In February 2025, Josh Allen, quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, was awarded the NFL’s prestigious Most Valuable Player (MVP) award in recognition of how his leadership inspired and elevated his team during the regular football season.

Allen’s journey to receiving this award wasn’t without challenge. He wasn’t a sought-after quarterback prospect in high school. When he went on to junior college, he sent over 1,000 emails to Division I and Division II college coaches across the country, hoping someone would give him an opportunity to lead their football program as quarterback.

One school decided to take a chance on him, and the rest, as they say, is history.

But it wasn’t only his physical skillset that led to Allen receiving the offer; the college also recognized his resilience, problem-solving skills, and ability to create a culture of ownership – all of which would help his team win championships.

The core competencies of effective leadership

Strong leadership can have a dramatic impact on a team’s success – not just in sports, but in a variety of industries, including financial services. Most organizations recognize that impact and seek to bolster their leadership competencies. But there is often a lack of clarity around what those competencies are.

Perhaps the best judges of the critical skills leaders should possess are employees. Research from Forbes and Salesforce finds that leaders link many key benefits – including increased productivity, increased customer satisfaction, and increased employee communication – to effective communication. Yet an Interact/Harris Poll revealed that 91% of employees surveyed said their leaders lacked communication skills.¹

Essential skill #1: Effective communication

Clearly, both team members and leaders recognize that communication is critical to success, but many leaders appear to be falling short in this area. So, how can leaders nurture this skill? Following are the core elements of effective communication and how teams can work to strengthen them:

Building trust: Creating an environment of trust and respect is the starting point for effective communication.

Here are a few key areas to focus on to build trust:

Compassion: How can we enhance our skills in active listening, empathy, and providing recognition when it occurs?
Consistency: What can I do to show up as an individual that my fellow team members can count on?
Character: Am I known for doing the right thing? If not, what needs to shift?
Competence: What can I do to develop my knowledge as well as those around me?

Recognizing uniqueness: Acknowledging and valuing the uniqueness of each team member and how they add value to the team is yields numerous benefits. It creates an environment where individuals have the freedom to be themselves, which results in increased creativity and more effective use of resources. Consider what steps the team can take to celebrate how each individual’s uniqueness adds to the team and ensure everyone feels they are contributing to something larger than themselves.

Establishing clarity: The role clarity plays in effective communication is bigger than just being clear in your message; it’s also about having a clear understanding of how day-to-day contributions help the team achieve its goals. This means the team not only recognizes the vision, mission, and strategy for the practice, but also that everyone understands their unique role and how it complements the roles of others on the team.

To be proactive around clarity, hold a team session to create a roadmap on how team members will commit to agreed-upon expectations that will govern the team’s interactions, including communication protocols around clarity and guidelines for miscommunication should it arise.

Essential skill #2: Creating a culture of ownership and accountability

By painting a clear picture of the future and inspiring others to work toward it, visionary leaders can drive organizational success through the team’s execution of the strategic plan. In this environment, everyone is engaged and rowing in the same direction.

Creating this type of environment involves five key steps:

1. Define your purpose. Developing a clear vision, mission, and strategy will allow you to connect with your audience and enhance your team members’ focus. This entails conducting a thorough assessment of the firm’s values, objectives, and target market, focusing on the following areas:

– What are our core values and principles?
– What is our purpose and what distinguishes us from other firms?
– Who is our target audience, and how can we articulate our unique value proposition to clients?
– What are our intermediate- and short-term goals and objectives?

2. Create a strategic roadmap. This step begins with defining as a team what you want to accomplish that supports the vision and mission of the practice. Consider these steps to establish a clear path forward:

3. Establish your rocks. Identify and prioritize the top three to seven mission-critical initiatives for your practice during the next 90 days. Clearly defining these rocks and determining how much time should be allocated to each one ensures everyone is working toward common objectives.

4. Measure the right things. Hold a collaborative goal-setting session where everyone contributes their ideas of what success looks like. Prioritize the goals that align with the organization’s strategic priorities and define clear metrics and milestones for each.

5. Monitor the plan. For the team to have ongoing improvement and accountability, it’s important to commit to tracking progress through regular reviews. Doing so can provide valuable insights into the expected outcomes of the team’s efforts.

Essential skill #3: Empowering team members through delegation

Delegation helps create an environment of empowerment and provides for the development of team members’ skills. It also boosts team efficiency while increasing team engagement and motivation. Leaders who delegate among their team members strengthen trust in themselves and others. And because delegation shows confidence in the teams’ abilities, it improves morale and makes team members enthusiastic about coming to work every day.

You can create this type of culture on your team by implementing these steps:

Assess projects and tasks to determine whether you are working on the highest priorities.

– What projects can be completed by you?
– Which projects or tasks can you partially or fully delegate?

Ensure you are delegating to the best person by assessing their abilities, interests, and needs.

– What are their strengths and development needs or interests?
– What new responsibilities are they motivated to take on?
– Are they under or over capacity?

Define success for the project or task so that it is clear to the delegate.

– What is the desired outcome?
– What milestones need to be met?
– What progress updates are required?

Today’s clients want to work with organizations that have a sense of purpose and the determination to make a difference in their lives. By developing the skills outlined above, leaders can be viewed as the MVP of their practice while elevating each team member to star-player status. The result will be a more cohesive, focused, and energized team that clients can depend on.

¹ Interact/Harris survey, 2017.