Table of Contents

1.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 2

2.0 Components of people skills and leaders responsibilities in leading people ... 2
2.1 Pat Williams Seven Elements of people skill .................................................. 2
2.2 Brian Tracy and Dr. Peter Chees approaches of people skill ....................... 7
3.0 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 10
References ................................................................................................................... 10

1.0 Introduction
It is clear that leadership and followership goes hand in hand, and leadership is
the ability to obtain followership. It is the ability to get others to accept and be
committed to the visions, missions, values and decisions made by the leader (Abdullah,
2016). We can say that, without followership, leadership does not exist. However, it is
believed that followership cannot be obtained as easy as some orders or invitation.
Followership can only be obtained for leaders that are equipped with matured and
developed people skills. According to Pat Williams (2013), people skills are the
learnable skills that enable a leader to understand the people he or she lead, to empathize
with them, and to build harmonious relationships with them. People skills are the social
skills that enable a leader to get along with people, to negotiate with people, to avoid
and resolve conflicts, and to interact with people in a mutually beneficial way. In this
paper, the various components of people skills with be described and analysed. Then,
the tasks that the leaders have to undertake in order to effectively lead and manage the
human resources of the organization with also be presented.

2.0 Components of people skills and leaders responsibilities in leading people

There are many scholars in leadership studies who had introduced many
approaches of obtaining people skills. Although there are different in their application,
their values and principles are about the same, that is to sharpen a leaders people skills.
In this section, I would like to present the different approaches to obtain people skills
suggested and introduced by scholars such as Pat Williams in his book entitled
Leadership Excellence: The seven sides of leadership for the 21st century, and Brian
Tracy and Dr. Peter Chee in their book 12 Disciplines of Leadership Excellence.

2.1 Pat Williams Seven Elements of people skill

Pat William, in his book Leadership Excellence: The seven sides of leadership
for the 21st century, suggested that there are seven elements of people skill, namely
(Williams, 2013):

1. Be Visible and Available

A leader should never isolate or insulate himself or herself from his or her
follower. An army could not be led from an ivory tower. The people need
to see their leaders and talk to their leaders.
Many great leaders such as George Washington and Abraham
Lincoln set the example of being available and visible. George Washington
for example, never left his troops during the eight years of Revolutionary
War. Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, personally visited encampments
and hospitals to encourage the Union soldiers and comfort the wounded
during the Civil War. Leaders behaviour of such can indeed boost the
morale of their followers, in this case, their troops.

2. Be a Good Listener
Leaders should be a good listener because everyone has a need to be heard.
The most uplifting leader of all is a leader who listens. Listening for leader
does not mean just lending his or her ear, but to turn around and provide full
attention to what his or her followers are trying to articulate. Prophet
Muhammad P.B.U.H. will always turn himself directly to the person who
tries to talk to him. Besides that, leaders should always let the person know
that he or she is really listening. This could be done by giving eye contact,
nod empathetically, responding in such a way that the leader shows that he
or she is tracking and really hearing to what his or her follower says. Other
than that, more time allocated for listening also would provide leader extra
information and more detailed information on how the organization is
performing at lower levels.
However, if a leader is reprimanding his or her people for speaking
up or asking question. It would be devastating for him or herself and for the
whole organization. If a person found out that his or her voice is unwelcome,
the communication throughout the organization will be turned off. Just as
Pat William says: Information is the lifeblood of the organization, if that
lifeblood stops circulating, it is as if your organization has suffered a
massive heart attack. Keep the life blood flowing by being a good listener.

3. Empower your people

Empowerment is the act of uplifting and encouraging people to improve and
achieve more. Leaders usually are equipped with powerful megaphone. It
amplifies the reach and effect of the leaders words. Leaders need to be
careful of the word selection when they speak to their children, spouses,
employees, team members, clients and customers, neighbours, and people
in his or her community. Every time a leader speaks, it will leave an imprint
that is hard to be erased. Empowerment are sometimes as easy as
pronouncing some words, such as good job and well done, and giving
credit where credit is due. These are act of empowerment that can list people
to heights of confidence and achievement we can scarcely imagine. Besides
that, empowerment can also be done by teaching and training the followers
with skills and knowledge they never learned or providing suitable and
appropriate tools and equipment for the followers to make their life more
convenient and productive.

