How To Know You Are An Effective Leader (Part 2 of 2)

Do you know what good leaders do?

Who defines what good leadership is?

Do you know how to measure good leadership?

What are the responsibilities of leaders . . . to customers? to employees? to the Board?

When I ask people to give me their definition of "Leadership" I get many different answers.

However, when I ask those same people to fill in the blank below . . .

Leaders are responsible for ______________ inside their company?

The two answers I most often hear are:

(1) Producing Results (like making a profit, or delivering a product or service.)

(2) Strengthening Relationships (like with the employee or with the customer)

Leaders know that their success with these two responsibilities will ultimately determine if they will be viewed as successful.

But, let's go a layer deeper. Last week, we wrote about how leaders should measure what matters.

We know that producing results and strengthening relationships matter to the leader.  So how do the great leaders measure their progress with these responsibilities? How do leaders know if they are effective?

Measure it.   And here's good leaders do.

(1) Establishing a PURPOSE for your business.  Peter Drucker encouraged every business leader to state the purpose of their company in terms of their primary customer.  When you align your purpose to what your customers value, measurable results appear.

(2) Developing a PROCESS to get the results you want.  Once the results are established, a plan to achieve them is the next step.  This is where OKR's are important.  (Objectives, Key Results)

(3) Defining a method to measure PROGRESS.  If you aren't monitoring progress towards your OKR's consistently and frequently, you are behind the eight ball.  How a leader does this is critical to developing the culture inside their company--which can add to or subtract from your results.

(4) Growing your PEOPLE to deliver these results.  Automation has greatly reduced the life span of many companies as well as effected the jobs of today.  Still, people drive results.  How you grow your people and leverage their skills is a well-established competitive advantage.

So, if these four areas determine the path of effectiveness, how can leaders measure (1) Purpose (2) Process (3) Progress and (4) People?

Answer:  The Personal Leadership Assessment Tool or P.L.A.T.

The P.L.A.T. answers the questions we started with:

(1) What do good leaders do?

(2) What defines good leadership:

(3) How do you measure good leadership?

If a leader addresses these questions, results and relationships will follow.  In fact, I can guarantee that.

Join me next Tuesday, April 7th, for a free, live webinar to discuss your Personal Leadership Assessment Tool and how you can maximize your potential as a leader.  Click here for details.

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