How Can You Develop Soft Skills to Become a Unicorn Leader at Work?

What Are the 12 Data-Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders?

Discover the 12 data-driven habits from Be the Unicorn by William Vanderbloemen to master essential soft skills, stand out at work, and become an irreplaceable leader. Ready to stand out from the crowd and accelerate your career? Read the full article to discover the 12 teachable habits of unicorn leaders and start building your indispensable soft skills today!

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William Vanderbloemen, an executive search professional, details a dozen leadership habits you can develop to stand out from the crowd – just like the fabled unicorn. He offers a lot of basic but useful information, though you might wish he would stop referring to himself in the third person, coupled with the phrase “not to brag.” His 12 leadership lessons include important soft skills presented with intriguing, teachable case studies. Vanderbloemen shows leaders who want to advance how to become more productive and competent as well as more likable – an asset whether you want a promotion at work, more sales, or improved social connections.

Take-Aways

• Become as unique as a unicorn by developing 12 leadership-related soft skills.
• Move quickly to seize opportunities.
• To get ahead, be authentic.
• Build the agility to welcome new opportunities.
• Become a problem solver.
• Learn to anticipate the future.
• Be over-prepared.
• Develop self-awareness.
• Stay curious.
• Establish a network of connections.
• Learn to be likable.
• To maximize your productivity, focus.
• Live a purpose-driven life.

Summary

Become as unique as a unicorn by developing 12 leadership-related soft skills.

What is a unicorn? In this context, it’s a distinctive person others admire and respect. Unicorn-level leaders are rare, though not mythical, and you can become one. A unicorn stands out as the spark that lights up a room, the magical force everyone else wants to experience and emulate, the heart of a team.

William Vanderbloemen founded and runs an executive search firm. Companies hire him to find and recruit top talent for executive positions. He has learned by experience exactly which habits, qualities, and characteristics distinguish superstars — the unicorns — from everyone else.

“Beware of distractions disguised as opportunities. It can take a lot of discipline, plus some trial and error, to teach yourself the difference between distraction and opportunity, but the more you practice, the better you get.”

Vanderbloemen and his firm have conducted more than 30,000 interviews with executives seeking new positions. Candidates’ answers to his company’s extensive questionnaire taught him and his colleagues what traits make leaders special. Based on his firm’s research, Vanderbloemen identifies 12 soft skills that distinguish unicorns from everyone else. Unicorns move swiftly. They are authentic, agile problem solvers who effectively anticipate the future. They are prepared, self-aware, curious, connected to others, likable, productive, and purpose-driven. To become a unicorn, master these talents.

Move quickly to seize opportunities.

Never hesitate. Don’t bog down. Avoid over-thinking and procrastination. Move ahead decisively. Seize opportunities when they appear. In today’s fast-moving business world, you have to keep up your pace.

“You can stand out from your peers, and you can become irreplaceable.”

“Response time” matters most. If you don’t respond to challenges and opportunities with alacrity, you’ll get left at the starting gate as your competitors blaze around the track.

To get ahead, be authentic.

In the search engine era, you cannot hide. Whoever you are and whatever promises you make or secrets you try to keep, everything about you eventually could be revealed – and probably sooner rather than later. Being authentic makes sense over the long term. If you want to build trusting relationships with others, be your real self.

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” (Warren Buffett)

Authenticity comes to the fore when the best applicants compete for a desired job. Almost always, authentic applicants who can make a genuine, human connection get the best positions.

Build the agility to welcome new opportunities.

Ursula Burns grew up poor on New York City’s Lower East Side. In Catholic grade school, Burns could imagine only one of three jobs for herself as an adult: “teacher, nurse, or nun.” None of these vocations appealed to her or paid what she hoped to earn to overcome poverty. When she managed to attend college, she chose to study chemical engineering.

“The world is sending us an invitation to change. If we think we can keep our heads down and wait for that invitation to go away, we’re wrong. Change is a rip current and trying to swim against it is futile. The agile know not to fight it but to swim parallel and accept change for what it is.”

