The skills that make good leaders actually stand out

When people talk about what sets good leaders apart, “they’re a good communicator” is usually the first thing mentioned.

I’ve worked with plenty of leaders who were excellent communicators. They ran clear meetings. Their updates were thoughtful and well-structured. Everyone left aligned on what was happening.

And still, nothing moved.

Decisions stalled. The same issues resurfaced quarter after quarter. Teams waited for direction instead of acting. The communication was strong, but the system never changed.

That’s when it clicked for me: communication isn’t the differentiator we think it is. It’s the baseline. A leader who can’t communicate clearly isn’t going to be effective. But a leader who only communicates well isn’t necessarily effective either.

So if communication is table stakes, what actually sets strong leaders apart? And what are the skills leaders can build and model on their teams to create real momentum?

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Over many years of leading teams and managers, the same pattern keeps showing up: teams don’t feel unclear. They feel stuck.

I recently fell into this trap myself. I had a project I was eager to move forward, but momentum stalled. There were too many decisions, too many dependencies, and no obvious line between “get more input” and “just move.” I wasn’t seeking consensus, but I also didn’t want to create rework or miss something critical.

With other teams busy and an upcoming medical leave on my calendar, the risk became clear: this wasn’t a clarity problem. It was a momentum problem.

Avoiding this trap is what separates good leaders from the rest. Over time, I’ve come to see it as a combination of three skills.

Skill 1: Systems thinking (seeing beyond your lane)

If you read “systems thinking” and thought, well, duh, hear me out.

Systems thinking is something we love to screen for in interviews and then rarely talk about again. Once someone is hired, we tend to reward execution within a team’s boundaries, even when that work quietly creates problems everywhere. These leaders are taught to focus on the execution of their own problems, and they’re often too busy to see the ripple effects of their work to a meaningful extent.

Strong leaders do something different. They consistently notice the second-order effects of decisions and say them out loud.

Instead of stopping at “how does this affect my team?” they ask “how does this change the system around us?” And they’re willing to slow things down early to avoid much bigger messes later.

This is the difference between a leader who ships work efficiently and a leader who prevents the same problems from resurfacing every 3-6 months.

What this looks like in practice:

The leader who lack this skill aren’t careless or selfish. They’re often highly competent. They just optimize locally and assume someone else is responsible for the rest.

Over time, that assumption becomes expensive.

Seeing the system is necessary. But it doesn’t matter if nothing happens next.

Skill 2: Agency (turning insight into motion)

Agency is the difference between seeing what’s required and making it happen. It’s not about taking ownership of all the work yourself. It’s about taking responsibility for momentum.

This matters most when work spans teams and no one has clear authority to move it forward. In those moments, insight alone isn’t enough.

In the aforementioned project I’ve been leading, the systems impact was clear: the work would affect every engineering team by changing how decisions were made. That meant I shouldn’t be the only person defining its direction. It required input, experimentation, and honest feedback from others.

The mistake would have been stopping there.

Agency meant creating the first draft, identifying the right partners, and putting a concrete plan in front of people to react to. Not waiting for perfect alignment. Not outsourcing ambiguity upward. Just moving the work forward in a way others could join.

What this looks like in practice:

This is the real superpower of agency. Leaders with agency don’t wait for clarity to arrive. They create enough structure for progress to begin.

Once progress begins, we need to finish what we started. That’s where trust is built.

Skill 3: Follow-through (closing the loop)

Seeing the system and creating momentum are both necessary. But neither of them builds trust if the work never actually lands.

Follow-through is the skill that turns effort into credibility over time. It’s what ensures that projects don’t just start strong, but actually finish in a way that others can rely on.

This is where many leaders struggle. Work moves forward, meetings happen, decisions are made, and then attention shifts elsewhere. The initiative fades out without a clear conclusion. No one is sure whether it worked, what changed, or what to do differently next time.

Leaders with strong follow-through close the loop. They make outcomes visible. They keep the right people informed as work progresses, and they take responsibility for explicitly ending one phase before starting the next.

Follow-through isn’t about perfection or rigid process. It’s about honoring commitments and creating shared understanding of what actually happened.

What this looks like in practice:

This is how leadership compounds. Over time, teams trust leaders who finish things, reflect honestly, and make learning explicit. Without follow-through, even strong judgment and agency reset to zero.

Communication still matters. It always will. It’s how we align, explain, and make sense of complex work. But it’s not what separates good leaders from strong ones.

What I’ve learned, and continue to relearn, is that teams don’t get unstuck through better articulation alone. They move when leaders notice how work ripples beyond their immediate scope, take responsibility for creating momentum in the face of ambiguity, and follow work through to a real conclusion.

This project is still in motion. There are open questions, adjustments being made, and feedback still coming in. I don’t yet know how it will fully land. But I do know what I’m watching for now: whether the system improves, whether momentum sustains without constant intervention, and whether the outcomes are clear enough to learn from.

These skills aren’t innate. They’re practiced. They’re modeled. And they’re visible over time in the teams that don’t need to wait for direction to keep moving.

Communication sets the floor. What happens after clarity is where leadership actually shows up.