The leadership consulting world is awash with instruments, 360 feedback processes, and other means to help you determine whether you’re a good leader. While all have their value and can contribute to your learning journey, there’s another way to determine your effectiveness as a leader.
Look at your followers. Ask yourself:
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- Are they passionate about the vision?
- Are they reaching their goals and objectives?
- Are they taking ownership of their role on the team?
- Do they hold themselves accountable for their performance?
- Do they demonstrate a passion for serving the customer? Each other?
- Are they stronger and more effective than, say, a year ago?
- Are they gracefully exercising more initiative?
- Are their skill sets improving?
- Do they challenge ideas instead of each other (or you)?
- Do they handle the inevitable conflict on the team well?
- Is your confidence in their competence increasing?
- Are they becoming leaders themselves?
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Good followers are hard to find. Why? Because good leaders are hard to find as well! Your followers are a reflection of you – your strengths, your blind spots and even your idiosyncrasies.
Reflect on your answers to the questions above, and you will begin to recognize opportunities for your own development. Great leaders, just like great coaches, bring out the best in their team.
What’s next for you in your learning journey?
A good list to keep tabs on.
I really like your blog and i respect your work. I’ll be a frequent visitor.
Thanks, Crasty! Your comment was (unfortunately) sent to spam and I just found it there and got it posted. Thanks again!
One way to know if you a leader (good or not) is to stop and look behind you. Is there anyone following?
I really like this list. I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed it for a blog post. It’s so helpful for people to change their perspective a little.