The more we learn about leadership and employee engagement, the clearer it becomes that having technical know-how and knowledge of your field isn't enough to keep staff happy and a business ahead of the competition.
Successful leadership requires a dominion of both hard and soft skills, and leaders who master soft skills have a positive impact on employee performance and satisfaction.
In this article, we'll look at how you can develop soft skills as a leader, but you can also use these tips to support the leaders in your organization to develop their soft skills.
But first, here's why leadership soft skills are so important in the hospitality industry.
The Importance of Soft Skills for Hospitality Leaders
Learning new skills is important for leaders at all levels, from senior leaders to team leaders, regardless of their leadership style, and that's no different for soft skills.
As you move up (or diagonally) from leadership position to leadership position, the organizational politics you need to participate in will change, and you'll need to navigate increasingly complex situations with larger numbers of stakeholders.
Even when you're managing a small team, guiding people from diverse backgrounds and with different personalities can be a complicated matter that requires significant interpersonal skills.
How good you are at active listening, negotiating, and other soft skills affects how you'll be able to build relationships with and influence others at all levels of your organization.
Soft skills also enable leaders to get people behind a common goal. Motivational skills and mentoring skills bring out the best in people, while strong problem-solving and decision-making skills inspire confidence
9 Leadership Soft Skills to Master
Soft skills include, but are so much more than only interpersonal skills. They also have to do with how leaders approach problems, divide work, move projects forward, and more.
Effective leadership today means mastering the following soft skills.
Self-Awareness
To effectively manage and inspire others, you need to understand what drives you and how to manage your own emotions. Self-aware leaders look inward to uncover their biases, question their assumptions, and investigate their motives.
They are in tune with their bodies so that when something elicits a strong reaction (anger at an employee, frustration around slow progress, …), they catch it before they react in a counterproductive or even harmful way.
The pause is the most powerful tool of the self-aware leader. It allows them to take care of their own emotions before taking action. By self-regulating, they can approach issues and people with calm and clearheadedness.
This doesn't just prevent things from escalating; it also allows them to be a role model for their team members.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence comprises but isn't limited to empathy, compassion, and recognizing the individual needs of every employee. Emotionally intelligent leaders are more effective leaders because they understand that different team members may need different motivational skills, encouragement, freedom, and more.
As empathetic leaders, emotionally intelligent leaders make others feel seen. They pick up on non-verbal cues and catch when someone is frustrated, unhappy, or at risk of burning out, even when the person in question doesn't come to talk to them.
But that's not all. By showing empathy (for example, by inviting the person for a conversation and then actively listening to them), their team members know that the empathetic leader is on their side.
Cultural Intelligence
Cultural intelligence has become increasingly important as organizations are more diverse than ever. Leaders need to be aware of any cultural differences within their team and among stakeholders so they can choose to adapt their approach accordingly (or not).
When a leader's approach isn't aligned with the cultural background of their team members, they risk misunderstanding, frustration, and disengagement on both sides.
Communication Skills
Communication is a key soft skill regardless of your position. It hinges on the soft skills of self-awareness and emotional intelligence and comprises a wide range of essential soft skills in itself:
- negotiation
- influencing
- active listening
- conflict resolution
- motivational skills
- providing feedback
- being able to receive feedback
Great leaders master these soft skills in one-on-one situations as well as when addressing teams, departments, or other (large) groups of people. They communicate effectively and with empathy when interacting with others in person, via email, on the phone, and during video calls.
Negotiation
Effective leaders know how to push their own agenda while remaining fair and considerate. They address the other party's concerns and questions respectfully and defend their stance with reasonable arguments.
Thanks to their self-awareness, these leaders manage to observe and control their own emotions during the negotiation process while also taking into account how others will be affected by the outcome.
Influencing
A successful leader uses their communication soft skills to encourage, motivate, dissuade, and direct as they feel is needed. Influencing isn't the same as manipulating, though. Great leaders take into account the well-being of the people they're trying to influence and may even use transparency and vulnerability to win others over or guide them in a certain direction.
They also have a clear picture of the different stakeholders they need to influence and know which information to gather about them and their interests to make their case in the most convincing way.
Active listening
Active listening skills refer to a leader's ability to stay fully present with what the other person is communicating, both verbally and through body language. This key soft skill requires an openness towards other people's perspectives and is focused on understanding, rather than trying to get your own point across.
This also applies when someone offers you feedback, regardless of whether it's someone higher up the chain or someone you manage.
Active listening is also crucial for information gathering. It decreases the chances of misunderstanding someone and causing frustration down the line.
Conflict resolution
Good leaders use their communication skills to help resolve conflicts between team members, departments, and other stakeholders. They can take on the role of mediator when needed, listen to the parties involved, and facilitate the conversation or offer possible solutions.
