What is leadership, anyway?

Such a simple question, and yet it continues to vex popular advisors and laypeople alike. Now, I've written several books on leadership for employee engagement, and yet it occurred to me that I'd never really stopped to define leadership. Let's start with what leadership is not.

Leadership has nothing to do with seniority or position in the company hierarchy. Too much talk about corporate leadership refers to the top executives in an organization. It's them, the senior managers. Leadership doesn't happen automatically when you reach a certain grade. Hopefully you can find it there, but no guarantee.

Learn how to be a good leader to improve your team's engagement and success

Learning to be a good leader can make a huge difference to the success of your team, your organization, and yourself.

To be an effective leader, you need to understand your own motivations, strengths and weaknesses.

Great leaders connect with their team by facilitating open communication, encouraging employee growth and development, and giving and receiving feedback.

Anyone can sit in a corner office and delegate tasks, but there is much more to effective leadership. Effective leaders have a great impact not only on the team members they lead, but also on their company as a whole. Employees who work under great leaders tend to be happier, more productive, and more connected to their organization—and that has a ripple effect on your company's bottom line.

"I think a great leader is someone who makes the people around them better," Dana Brownlee, founder of Professionalism Matters, told Business News Daily. "There are many litmus tests for a great leader, but I really look at their surroundings: Are they growing, becoming better leaders themselves, are they motivated, etc.?"

If you look around and see that your team members have become disengaged or stagnant in their work, it may be time to rethink and reform your strategies. According to Brownlee, the following behaviors are signs that you may have a poor leadership strategy:

• No one on your team has criticized any of your ideas in the past month.

• You spend more time planning your own career progression than your team members.

• You have not had at least three completely unrelated conversations with a team member per week.

• Different team members would give different answers if asked about your top three priorities for the year.

• Team members fear failure.

A recent study by the Center for Creative Leadership found that anywhere from 38% to more than half of new leaders fail within the first 18 months. Leaders can avoid becoming part of this staggering statistic by incorporating good leadership strategies that motivate their team members to achieve their goals.

21 Examples of the most in-demand leadership skills.

Many different leadership skills are required in the workplace, but some of the most in-demand include:

• Active listening

• Empathy

• Ability to share clear messages and make complex ideas easy for everyone to understand

• Strategic thinking

• Creativity

• Ability to inspire and persuade others

• Flexibility

• Ability to turn information into action

• Project planning

• Active listening

• Business storytelling

• Organization of time

• Ability to build trust

• Strong communication skills

• Positivity

• Reliability

• Management skills

• Strong leadership vision

• Recruitment skills

• Persuasive skills

• Strong charisma