Upon graduation, Burns went to work as an engineering intern at Xerox. Thoroughly adaptable, agile, and willing to accept any new Xerox job that raised her salary, Burns quickly transferred away from engineering to management. She worked her way up the ladder at the firm, eventually becoming Xerox’s CEO. Burns’s formula for success exemplifies the value of agility. To stay physically healthy, people must exercise and stretch. To get ahead in today’s demanding business world, people must stretch their minds and their horizons. Burns believes that the most effective way to change is to embrace new tasks and challenges with committed energy and dedication. As you become accustomed to a new role, you may find you were born to do it.

Become a problem solver.

Problems are everywhere. Help solve them, and companies will want to pay you to do it and will want to keep you nearby. Kevin Plank played football in college in the late 1990s. It bothered him that cotton, then the dominant fabric for athletic clothing, didn’t solve athletes’ ever-present sweating problem. After carefully researching synthetic fabrics, Plank started an athletic clothing company called Under Armour. His firm soon reached sales of more than $1 million. Under Armour, which uses materials that wick away body moisture, solved athletes’ sweating problem.

“When faced with challenges, people can either choose to be on the problem side of the equation or the solution side. Those who choose to find solutions, who refuse to be victims, and who spend energy moving past those challenges are irreplaceable.”

Ask what problem you might be able to solve for your company or potential clients. To position yourself advantageously, don’t try to solve a problem in a vacuum. You need context. Study where, when, and how the problem occurs, and how people respond. Then, muster your resources and work on developing a sound, profitable plan to solve it.

Learn to anticipate the future.

While on sabbatical, Marc Benioff experienced a ground-shaking epiphany. He wondered if an inexpensive, easy-to-operate, online business and sales-management system could replace the tired, cranky, software that then dominated popular use even though it required installation, constant updating, and expensive hardware. Pursuing this vision, Benioff co-founded Salesforce, the manifestation of his germ of a great business idea. Customers use Salesforce simply by going online. They do not need to buy hardware or software. All they do is sign in. By 2022, Salesforce was ranked 136th among the Fortune 500.

“Predictions are just your brain having a conversation with itself. A bunch of neurons make their best guess about what will happen in the immediate future, based on whatever combination of past and present…your brain is currently conjuring.” (Lisa Feldman Barret)

To figure out future trends in your business or industry, you don’t need to anticipate everything important that may occur in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. But you do have to understand future trends more completely and anticipate them earlier than your competitors do. Among other things, this requires developing a profound understanding of the environment in which you and your firm operate.

Be over-prepared.

During the first practice of every season, famed UCLA basketball coach John Wooden always insisted that his players learn how to put on their socks and tie their shoes as he instructed. This wasn’t as silly as it may sound. Wooden knew that improperly fitted socks and poorly tied sneakers inevitably meant blisters for his ballplayers. Blisters keep athletes off their feet, which means they practice less, which means they perform poorly on the court. Wooden had no fear of over-preparing his players. Over the course of a dozen years, he guided his UCLA team to 10 national championships. Wooden’s perspicacity and devotion to correct preparation paid steady dividends for his team. People generally give their confidence – and their buy-in – to prepared leaders, and over-prepared leaders are a step ahead. The under-prepared face constant shocks and are never ready for a crisis. In contrast, being over-prepared builds your agility. Those who over-prepare are ready for just about anything.

Develop self-awareness.

Socrates was one of history’s most perceptive, articulate philosophers. His best-known advice is, “Know thyself.” That calls for being honest with yourself and aware of your strengths and weaknesses.

“People who are self-aware are more creative, more effective at their jobs, better at relationships, better leaders, and more likely to be promoted.(according to the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology)”

Being self-aware helps you develop a special kind of social contract that directly benefits you and all those with whom you have sustained contact. It maximizes your efficiency and happiness. To increase your self-awareness, practice humility and be patient with yourself. Put your trust in others. Gaining self-awareness means learning and becoming comfortable with who you are.

Stay curious.

