The Basics of Leadership
The Basics of Leadership
Leadership isn’t a gift; it’s a set of skills that can be learned. This post explores the essential leadership basics every organisation should teach, from feedback to empathy to effective meeting management.
The Basics of Leadership
Boardroom Briefs with Frans Versteeg
Leadership is often romanticised as a natural talent. A gift you’re either born with or not. But in my experience, leadership is not a mystery. It’s a profession. A craft. A skillset. And like any skillset, it can be taught and it must be practised.
Where real leadership begins.
Many organisations still treat leadership as an intuitive art: “You’re good with people, you should lead them.” But assigning leadership without training is like asking someone to captain a ship before they’ve learned to sail. The basics are not optional. They are the foundation. These are a few of them.
Self-management comes first.
Before you can lead others, you must learn to lead yourself. That includes:
• Awareness of your own behaviour
• Time management and discipline
• Emotional regulation under pressure
This is not abstract. It’s deeply practical. No one follows a leader who is perpetually disorganised, distracted, or reactive.
Listening is more powerful than speaking.
Leadership starts with presence. It is built through empathy and active listening, not just the ability to speak clearly. The best leaders create connection before direction. And connection is a skill.
Feedback is a leadership essential.
One of the most undervalued skills in leadership is the ability to give and receive feedback. Not once a year, but in real time and in ways that are direct, respectful, and constructive. Good leaders offer short feedback loops. Great leaders create safe environments where feedback flows both ways. If your team fears being honest with you, you’re not leading, you’re presiding.
Be tough on clarity, gentle in tone.
Leadership is not about being soft; it’s about being clear. The strongest leaders are the ones who can set expectations firmly, hold people to account, and still leave everyone feeling respected. It’s a balance of strength and sensitivity.
Even meetings require craftsmanship.
Chairing a meeting is a skill, not a side task. Yet in many organisations, it’s treated as an improvised routine. Poorly run meetings waste time, kill energy, and diminish confidence in leadership. Every leader should know how to:
• Prepare an agenda with a purpose
• Facilitate discussion with a focus
• Conclude with clarity and action
These are not high-level competencies. They’re basics. But they’re often ignored.
Teach before you expect.
Too many organisations throw new managers into the deep end, hoping they’ll swim. The result is inconsistent leadership, reactive decisions, and team disengagement. Before someone leads, they should be trained. Before they’re trained, they should be aware. Leadership programmes should not begin with strategy. They should begin with fundamentals.
Final Thought:
Leadership isn’t a rare gift. It’s a practical craft. It can be learned. It can be taught. And it should never be left to chance.
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction to Leadership
01:20 The Basics of Leadership
01:36 Self-Management and Discipline
02:00 The Importance of Communication and Empathy
03:24 Constructive Feedback
04:45 Creating a Safe Environment
05:36 Time Management and Organization
05:57 Effective Meeting Management
07:48 Conclusion: Leadership is a Learnable Skill
Links:
Website: https://www.fransversteeg.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fransaversteeg/
Transcript:
The basics of leadership. Well, well, let me begin by saying that I believe leadership is not a mysterious gift. It's not like you're a prodigy, you're a natural talent, and somehow you are being born as a true leader. I think leadership is. A profession, a trait, a set of skills. And of course it does help if you are talented, like, but we, we can't all become Yohan Craft, but basically we can learn the basics of football. Um, and the basics are indeed, uh, a set of skills that, uh, almost all leaders can learn. And I strongly believe that companies should actually have to implement. Uh, if you think of people starting. To lead other people, then I think it would completely irresponsible to basically say, well have a go at it.
Let's see what happens. There are several basics for leadership, so several basics of leaders. Several basics of leadership start, I guess, with uh, awareness. Self-management and discipline. Uh, so to manage others to manage lead to people, uh, one has to first learn to lead to oneself. So indeed, awareness, discipline, time management, becoming aware of your own behavior. Uh, that is something that it, that's where it sort of starts with, but leading others requires, I would say, first of all, true and deep listening, uh, connecting with people, so communication and, uh. Empathy, not just the skill of talking and listening, but uh, also real empathy for people. And the ability to connect is something that is essential for all sorts of leadership.
Be that operational leadership, be that tactical or strategic. So either it's people that lead, other people that basically do the, the work. When you start leading. Managers that already lead other people. When you become a general manager and you have the, uh, functional managers reporting to you, or even at the highest level when you are guiding and advising in a supervisory, uh, role, uh, supervis, uh, supervising general managers. At all these levels though, though at different, in different ways, the, the basics are essential, leading others requires. Uh, also the important thing, and I, and one of the maybe most important things that I've come across is the, the, the awareness to. Give constructive feedback and give constructive feedback in a very direct way.
Don't sort of let things go for a year and then in the end say, well, uh, you must have noticed that, of course, and, but basically be very. With very short feedback loops, so the ability to constructively and in an open way, uh, give feedback and also to share feed, uh, to, and to receive feedback and receive. Also very critical feedback. So being able to, to take that in and to, uh, to in that sense become what I always say, uh, don't make sure that there are, that there is no hesitation on the part of, uh, direct reports on the, on the part of employees to basically tell you what's on their mind. And people can hide an enormous amount of stuff.
If they are, if they feel insecure, if they feel unsafe, when they have the impression that you're not really listening, or when, when they, when they are afraid that they will be punished for being too outspoken. So the, it's really essential that you can radiate. A, a willingness to accept critique, to accept, uh, critical feedback, and basically use that in a constructive way, and in the same way, be tough and strict, but very gentle. In the connection and relationship with your people. And I think that these, uh, these are some of the well direct, uh, basics of leadership. There's more. Um, and, uh, we can also talk about time management, uh, clean desk, uh, all that sort of stuff. And coming back to the opening remark that it's not a mysterious gift.
All these things can basically be learned. And, um, another very basic one, preparing and sharing a meeting in lots of companies. I see that organizing meetings and chair and, and, and being the chairman of a meeting is something that. Nobody has ever wondered how, how to do that. Basically, we are improvising and we're together. We have a subject that needs to be discussed. Uh, and with a, with a little bit of bad luck, several other subjects come up as well. And so it's, it's not efficient, but it's also not effective. And also there, chairing a meeting, organizing a meeting is not something. That you are, well, you are a born, uh, uh, chairman of meetings.
No. It's basically going by the normal do's and don'ts. And it's a set of skills that, uh, that is basically get, that can be taught, that can be learned. And one of the essential things in my mind for organizations is to understand that. These simple, basic operational do's and don'ts are something that you need to meticulously, uh, manage and actually have management development programs for so that you just don't, you don't just let people jump into the deep end of the, the water. You basically say, well, before you start. Leading people before you start organizing people. These are the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 things that you really need to know. Um, uh, there's quite a lot and the, the things that I've mentioned now are just, I would say the tip of the iceberg, but, uh, the long and short of it is basically, it's not a mysterious gift. It's a trait. It's a set of skills. It can be taught, it can, and you can and you can learn it, and it's simply a matter of working at it.