Here are five essential skills that can make a business leader stand out

Ironically, most youngsters stop reading as soon as they graduate, partly because our education system is oriented more towards the passing of exams than absorption of knowledge. However, reading is possibly the most powerful force multiplier for a budding leader. The ability to consume knowledge at a high rate accelerates mental and professional maturity, and that ever-increasing knowledge base enables better opportunity spotting, inter-disciplinary dot connections and superior decision-shaping. While ‘reading’ online news, editorials and long-format articles is good, that’s incomparable to reading books that cover the subject with far more depth and nuance than an opinion piece, which by definition can only be the opinion of an individual and not the complete picture. One of the best investments young leaders can make is to master speed-reading as a skill, and more importantly implement the discipline of reading every single day. Reading also forms the bedrock of the second essential skill, which is the ability to write well.

As American historian David McCullough pointed out, “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly and that is why it is so hard." Stringing some sentences together is not writing well. To write a summary of a complex situation and present solutions in a simple, compelling and effective manner is a powerful and rare skill. It requires the ability to think before expressing oneself, which is why many competitive examinations test vocabulary and firms like Amazon require leaders to write a note specifying the objective, context and decision points as an essential precursor to any meeting. Also, at junior levels, one of the most powerful ways for a leader to increase her value to the organization is being able to take copious notes during meetings, arrange them into action points and present them to the meeting champion. It virtually guarantees an invitation to every meeting thereafter.

The third skill is an adjunct to the above two and that is learning new languages. And not just for the obvious reason of being able to communicate in a different one. Mastering a new language (even if it is just at spoken levels) creates new neural connections, enhancing the ability to view the same situation from different perspectives. Speaking the language of team members or subordinates also strengthens bonds. This is precisely why officers in the armed forces and the bureaucracy are mandatorily required to learn languages of the teams they lead. Fortunately, unlike the civil services, whose officers have to learn the language of their parent cadres (both spoken and written), most young corporate leaders need to put in a few hours of dedicated practice to attain just conversational fluency. There can be no better example of empathetic leadership than a leader who demonstrates the willingness to learn the language of the people she leads. I can vouch for this from personal experience. Troops do not care about the accuracy of their leader’s language; instead, they cherish her sincere attempt to speak theirs.

The fourth skill is speed mathematics. Business is a numbers game and those who can calculate scores rapidly will always top those who can’t. One of my mentors narrated an incident about a CFO who possessed this uncanny ability to calculate complex numbers in his head. During a negotiation with labour unions, the CFO just glanced at the demands of the union and seemingly arbitrarily agreed with the majority of them, rejecting just two. On the face of it, it seemed a victory for the union, but what the CFO had been able to do was calculate the long-term financial implications of each demand and concede many which had low impact, while rejecting the ones that were high. He came across as a large-hearted and decisive negotiator.

The last skill is an ability to remember the names and personal details of colleagues, subordinates and other stakeholders. Most political and religious leaders have honed the ability to make every person feel special precisely because they remember their name. Now many of us might complain that we don’t have a good memory for names. Well, one of the most powerful business leaders of India taught me how he worked on this every day. He would memorize the names of 50 people every day and revise 10 from the previous day. He not only knew the importance of remembering names, but also knew that not having a gifted memory was no excuse for not attaining this crucial skill.

Of course, these skills are not just stepping stones for budding leaders; they are perpetual assets that enrich a leader’s journey at every stage. In a dynamic corporate landscape, these competencies can act as differentiators between a leader who merely functions and one who inspires and transforms.