The first rule of skills is simple: know the skill exists.
That sounds obvious, but most people—especially growing leaders—aren’t intentional about skills. They focus on outcomes. Goals. KPIs. But they don’t stop to ask: What specific skill am I building right now? What skill does this teammate need?
When you’re intentional about skills, you grow faster. You get better at execution. And you help others do the same.
This matters. Because leadership is a set of skills. Not magic. Not charisma. Skills.
And just like in sports, music, or meditation—skills are learnable. You don’t become a great goalie by accident. You drill. You study. You get coached. Leadership is no different.
So, how do you build a skill?
- Know the skill exists. If you don’t know “naming things well” is a skill, how would you ever get good at it?
- Get curious. Curiosity fuels learning. Without it, you’ll stall. With it, you’ll fly.
- Practice. A lot. Think 10,000 reps, not 10. You’ll make mistakes. Good. That means you’re learning.
- Celebrate small victories. This is also a skill—knowing how to recognize progress and reinforce it.
- Study examples. Watch the pros. Emulate. Steal with pride.
- Get coaching. Critique, reinforcement, cheerleading. All of it matters. Don’t go it alone.
- Teach. If you can teach it, you truly understand it. It’s the final boss of skill-building.
- Keep practicing. Forever. Skills are either growing or dying. There’s no neutral.
Here’s an inventory of real leadership skills I’ve come to recognize—especially the non-obvious ones, or the ones so obvious they’re ignored. Many are unpacked further in my blog:
- Driving Change – How to be a Secret Agent (of Change)
- Being Principled (Driving Clarity and Alignment) –
- The Secret to Delivering Outsized Results
- Crafting Tenets
- Debating Tenets
- The Tension is Intentional
- Just Right Porridge and Leadership Principles
- Work Backwards From The Customer
- Focusing on users is not Customer Obsession
- Ownership | tig.log
- Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit | tig.log
- Dive Deep != Micromanaging
- How Meeting/Not-Meeting Goals relates to Earn Trust and Insist on Highest Standards
- Influencing without Authority –
- Being Planful Date-Oriented (vs reactive) –
- Using Mental Models Effectively – Mental Models
- Naming things well – Taxonomy and Lexicon
- Making Decisions That Stick, Fast –
- Execution Excellence –
- Ruthless Prioritization – No Starving Children? The Shocking Truth About Prioritization.
- Don’t Rely on Good Intentions – Mechanisms
- Focus on the Important, not Urgent – Make the Routine, Routine – Blow up Dunbar’s Number
- Send in the Wolfes: Why Hard Problems Need Fixers, Not Just Leaders
- Engineer the Sh*t out of Errors – Everywhere
- Path To Green
- How Meeting/Not-Meeting Goals relates to Earn Trust and Insist on Highest Standards
- Thinking Big – Biases and Fallacies Lead to Smol Thinking
- Writing things down to sharpen thinking
- Giving and Receiving Feedback –
- Celebrating small victories (authentically)
- Saying “I don’t know” and meaning it
- Making people feel seen
- Repetition without sounding like a broken record
- Defusing tension without sugarcoating the truth
- Asking questions that unlock new thinking
- Letting someone else take credit (on purpose)
- Staying calm when it would be easier to freak out
- Calling out excellence in real-time
- Taking the blame without qualifying it
- Making a boring meeting fun and useful
- Knowing when to walk away from a bad idea you were excited about
- Translating between exec-speak and engineer-speak
None of these are magic. They’re just skills. Like skiing powder. Like meditating. Like driving a manual transmission.
Learn them. Teach them. Practice them.
Just start by knowing they exist.
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