Is Your Leadership Effective?

In many ways, good leadership is hard to define. It can't be directly measured. There's no leadership "score" or report card. In fact often the measure of leadership is qualitative rather than quantitative - although quantitative results always follow. So, the questions remains, how can you tell if your leadership skills are effective?

Plain and simple, leadership is about getting others to take action. If leadership effectiveness is lacking, less than best effort is put forth. The better the leadership, the better the effort.

Exceptional leadership inspires the best effort in others.

Effective leadership is a function of both individual competencies and organizational culture. What are some signs that leadership isn’t as effective as it could be? There are a number of them. They are indications that something is missing in the leadership equation.

• Inability to Motivate Peoplen • Difficulty Attracting/Retaining the Right Peoplen • Low Productivityn • Poor Customer Orientationn • High Stressn • Isolationn • Declining Profitsn • Ineffective Delegationn • Lack of Creativityn • Lack of Initiativen • Ineffective Teamsn • Poor Communicationsn • Lack of Visionn • Diminishing Revenuesn • High Turnover

What can be done to improve leadership effectiveness? The answer is simple to understand and yet not so simple to implement. It starts with understanding the foundations of what makes someone an effective leader and what kind of organizational culture is most effective.

Effective personal leadership can be summarized as being competent in these skill sets:

1. Becoming Influentialn2. Facilitating Teamwork & Collaboratio

3. Being a Catalyst for Changen4. Managing Conflictn5. Developing Othersn6. Having & Communicating a Compelling Visio

The foundations of a strong organization are:
1. Developing a clear and compelling Purposen2. Identifying the organization's Mission to achieve the Purposen3. Agreeing on a set of Values by which to carry out the Missio

4. Adopting a Servant Leader attitude throughout the organizatio

In summary, when we combine personal competency in all areas of leadership skills with an organizational culture which supports people, their development, and their success, we end up with exceptional leadership which, in turn, inspires the best effort in others.