How can you develop leadership skills?
07/28/25 4:36pm
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This post was sourced from submitted reader questions and posted by wikiHow Editorial Staff.
To develop leadership skills, start by leading yourself. Define your values and learn how to have your own back in your decisions and show up consistently even when it’s hard. To me, the two biggest drivers of success that I see are learning how to feel
and learning how to fail
.
Everything we want most is on the other side of a feeling we don’t want to feel. If you don’t learn how to feel the discomfort that comes from speaking your mind, taking risks, even disappointing people sometimes, you’re going to end up people-pleasing and hiding and just living a smaller life. If you consider that the worst thing that can happen is a feeling, and you know how to process and move through it and not immediately react, you’ll be unstoppable. I believe the truth is that there’s no emotion that you can’t handle.
Leaders also usually have a high failure tolerance. You build up your tolerance for failing by changing what you make failure mean. It does not mean that you are inherently flawed or that you’re a failure. It just means you failed at something. How human of you, right? Failure is not a bad thing. We’ve just been conditioned to believe it is. We’ve learned that you succeed by getting the A+. But we actually succeed by failing. Success is built on a big pile of failures. It’s how we learn and grow, and those lessons stick.
I would really love it if we took pride in our failures as much as our successes. Failure is just feedback. It means you’re brave for trying, that you’re figuring it out. You’re on the right track, not the wrong track. I have this quote here that I love from Thomas Edison, and he says, “I have not failed, I just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” So just keep going.
There’s also a story I really like about the household cleaner Formula 409. It’s called that because it took 408 attempts to make it. So you could look at that as 408 failures or 408 attempts to create a multi-million dollar business. So, failure is just feedback. Keep going. You’re heading in the right direction. I think leadership and success really have to do with getting good at feeling and failing.
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Everything we want most is on the other side of a feeling we don’t want to feel. If you don’t learn how to feel the discomfort that comes from speaking your mind, taking risks, even disappointing people sometimes, you’re going to end up people-pleasing and hiding and just living a smaller life. If you consider that the worst thing that can happen is a feeling, and you know how to process and move through it and not immediately react, you’ll be unstoppable. I believe the truth is that there’s no emotion that you can’t handle.
Leaders also usually have a high failure tolerance. You build up your tolerance for failing by changing what you make failure mean. It does not mean that you are inherently flawed or that you’re a failure. It just means you failed at something. How human of you, right? Failure is not a bad thing. We’ve just been conditioned to believe it is. We’ve learned that you succeed by getting the A+. But we actually succeed by failing. Success is built on a big pile of failures. It’s how we learn and grow, and those lessons stick.
I would really love it if we took pride in our failures as much as our successes. Failure is just feedback. It means you’re brave for trying, that you’re figuring it out. You’re on the right track, not the wrong track. I have this quote here that I love from Thomas Edison, and he says, “I have not failed, I just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” So just keep going.
There’s also a story I really like about the household cleaner Formula 409. It’s called that because it took 408 attempts to make it. So you could look at that as 408 failures or 408 attempts to create a multi-million dollar business. So, failure is just feedback. Keep going. You’re heading in the right direction. I think leadership and success really have to do with getting good at feeling and failing.
To develop leadership skills, lead yourself first, learn to manage your emotions, and keep taking uncomfortable actions that help you grow. We hold back because we think others are better, more experienced, or more qualified. However, hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. It’s all about taking uncomfortable action. Remember, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
I believe that those of us on a self-discovery journey have a duty to give back. I do this work because little Eden would’ve loved someone like big Eden to guide her. You don’t have to be the expert of all experts to lead. My mentor says, “You just have to be 10% ahead of the people you’re helping.” If you’ve learned something or grown a little, share it—that’s leadership.
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I believe that those of us on a self-discovery journey have a duty to give back. I do this work because little Eden would’ve loved someone like big Eden to guide her. You don’t have to be the expert of all experts to lead. My mentor says, “You just have to be 10% ahead of the people you’re helping.” If you’ve learned something or grown a little, share it—that’s leadership.
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