Conflict resolution in this sense can take a more formal form - a meeting, a conversation in the leader's office, a facilitated workshop - but it can also just mean that a leader takes some people aside in the hallways or casually invites them for a chat.
Different conflicts will need different approaches.
Motivational skills
Good motivational skills come from a combination of emotional intelligence and good communication skills. After all, it's hard to motivate someone if you don't understand what motivates them or why they may have lost their drive.
Speaking in an inspiring way and appealing to the things that incentivize them has a positive impact on employee morale and, as a consequence, performance.
Providing feedback
Providing feedback is a delicate art. Some people prefer their managers to cut the fluff, or get confused when feedback is presented in a convoluted manner. Others need a gentler approach.
Knowing how to present feedback in a way that it is understood, accepted, and acted on is a crucial communication skill for any effective leader.
Adaptability
Soft skills aren't just people skills, and adaptability is a good example of that. Effective leadership is leadership that changes course when needed, from changing inefficient business processes to responding to shifts in the industry.
Being adaptable also implies being able to admit mistakes. Good leaders aren't stuck in their ways, but admit when an idea didn't work as well as they'd hoped. By doing this, they show team members that it's okay to try and error as long as they take responsibility and look for a solution.
Analytical Thinking
While not all leaders have strategic planning as part of their responsibilities, they should practice their critical thinking skills. These allow them to design and adapt effective operational systems, get to the bottom of issues, and make informed decisions.
Problem-Solving
Great leaders know how to think outside the box and stay up-to-date with the latest technologies without disregarding best practices and things that were effective in the past.
They know how to look at a problem from all angles and have a diverse toolkit they can use to help them find creative solutions.
Effective problem-solving also includes forward thinking. Rather than putting Band-Aids on a wound, great leaders solve problems in a way that stops them from recurring and prevents related problems down the line.
Effective Decision-Making
Effective decision-making balances the need for forward movement (speed) with smart information gathering and analytical skills. Leaders who are good at decision-making take into account all stakeholders and resources, as well as the outcomes of their decision on them.
Delegation Skills
Delegation seems like such an obvious leadership soft skill, but it's one many leaders struggle with in one way or another. Successful delegation doesn't just mean handing over tasks. It requires you to know the strengths and weaknesses of each team member so you can distribute tasks accordingly.
When people get to work with their strengths, they'll be happier, and results will improve.
And when done right, delegation can be a way to inspire teamwork and empower staff to take ownership of their tasks.
How to Develop Leadership Soft Skills
Regardless of whether you want to develop leadership soft skills within yourself or help someone else become a successful leader, here are a few things you can do.
Self-Assess
Take a moment to reflect on your vision, goals, and gaps to jumpstart your soft skills development plan with focus and clarity. Start with these questions:
- What are common points of friction between me and the people I manage? What about other stakeholders I deal with?
- What are situations in which I feel uncomfortable and/or unsure of how to proceed?
- Out of the list of leadership soft skills mentioned in this article, which one do I feel I need to work on most? Which ones am I most excited about? Which ones do I think will make the biggest difference for my own performance and that of those around me?
- What are my future career goals, and which essential soft skills are the most important to develop to achieve those?
If you're training or mentoring leaders, you can guide them through these questions.
Identify Possible Mentors
Make a list of people you admire for the way they handle things. That can include other leaders at your company, but also vendors you work with, people in your industry, and even people in your personal life.
Identify what you admire in their approach and schedule a conversation with them, or make a plan to study how they do things and how you can implement what you learn in your own approach.
Seek Feedback
Asking for feedback is a great and direct way to learn what you could improve on, but be aware that the more senior your leadership role, the harder it will be to get honest feedback.
If you're training leaders, you can offer feedback on their leadership skills both ad hoc, as you notice things, and at regular intervals.
Training
Consider joining workshops, leadership programs, or other forms of training focused on the strengthening of soft skills. Working with a coach can be great because of the one-on-one custom approach.
When it comes to self-awareness, working with a therapist or somatic practitioner can help you gain a lot of insight into why you lead the way you do and how you can change the things you'd like to change to help you perform better and with more comfort.
Track Progress
Schedule a regular check-in moment with yourself and be honest about the progress you're making. Are you dedicating time to developing your leadership soft skills? Is there a skill you're avoiding practicing? Are you stuck somewhere, and if so, would it benefit you to seek help?
Great leaders don't pretend to have it all figured out. They're willing to learn and grow, as leaders and as people.
Developing Leadership Soft Skills Isn't Optional
If you occupy a leadership role and don't develop soft skills, you're shooting yourself in the foot. While technical know-how may be enough to get a task done, leadership soft skills are essential to successfully manage people, face industry shifts, solve problems, and deal with organizational politics.
They may be harder to measure, but when mastered, they're a true driver of employee satisfaction and overall performance.
