As we continue to look at what will help make you a leader that others will want to follow, we look at the leadership attribute of competency.
When we consider this attribute, we can look at it from a number of various aspects. For the purpose of this article, let us look at the aspects of physical, knowledge, skill, and experience for the leader.

Physical – If you are a leader, you know that leadership is not for the faint-hearted. A leader needs to have the mental and physical stamina to develop knowledge, skills and experience needed to become effective. They need to be able to endure long days and deal with the many issues that will arise. As a result, it is important that the leader maintains good physical health through diet and exercise.

Knowledge – Leaders need to have specific knowledge for the area that they are providing leadership. There are many ways that a leader can grow in their knowledge. For example, in my career at a Fortune 50 organization, every few years I would move to a new team that would require me to gain knowledge of the subject area. To learn more about the new area, I would join the professional organization aligned with the subject area I was providing leadership for (learning, project management, service management), as well as take classes to increase my knowledge competence. If you try to lead a team and make decisions without the necessary knowledge of what your team members do on an everyday basis, they will not respect you, follow you and you will ultimately fail.

Skill – We could say that skill is an application of the knowledge we have gained. For example, one aspect of leadership is developing people. We can read books, take classes and work with our mentors on how to develop people. And the more you actually work with your team members and mentees, providing feedback and coaching them, the better you will become at this particular skill.

Experience – We gain experience when we use and develop our knowledge and skills repeatedly over time. As a leader, as you master the various leadership attributes, and demonstrate that that you can effectively lead in a variety of situations (work, professional organizations, church, etc.), you gain valuable experience that will make you a more effective leader.

We have briefly looked at four applications of competency – physical, knowledge, skills and experience – that will help you be a leader that others will want to follow. What would you add to this list?

This is an Adapted Excerpt From My Book “A LEADER WORTH FOLLOWING: 40 Key Leadership Attributes and Applications to Master”.