4. Delegate
Delegation is not as simple as assigning tasks for others to be accomplished.
Delegation represents the sharing of responsibilities with the followers. By
delegating, leaders will be able to utilize all strengths, talents, imaginations,
and energies of his or her followers. However, delegating to others require
trusts among the leader and follower as well. By entrusting and allocating
tasks and responsibilities to the follower, a leader could manage to
accomplish incredibly more than he or she could by him or herself. That
said, delegating does not mean leaving all the work for the subordinate to
be done and leaders will not be responsible or accountable for it. It does not
mean leaders abandoning their people or abrogate their responsibilities as a
leader. Leaders are still accountable for everything their followers do, and
they still need to maintain communication, set benchmarks, assess
performance, hold people accountable, and accept responsibility for both
and achievements and failures of the team and the tasks. In short, to delegate
is to create an environment where people are free to make mistakes, and free
to succeed, and is to unleash the talent and imagination of the followers. By
delegating, a person will be more of a leader than a boss.
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5. Take care of Your Troops

If leader want to have followers that are loyal to them. They, as a leader,
must first be loyal to those he or she leads. Loyalty is the quality of being
faithful to a person or cause. Loyalty is based on a commitment, a decision,
not feeling. The level of loyalty of a leader does not depends on whether the
leader wants to be loyal to his or her follower, but because it is the leaders
responsibility and commitment to be loyal to his or her followers. Leaders
should always stand up for their people. If their people are criticized in a
meeting or in the media, speak up and defend them. The leaders and their
followers will rise or fall, succeed or fail, together as a team. Let not attacks
and opposition divide the leaders from their followers or vice versa. No
matter what happens, said Pat Williams, follow the advice of General
Powell, Take care of your troops, keep your mouth shut and do your job,
stay focused on this job, do not worry about your next job.
6. Dont avoid conflict, manage it
Great leaders dont fear conflict. They embrace it and resolve it. They learn
the lessons of conflict and extract the benefits of disagreement. Clashing
points of view can sometimes produce change and growth in an organization
due to emerge of ideas and concepts. In fact, throughout history, times of
conflicts are usually times of flourishing ideas and inventions.
Embrace those times when people in a team express strong opinions
and contend for their points of view. Contention means that everyone is
committed to winning. Leaders should let their people voice out their
opinions. Then, finally, leader should have the final say and that everyone
in the team buys and agrees into the leaders decision, whether they agree
or not. However, hidden agendas should be prevented and quashed. Leaders
shall not allow people to destabilize them or others through backbiting and
rumourmongering. Leaders should make sure the conflict is exposed on the
table, and conducted with healthy exchanges of views and ideas. Open
communication will always strengthen an organization, while whispering
campaigns weakens an organization. In short, in times of conflict, leaders
should lower down their voice and emotions and so that the situation can be
controlled.
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7. Level with your people

Level with the people can be understood as be honest with the people.
Integrity and honesty can be considered a prerequisite for every leader. If
leaders do not show their followers with true self, they should not expect the
followers to treat and serve them sincerely and truthfully. Mike Holmgren,
a former NFL coach, once said that: I never lied to a player or a coach, not
even to the press. My philosophy is that honesty has to permeate your entire
existence. You must live your life this way, at the office and away from the
office. This is where you start, because if your loose trust, you cant teach.
You cant communicate. Your people wont listen to you and you will never
be able to get them to do what needs to be done. In short, if you want to
lead people, you have got to level with them. Leaders of excellence are
leaders who speak the truth.
Bonus: Love
Love is considered by Pat Williams as the greatest people skill of all, which
I agree. Love encompasses all the seven people skills above into a simple
but complicated, abstract energy. Love is an energy that every person is born
with, that God has provided us and granted us with. It is the most powerful
people skill that every people is equipped with, and planted with. Pat
Williams said that love is the first and most foundational people skill of all.
He suggested that is a leader truly show agape love to his or her followers,
the love that is rooted in the leaders will, not the feelings, then every other
people skill William has proposed will come naturally.
If leaders love the people, they will be visible and available to them
as a leader. If leaders love the people, theyll be a good listener, and theyll
empower them. If leaders love them, theyll delegate to them and entrust
real responsibility to them. Leaders will be loyal to their people, will take
care of their troops, and manage conflicts, and level with the people. In short,
all these other people skills are simply facets of the greatest people skill of
all, the people skill of agape love.

2.2 Brian Tracy and Dr. Peter Chees approaches of people skill
In this section, I would summarize the important elements of people skill
suggested by Brian Tracy and Dr. Peter Chee in their book entitled 12 Disciplines of
Leadership Excellence: How Leaders Achieve Sustainable High Performance. They
centred the care of people on the element of motivation. They believed that motivation
will help to develop human capital and mobilize the human resources in an organization.
They also suggested that any inefficiency in an organization is due to lack of motivated
people, minimal focus on their work, and lack of urgency and direction to get their work
done. They believed that one of the roles of leader and manager is to maximize the
human capital and human resource of an organization and focus it on achieving the
most valuable and important results possible for the organization. More specific
approaches and methods to achieve such level of people skill are illustrated below
(Tracy & Chee, 2013):
1. Remove the De-motivators
The two major de-motivators in life and work are both factors that begin in
early childhood and carry forward into adult life. They are often referred to
as negative habit patterns or conditioned responses to stimuli.
a. Removing Fear of Failure (Making people feel safe)
Fear of failure is the greatest single obstacle to success and
achievement in ones life. It is very much due to destructive criticism
during a persons childhood that a person is afraid to make mistakes
and fear of challenging the status quo. Removing this fear of failure
will make people feel safe and people tend to perform and produce
at a higher level than ever before.
b. Removing Fear of Rejection (Making people feel important)
Fear of rejection also arises in early childhood when parents practice
conditional love on their children. The result of this would cause
the person becoming hypersensitive to the opinions, comments, and
feedback of others throughout his or her life. Encouraging these
people to try, to like themselves, value themselves, and consider
themselves to be worthwhile beings, they would be in the path of
removing the fear of rejection and the discovery of self-confidence.

