All aboard the Leadership Express!
Station Eleven: Talent Inventory
Welcome Aboard: The Rise As A Leader Journey!
Every great leader embarks on a journey, and today, we continue ours. Each stop along the way reveals new insights, challenges, and discoveries about yourself as a leader.
Our final destination? Your personalized Leadership Development Plan, a roadmap to becoming the leader you aspire to be.
Today, we arrived at: Talent Inventory – What skills do you already have?
Growth starts from strength. Today, you’ll take stock of the leadership skills you’ve already developed.
Reflect. Write. Grow. Your carry-on strengths that will continue to support your journey forward.
Let’s dive in!
What Leadership Skills Do You Already Have?
Reflective Questions
Here are some questions to help you reflect deeper.
Highlight your talents, you’ve already built a foundation!
Think back to a moment you were at your best as a leader.
Maybe you:
- Held a difficult conversation with calm
- Organized a chaotic task with clarity
- Inspired your team with purpose
Ask yourself: What skills do I hold that helped me do that?
That’s your existing toolkit in action.
You’ve been on the leadership train long enough to have packed some things already.
This is your carry-on: your go-to strengths, the skills that never leave your side. Don’t underestimate them. Even simple ones like disconnecting from work, empathy when checking in with your team, or asking powerful questions because you are a curious leader; are all part of your power.
These are the skills that you've already developed. They may feel second nature, but that’s their power, you’ve practiced them into your identity.
This is your leadership foundation. Recognizing it helps build confidence and shows what’s already working.
Research, this is the ongoing process of exploring, observing, and gathering information from diverse sources to deepen your understanding and expand your knowledge.
For leaders, research includes reading, asking powerful questions, seeking feedback, learning from others, and staying curious about emerging ideas and best practices.
A skill is a specific ability that a person defines, learns, and practices until it becomes second nature. It is both measurable and improvable through repetition and feedback.
Example:
Intentional listening is the skill of fully focusing on the speaker, not just on their words, but also their tone, body language, and emotional undercurrent.
For the purpose of this question, we are only defining skills. please see the remaining questions as they will help you differentiate between skills and (tools, habits and or competencies).
Return to your list from the last stop. Now highlight the ones you:
- Already practice regularly
- Have learned through experience
- Get feedback on by others because they can recognize it in you
This list reminds you that you’re not starting from scratch, you’re building from strength.
A competency is a broader capability made up of multiple, interrelated skills. It is an area that is made up of multiple related skills, behaviors, and knowledge areas.
In the context of this leadership journey, we are not just identifying general competencies, we are breaking them down to discover the precise skills they contain. This helps make development more focused, trackable, and practical.
Think of a competency as the category, and skills as the ingredients that bring it to life.
An example:
Communication is a competency, but it is not a single skill. It includes a cluster of skills, such as:
- Active listening
- Nonverbal communication (eye contact, posture, gestures)
- Empathy and emotional awareness
- Clear and concise writing
- Storytelling and public speaking
- Adapting your message to different audiences
Next stop: [Growth Central] – You’ve mapped what you carry. Now let’s find what else you want.
Your leadership vision is in motion, let’s keep riding toward bringing it to life!