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Top 10 Personal Development Skills for Leaders & Professionals

Einstein stressed that lifelong learning should be a focus because personal growth stops where there’s no learning.

Continuous personal development is a necessity for top professionals, but failure rates are alarmingly high, Harvard Business Review states.[i] When a survey was conducted of over 1,000 people who worked on personal development, as many as 96% of them failed to achieve any results.[ii] Research concludes that the reason for it is that personal development should be a group activity, not something to be learnt in isolation.[i]

August Turak, author of Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks: One CEO’s Quest for Meaning and Authenticity, points out that life-work balance, punctuality, and the integration of personal development in life are key factors for successful personal development.[iii]

Here are top 10 personal development skills that leaders and professionals can integrate in their life and work:

Work-Life Balance 1 Maintain a healthy balance between work and life
Time Management 2 Prioritise, delegate and use resources to manage time better
Active Listening 3 Listen to understand and respond appropriately
Self-Confidence 4 Manage your emotions and fears, and deal with others’ negative behaviours positively
Communication Skills 5 Use the right tone and voice for communicating clearly and confidently
Emotional Intelligence 6 Stay aware of your and others’ emotions to build healthy work relationships
Leadership 7 Have the vision, communication ability, and management skills to influence and direct others
Problem-Solving Ability 8 Recognise problems, consider options, and make the best possible decision
Organising 9 Use ways to organise tasks, time and materials
Body Language 10 Use correct body language to communicate suitably

 Sources

[i] https://hbr.org/2017/02/why-self-improvement-should-be-a-group-activity

[ii]https://medium.com/@skooloflife/why-96-percent-of-personal-development-efforts-fail-63a0990b7c1d#.4nn9cytyp

[iii]https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustturak/2014/01/10/what-every-leader-must-know-about-personal-development/#7049bdeb4ee2