Which of the following skills is your team most in need of improving? - SmartBrief

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Which of the following skills is your team most in need of improving?

The mmost recent SmartBrief on Leadership poll question: Which of the following skills is your team most in need of improving?

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Leadership

Which of the following skills is your team most in need of improving?

SmartBrief

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from 250,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our newsletter.

Which of the following skills is your team most in need of improving?

  • Communications: 34.7%
  • Decision-making: 9.0%
  • Problem-solving: 9.7%
  • People leadership: 13.0%
  • Strategic thinking: 19.3%
  • Time management: 14.3%

It’s all about the communication. A significant portion of you listed communication as the most critical skill gap on your team. That makes sense. Many other skills like leadership, decision-making and problem-solving require strong communication skills at their foundation. Even skills like time management have roots in communication — how can you delegate or push back on requests if you can’t communicate clearly? Given this demand for communication skills, the question is: What are you doing about building your team’s capabilities in this arena? The ability to get recommendations approved and convey thoughts in a clear and compelling way is something that can be learned. Are you investing in building your team’s skills? Given the current environment, it seems there’s no better time than the present to start working on it. 

 

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS. Before launching his own company, he worked at McKinsey & Co., Capital One and Scotts Miracle-Gro. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He’s the author of three leadership books: “One Piece of Paper,” “Lead Inside the Box” and “The Elegant Pitch.”