The Four Components of All Leadership Skills (with examples)

There are four components of leadership skills, that are the key to effective leadership in any scenario.

I’ll give you examples of how to apply each of them in this guide.  

When you integrate these four components into your leader development training, you can be sure you are building the best leadership traits possible.

It’s important to note that all management training, executive training, training in leadership styles, and emotional intelligence in leadership involve these four elements in some form.  

The best leadership development plans should train on these four skills components. If your training plan does not, be wary. These skills are a must-have.  

You can find out more about the best practices of leadership training here:

The 3 phases of leadership training and development

Why leadership skills are the core foundation of great leadership development

Leadership and its development is an abstract concept that has been described in many ways. Even dictionaries differ on what it is.

For the purpose of leadership skills development, a simple, practical definition of leadership might be:

"Leadership is influencing your audience using various types of persuasion skills."

Larry’s leadership tips

The beauty of the four components, is how they allow you to make leadership development into a practical process. Regardless of of what definition you use.

This strengthens your ability to directly apply leadership skills in your hands-on, day to day leadership. 

The best way to do this is to break down skills development into their most basic building blocks. Like football coaches Bill Belichick and Vince Lombardi would do.

These coaches won numerous super bowls because they prioritized developing the athletic skills, strategic thinking skills and leadership skills of their players.

Players knew well what their roles on the field were, and played to win.

The four components of leadership skills work the same way. You develop skills in advance, so they can be deployed within your leadership role instinctually.  No matter what play action scenario arises.

"What makes a great leader?" Introducing the four components of all leadership skills - with examples

If you research all great leaders, you will note the emergence of a pattern. They all use these 4 skills as their key tools.

Anyone who thinks ‘a good leader is born not made,’ has not studied these key elements of leadership in my leadership courses. 

Here they are: the four 4 elements of all leadership skills are: 

  1. Position Power  
  2. Influence Power
  3. Vision Power
  4. Advisor Power

Leaders properly trained in these 4 elements become like a Kung-Fu Sensei: Skilled, disciplined, and confident to handle almost any leadership scenario that comes their way, instinctively.

No matter what leadership situation you are in, you can deploy one – or all – of the 4 leadership components to effectively lead your audiences.

Lets examine the definitions and examples of each of these 4 components. 

Larry LaFata, founder of WorkerMotivation.com

About the Author and Course Creator

Larry LaFata is a talent development specialist and the founder of The Modern Leadership Center at modernleadershipcenter.com. 

He has a unique ability to synthesize research and innovation into organized, usable concepts. This provides clients with streamlined leadership skills training and employee development solutions they can implement quickly.

After 30 years experience working with Fortune 500 companies, Larry turned to his passion: leadership development and talent development. The core of his course creation approach is customized self-assessment and skills development templates. No psychometric tests or psychology assessments are ever used.

Larry has authored: Employee Development Plans, Career Change Plans, Leadership Development Programs and Employee Rewards Programs.  

Larry’s mission at The Modern Leadership Center is to better humanity through innovative talent development strategies. His continuing efforts in  talent development keeps him in the forefront of thought leadership in the industry.

1. Position Power Coercion

The first and most basic form of leadership is “position power coercion.”

Leadership power is derived through coercive control by nature of your position, title or reputation.

This would include concepts such as authority, control, governance, management, head, chief, boss, director, top dog etc.

Because it is an easy power to abuse, many leaders use Position Power poorly. This can ruin relationships and sabotage your leadership effectiveness.

An example of position power is a manager authoritatively running a meeting.  

2. Vision

The Vision component of leadership can be described as leading followers on a mission of future purpose.

Other descriptions include trailblazer, having prescience, ground breaker, frontrunner, futurist.

Leadership vision skills are the most underused of all leadership power. Smart executives use them to excellent effect.

One of the most amazing leadership skills examples is Elon Musk. He read comic books and science fiction as a child. The vision for his SpaceX rockets were modeled on those he saw in Flash Gordon comic books! 

3. Influence

Influence is leadership through persuasion, motivation and charisma.

This includes empathy, pressure, encouraging, motivating, inspiring, manipulating, persuading, discouraging, desire to belong and to impel.

Good leadership skills examples for influence can be found with social media influencers. 

Online influencers are leaders in the sense that they develop a niche following based on their shared interests and human interests with followers.

This can include sports, entertainment, beauty, physical skills, musical talent, cooking skills, photography, politics, crafts etc.

4. Mentoring

Mentoring skills are the hands-on skills of guidance, advising and training.

Mentoring skill implies caring guidance.

Mentors are typically those with hands-on experience who are showing you the ropes so you can grow into leadership.

An example of a mentor would be a senior executive helping a manager to  navigate office politics so they can gain the gravity to move up in the organization. 

Mentoring is one of the most misused of the 4 leadership skills, especially since it has a low ROI.

Leadership skills development - does leadership style matter?

The best way to train in the four leadership skills is to apply them to your audiences. 

A note of caution: Your leadership development objectives should be leadership skills, not leadership styles. 

There are many leadership styles in vogue right now that may lure you like shiny objects.

Leadership styles biggest weakness is their lack of proficiency in one or all of the 4 components of leadership skills.

For example:

  • Autocratic leadership style like Martha Stewart may fail to include vision and advising
  • Servant Leaders who don’t use position power well can lead themselves to burnout
  • Democratic leadership style, which focuses on input from all parties, can quickly flatline without vision and position power
  • Transactional leadership style is focused on position power coercion, and can create harsh working environments
  • Laissez-Faire leadership style can fail due to non-use of position power, so it does not provide enough structure
  • Charismatic leadership is strong on influence and vision, but can lead to burn out

As you can see, leadership styles are not the best way to establish what leadership development objective to focus on.

As I show in my Leadership Skills Development Program, the key is to first take the time to establish who your audiences are. Then you can then carefully apply the 4 components of leadership skill to each audience.

Areas of development for leaders:
some leadership skills examples

There are dozens of potential areas of development for leaders.

Some leadership skills examples I include in my leadership development program include:

  • Take charge skills
  • Communication skills to better influence your audience
  • Leading your audience with a vision
  • Mentoring skills
  • Taking the initiative to set a good example
  • Influence skills
  • Teamwork skills
  • Judgement skills
  • Planning and organization skills
A leadership skills development template example from my Leadership Development Program follows.

 Leadership skills examples for skill: Taking charge
Leadership development plan template (c) 2020-2025 Larry LaFata

Ultimately, a leadership development plan starts as an employee development plan

Now that you have a broad picture of how to use the 4 components of leadership skills, you can begin to focus on deciding what shape your leadership development plans should take.

It’s important to treat executive leadership development and management training as an extension of the employee development plan.

This means you develop skills based on where the leader’s skill set and leadership role are. 

This Venn diagram of the leadership training and development continuum explains what training is needed as leadership responsibility grows.  

    • Employee development – requires functional skills
    • Management training – should include functional and executive skills
    • Executive leadership training – requires intangible skills such as emotional intelligence and vision
leadership training and development venn for leadership skills examples

Summary of the 4 components of all leadership skills with examples

There are four components that underlie all leadership skills.

Master these, as they are the core foundation of projecting leadership.

  1. Position Power
  2. Influence
  3. Mentoring
  4. Vision

These 4 skills make all the difference in your leadership power and influence.

By learning them and applying them to your constituent audiences, you become like a Kung Fu sensei: you carry a confident mindset with the skills to handle any leadership scenario.

If you are interested in mastering leadership skills, my Leadership Skills Development Program shows you how. Find out more below.

What makes a great leader?
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