As we enter the holidays, it is always a good time for reflection, and in particular, around leadership. In that spirit, I invite you to hold up the giant mirror and ask yourself these two questions:
- What am I like to work with?
- Why would my team want to work with me?
…Tough questions, I know. Leadership is a never-ending pursuit of growth. But how can you assess your own leadership skills? It is difficult to get this kind of feedback from others. And really, what is a great leader?
A million books have been written on this topic, but the exercise below can help you define it personally.
Exercise 1 – How do you define a great leader?
Think for a moment. Who has been the best leader in your life? What made them a great leader? What were their common characteristics? Then, how would you compare, right now, in your leadership journey?
Consider the leaders in your life have been tough to work for that you don’t want to emulate. Have you fallen into any of these bad habits?
Exercise 2 – Balancing performance and retention
An even more tangible way to assess your leadership success is through reviewing where you are on the performance/retention scale. Is your team delivering results and meeting their performance metrics? Are employees satisfied resulting in high retention?
Those that can balance team performance and employee satisfaction/retention are amongst the best leaders.
You have probably worked for an employer that got high performance out of their team, but their methods were harsh or too much pressure or unhappy work environment. This usually results revolving door of employees.
Likewise, you may have seen leaders who didn’t hold employees to a performance standard and so retention was high because that made work easy. A little too easy. Continued lack of accountability results in poor performance and isn’t sustainable.
The balance is never perfect, but periodically checking in with yourself and adjusting will fuel your growth.
Keep Learning
I recently attended a conference where the speaker, Michael Wozniak, went into greater depth on this topic through his model called the Support Challenge Matrix. He speaks about this model in his book, Employee Drift. A great read if you want to learn more.
Want help setting or reaching your leadership goals this year? Please reach out for 1:1 coaching.
