucial part of developing your employee’s skills. 69% of employees would work harder if they felt their efforts were better appreciated. If you aren’t able to take your emotions out of performance feedback, you are failing both yourself and your people.

“Managing our emotions effectively in the workplace is a major component of success for all of us.” – Harvey Deutschendorf, Emotional Intelligence expert.

Developing your leadership skills takes time, practice and can’t be done overnight. Luckily, we have a solution that makes communicating and giving feedback to your employees easy. Develop your leadership skills today by starting a trial of iRevü.