Albert Einstein claimed that curiosity was a primary factor in his success, and curiosity can drive your success as well.

“Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.” (Steve Jobs)

How can you increase your curiosity and your base of knowledge? The answer couldn’t be simpler: Ask questions and listen carefully to the answers. Select a field or a subject that intrigues and interests you, and vest in learning everything you can about it. When you find someone who knows more about your subject than you do, ask every question that comes to mind.

Establish a network of connections.

You need helpful connections to move ahead. Having a wide web of connections helps you learn about attractive job openings. You may never hear about the right openings if you don’t network with people in your field. Developing a reliable network of friendly connections helps you become a favored applicant for attractive jobs and promotions. In modern business, connections open doors. In today’s hyper-connected world, with its online communities, Internet forums, social media, email resources, messenger services, and the rest, connecting with others has become remarkably simple. However, online connections that stay only online can be ephemeral and fleeting. You must network with your connections face-to-face, which means overcoming any reticence and doing the work to build real relationships.

Learn to be likable.

After managing thousands of job placements, Vanderbloemen determined that one of the most salient characteristics of successful job applicants is the ability to work and play with others naturally, easily, and sincerely. Employers seek and hire the most likable job candidates, who go on to enjoy steady promotions. Up-and-coming leaders must determine what they should do to inspire others to like them.

“Feelings act as a gatekeeper; if you don’t like a person, they won’t have the chance to show their competency [and] what little competency a person has will be maximized if they’re liked; likability trumps competency almost every time.”

Talking less and listening more is an important way to achieve likability. Most people like good listeners, but few people like big mouths who never stop yakking long enough to listen. Listening attentively builds your empathy, and showing empathy makes people like you. If you show people that you put others first and are genuinely curious about them, they will be drawn to you.

To maximize your productivity, focus.

As a young man, Richard Branson, whose grand success led to him being knighted as Sir Richard Branson, was a remarkably productive, imaginative, energetic entrepreneur. In 1968, Branson launched a student magazine. Over his career, he started a mail-order catalog business, a record store, a record label, a space-exploration firm, and hundreds of different companies. Future unicorns should find inspiration in Branson’s astonishing life of unabashed productivity.

“Thanks to technology, we can work anytime and anywhere and with anyone. So why aren’t we super-producers?…we have too many distractions. You know how Henry David Thoreau was able to write ‘Walden’? He lived in the woods…Because we have access to anything, anybody, anywhere, it’s harder for us to focus on the task at hand.”

Being frantically busy does not necessarily mean being productive. Unplanned, disorganized busyness may leave you unknowingly going around in circles. Measure your own and your company’s productivity by noting important goals achieved during a specific work period or a combination of work periods.

Live a purpose-driven life.

Reshma Saujani, a “daughter of refugees” to the United States, founded the non-profit organization Girls Who Code, which became her driving purpose. Her goal is to give girls and women a platform for achieving professional-level IT training, opportunities, and salaries. Thanks to her, many have achieved all three. Like Saujani, you need to identify your “why,” your purpose, your raison d’être, the engine that drives you forward. Once you define it, your next step – ideally – is to find a workplace where you can work toward fulfilling it. Seek a job setting where you can address your “why” in a meaningful fashion every day.

“Change is moving faster than ever, but will never move this slowly again.” (Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau)

New York City’s Cloisters Museum is known for having six of the 12 medieval “The Lady and the Unicorn” series of magnificent tapestries. The other six hang in the Musée de Cluny in Paris. These antique, embroidered wall hangings depict medieval hunters capturing and killing a unicorn. In the final tapestry, the graceful unicorn is shown triumphantly alive and beautiful. As you nurture these leadership skills, you can become something every bit as strong, unique, and victorious as that unicorn. Your journey won’t require magic, but it will demand determination, focus, and dedication – a reasonable set of requirements for becoming a uniquely qualified, respected, sought-after leader.

About the Author

William Vanderbloemen is the founder and CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group, which Forbes named one of the best small businesses in the United States. It specializes in serving churches, schools, nonprofits, and values-driven businesses.