The core leadership competencies

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,0, University of Applied Sciences Berlin, course: Soft Skills & Leadership Qualities, language: English, abstract: Leadership and leadership competencies have been of great interest throughout history. Until today many theories have been developed to identify effective leaders and thus enhance business success.
In the 20th century, the efforts for a socio-scientific and empirically proven research on leadership strongly intensified, resulting in trait theory of leadership in the 1920s. Trait theory subsumes all approaches of leadership research, which ascribe the decisive meaning to the leader's personality. It revealed that leaders scored higher in the areas of intelligence, success in school, reliability, in acceptance of responsibility, activity and social integration, drive, self-confidence, socio-economic status in comparison to non-leaders. Despite of lacking empirical evidence for the validity of trait theory, it is nowadays still widely valued in the practice of corporate management, especially by those who hold leading positions and it should be considered along with other situational or behavioral variables.
Leadership competencies show in the areas of disposition, of management and of human resources. In the area of disposition, the leader has to be able to make well-evaluated decisions. Moreover, a good leader must be able to communicate and if necessary build up co-operations.

In the area of management, the leader needs four core competencies: first, the leader must be able to define measurable und reachable targets. Secondly, the leader has to be able to define a plan and prepare the implementation. Thirdly, the leader has to apply organizational measures for creating a framework for the implementation of planning results and structure the implementation process through formalized approaches. Fourthly, the leader must be able to control the results and the current achievement of the goals, without permanently observing the employees.

In the area of human resources, leaders have to be able to coordinate. Secondly, they should be able to delegate tasks, competencies and responsibility. Thirdly, leaders should understand how to motivate their associates. Fourthly, leaders should hold the competence to develop and support employees. Fifthly, leaders need to manage conflicts, since they are inevitable accompaniments of social interaction.