2. Personality development
The self-concept is the believe structure or value system of the individual.
It is a composite of all the beliefs, values, attitudes, and opinions of an
individual. It is the command centre that is located at the core of personality
and productivity, and governs individual performance, behaviour, and
output. The self-concept is made up of three components: the self-ideal, the
self-image, and the self-esteem.
a. Support Positive Self-Ideals
Being a summary picture of what the person aspires to be in life,
when self-ideals is influenced positively, individuals begin to
perform at higher levels.
b. Build Positive Self-Image
Self-image is the way a person thinks he or she is viewed by others.
Providing positive feedbacks on performance will improves a
persons self-image, and increases his or her ability and desire to
perform better.
c. Build Self-Esteem in Your People
Self-esteem is defined as how much you like about yourself. By
removing the fear of failure and fear of rejection, a high-self-esteem
environment can be created and the organization can receive higher
performance, lower absenteeism, lower employee turnover, higher
productivity, and fewer mistakes from the employees.

3. Focus on Key Factor

The key factor in motivation and in peak performance is the nexus of contact
between the leader and the follower. It is the key determinant of the
performance, productivity, output, and profitability of the organization. The
positivity of this point of contact will determine the performance,
productivity, and output of the individual. The more positive the point is,
the more positive the outcome will be. The top leaders today are those who
are capable of eliciting extraordinary performance and results from ordinary
people.

4. Practice Participative Management

Participative management is a powerful tool to build involvement,
commitment, loyalty, and ownership of the task. Higher quality of work can
be achieved by allowing people to involve in determining the work they do,
setting the standards of their work, and how they are going to accomplish it.

5. The 4-factors and 3-Rs of Motivation

a. 4-factors
i. Leadership style: Determines how motivated people are to
perform as parts of the team.
ii. Reward structure of the organization: How people are
acknowledged if they perform well?
iii. Organizational climate: The organizational atmosphere and
environment will determine the motivation level of a person.
iv. Structure of the work: Some works are naturally motivational
and appealing while some are dull and boring.
b. 3-Rs
i.Rewards: Rewards must be based solely on performance.
The better and more you do, the better reward can be
received.
ii.Recognition: Recognise and celebrate achievements, large
and small breakthroughs.
iii.Reinforcement: Take place when is it comments, praise, and
encouragement is done continuously.

6. Create a Positive Work Environment

Based on a huge number of survey and statistics, the six elements of a
positive work environment are:
i.

Challenge

ii.

Freedom

iii.

Control

iv.

Respect

v.

Success experiences

vi.

Positive expectations
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7. Effective Listening
Leaders are listeners. Leaders listen twice as much as they talk. It is because
listening has been called white magic due to its almost magical effect on
building up people and making them feel terrific about themselves. When a
leader listens to another person, he or she pay value to that other person
and make them feel important and worthwhile. The four keys of effective
listening, as suggested by Brian Tracy and Dr. Peter Chee, are:
1. Listen Attentively
2. Pause before replying
3. Question for clarification
4. Paraphrase the speakers words and give feedbacks

3.0 Conclusion
As a conclusion, it is known that people skill is one of the most important skill
that a leader should learn and acquire. It is because of the importance of people in an
organization and to every leader. Without people, nothing can work. And without
people skill, people cant be attracted. Therefore, people skill can be said as the key to
a harmonious and healthy performance organization. In order to acquire people skills
and attract followers, scholars such as Pat Williams suggested that leaders should
maximize and optimize and make full use of agape love, while intellectuals such as
Brian Tracy and Dr. Peter Chee said that focusing on emotional aspects of individual
and motivating them can help to develop people skills.

References
Abdullah, A. (2016). Note 3: Leadership and Followership-Building Loyalty,
Commitment and a Sense of Membership.
Tracy, B., & Chee, P. (2013). 12 Disciplines of Leadership Excellence: How Leaders
Achieve Sustainable High Performance. McGraw-Hill Education.
Williams, P. (2013). Leadership Excellence. Shiloh Run Press.

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