7 Surprising Questions to Measure Your Leadership
You can’t know how you’re doing until you’re measured.
Evaluation might feel uncomfortable, but the alternative is self-deception, lost potential, and mediocrity.
7 surprising questions to measure your leadership:
- How are you becoming dispensable?
- Create systems that function without you.
- Give control with accountability.
- Develop vision as a team, not an individual.
- Build redundant talent. Cross-train and rotate jobs.
- How are you making it safe for teammates to speak truth to power?
- Listen calmly.
- Honor constructive dissent.
- Lower the volume of your voice.
- Smile.
- Avoid power positions. Sit in lower seats.
- How are you expanding organizational capacity?
- What have you recently let go?
- What have you learned from failure?
- Who are you mentoring?
- How are you learning?
- What are teammates teaching you? You aren’t smarter than everyone on your team, are you?
- What are you reading?
- How are you connecting with people that excel beyond your achievements?
- How are you making yourself accountable to those you serve?
- Complete this sentence. “I’m accountable to _______ (insert a behavior) my employees.
- My team members know I’m accountable to them because I _______.
- What character quality are you developing? Who’s asking you about it?
- How are you actively seeking feedback?
- Open yourself to 360 degree evaluations. What might those closest to you say, if they were completely safe?
- Don’t tell teammates what you’re doing. Ask them to explain your goals and priorities based on your behaviors.
- What questions do you ask others about your leadership?
- How are you making others feel powerful?
- Trust people to take on big challenges.
- Provide coaching and training.
- Focus more on maximizing strengths than fixing weaknesses.
- Connect their values to leadership roles and goals.
Evaluation:
- Confronts self-deception.
- Minimizes waste.
- Expands potential.
- Identifies capacity.
- Invites development.
How might leaders evaluate their leadership?
“You can’t know how you’re doing until you’re measured.” Dan, if that’s all you wrote for this post it would have been more than enough. But I’m glad you wrote more!
Thanks Alan. It feels uncomfortable, but necessary. 🙂 Cheers
True,
But how accurate can be this measurement from teammates ?
How do we know they are really comfortable or in buttering the bread ?
And the evaluation from seniors may also be driven by objectives, past experiences, personal prejudices time.
Can ever we make such evaluation?
Thanks Chandrakant. We can try. 🙂 You bring up important points that impact the way we evaluate ourselves.
Perhaps we need to evaluate the way we evaluate.
I think the amount of trust you build with your employees is key to getting valuable feedback. I know that when I set time aside for my employees (actually setting up the meeting as well) they were much better at providing feedback. They knew how busy my schedule was and to be able to meet with me was something I found they all craved but would never say. The key then is to act and act fast!
Can’t get anywhere unless you self-assess (self-measure) or are measured. I like the use of ‘measure’ since it says to me that comparison to expectations / standards. BUT I maintain the measurements are most valuable for reflecting and refining, certainly not for some ranked list.
Love the purposes of evaluation in your list, all consistent with improvement.
Thanks John. Your point of clarity regarding stacked ranking is important to me. I’m glad you added the idea of reflecting and refining. We can always measure ourselves by someone who is “lower” or “higher” on the scale. When we measure ourselves by someone who is “lower,” we grow complacent and/or arrogant. Measuring to the higher might motivate. But, it may also discourage. In either case, as you indicate, it misses the point of this post.
I desire feedback, and don’t receive it enough. Feedback without relationship tends to hurt, and it’s difficult to use it constructively (I realize I’m exposing that I am challenged in the emotional intelligence department), but all feedback is useful. Nearly all of my close friends are very direct, but I am welcoming of their “wounds” because the relationship is there.
Thanks George. It’s so helpful that you connect relationship with feedback. “All feedback is useful.” — that’s powerful.
The other side of the coin, is there is value in receiving feedback from people who are giving us their first impressions. They don’t know us and don’t have biases. It’s true that they also have less to go on. But, as you say, all feedback is useful.
This post is very useful. I’m reminded of that old adage to “measure twice and cut once.” If we use redundant feedback to guide change rather that trying to change in response to every instance of feedback, we move more steadily ahead in the direction we want to go. I’m thinking I will ask my direct reports to reflect on some of these questions when they do their self-assessments.
Thanks Shayne. Your application helps me see the idea of receiving feedback from multiple sources more clearly. Measure twice, cut once. Love it.
In his excellent book, Lincoln on Leadership, Donald T. Philips shares the principle: Every now and then it does us good to take public opinion baths.”
Your thoughts on measurable leadership are timely.
Thank you
Thanks Dennis. I’m glad you brought an interesting observation. Your take on this, extends my thinking. Although, I think I’d like others to take the bash. I’ll hand them the towel. 🙂
Again, another FANTASTIC message. I can’t wait to share this with our office management team. THANK YOU!
Excellent post, Dan. I will definitely be sharing this one.
“What’s measured becomes important”. It also helps create what I call a “culture of evaluation” that leaves nothing sacrosanct. By creating this environment, the team always knows where they are and where they need to go. All leadership has to do is provide them the tools to get there. An additional benefit is that living in such a culture eliminates much of the negative perception of evaluation. It becomes viewed more as a device/conduit for 2 way communication and improvement–positive, forward motion.
Just this morning I was chatting with another leader about similar topics. I’ve been in self-deception mode and she was gracious enough to provide me with some feedback that is valuable to me. As she said, she cares enough about me to let me know what I need to know.
As I thought about that conversation and the need for a leader to make it safe for their team to share information, it struck me how important it is for the leader to take ownership here. If you can’t make it safe; fine. But you better get the feedback from someone else. I didn’t get this feedback from my immediate team but it came from someone who knows me and who I trust.
It’s not up to your team to tell you what you need to know. It’s up to you to figure it out. That’s entirely your job as a leader.
Great tips! A great leader works with the team they are working with. In my limited experience, a leader who wants things done exclusively their way and without valid explanation and or fear-mongering breeds an unfriendly and unproductive work environment. Leaders must listen to their team, after all they are often on the frontline, we all have room to grow and learn.