How Do You Measure Yourself as a Leader?
November 3, 2015Topic: “How Do You Measure Yourself as a Leader?”
Kalamazoo – Thursday, October 8, 2015
- You measure yourself against…peers, expert speakers and authors
- By the people that follow you.
- Matthew 6; Did I touch someone today? Engaged and advancement of the Kingdom?
- Strong Culture (not having politically lower standards)
- Feeling engaged to the mission
- Unity in the circle you develop
- Humility
- Compassion
- Build relationships (Men in the Bible got in trouble when they became arrogant.)
- Development
- Core Values
- Integrity
- Supportive leadership vs. “Or Else” Following in fear is not sustainable.
- Skill sets
- Critical thinking – connecting the dots
- Front line leaders – Everyone has a following. Get with them so they are aligned and don’t lead others astray.
- Being a good leader is developing the next leader. (Preparation for succession)
- Executive Margin
- You can do it in 5 days vs. 7
- Time, finances, relationships
- Gratifying family life
- Good Health
- A Fair wage
- Fulfilling career path
- Develop those around you
Take a way:
- You should genuinely care about others’ opinions.
- Make sure they are aligned
- Focus on Values. Live them out.
- Integrity – Employees want to emulate.
- Develop people
John Maxwell: “He that thinketh he leadeth, and hath no one following, is only taking a walk.”
Kalamazoo – Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Challenges and Solutions:
- We sometimes confuse Management and Leadership
- Leadership is:
- Working on the business
- Setting a clear direction
- Thinking vision
- Create Opening
- Management is:
- Setting clear expectations
- In the business
- Great communication
- Doing/execution
- Staying on it and not managing it.
- Building Trust
- Building trust both inside and outside of the workplace.
- Your reputation
- Do people trust you?
- How are you viewed?
- Are people coming to you?
- Proper Perspective
- Sometimes you are your worst critic. How do others measure you as a leader?
- Balance
- Are you involved?
- Solving problems and not letting them be part of the solution or figuring it out with your direction.
- Support vs. taking it away from them.
- How do you step in?
- Multiplication
- Do your employees feel empowered?
- The book “The Multiplier” has a great analogy. When someone comes into the room of the leader, does the person leaving feel empowered by the leader or do they feel the leader is the only one who can make things happen?
- How do we monitor how our team feels?
- You need three basic things:
- Have a handful of rules (Core Values)
- Repeat yourself often (7 times for someone to get it)
- Don’t get angry if it is the 3rd time and you “think” they should have gotten it.
- Be consistent – both with yourself and team.
- Treat others like you would like to be treated.
- Discernment:
- Know when to get in or get out.
- Find the root problem.
- Groom, equip, help, support and build for lasting success.
- “Clock building not time telling.”
- Aim to always be growing people, including ourselves.
- Remember the analogy of “Footsteps in the Sand”
- God didn’t do the work, he carried and supported.
- Ask more questions. Ask 85% of the time and make statements 15% of the time.
- Seeing confident employees seems confirming.
- Know where to start.
- Recognize when you and others have done it right and have a clear direction.
- Do your employees know what to do?
- Know your people and what they know.
- Are your employees at the level to make the decisions you are asking them to make?
- Transactional vs. Transformational
- Transactional: Going in, doing it, just getting things done in that moment and time.
- Transformational: Giving opportunity to grow people, they are well trained and supported.
- You have to let them fail in small things sometimes.
- You only fail for three reasons:
- Wrong person
- Wrong seat
- Poor Management
- Delegate
- Do your employees feel empowered?
- Leadership is:
Take-a-way:
- Give clear direction, tools, delegate, think of the greater good, get out of the way.
- Train/Equip
- Ask Questions
- What are our Core Values? Do we align with them?
- Skill sets, critical thinking, connecting the dots.
- Margin – Executive Margin
- A healthy relationship with yourself
- A gratifying family life
- A fair Wage
- Good Health
- A fulfilling Career Path
- Respect for others
- Contentment with your (brag-free) lifestyle
- Good mirrors – the way people see us.
Kalamazoo – Friday, October 9, 2015
How Do You Measure Yourself as a Leader?
- When you get the title/promotion, it doesn’t end there
- It takes self-discipline
- Be present in your conversations & situations that you need to deal with; be where you’re at
3 Silos = Values / Skills / Personal Margin
How do you measure leadership?
- Have an open platform to get feedback
- Have accountability partners
- Give permission to others to give feedback and let you know
- Our view is different than how others view us
- You’re not really a leader unless others follow you
- Constant communication of the vision/goal so the team is moving in the right direction – communicate often and in different ways
- What kind of culture / environment do we have? Positive energy? Conflict?
- “What gets measured, gets done.”
- We all need a follower to be able to give us strong feedback (not a friend or a faux)
- Need to have self-awareness – need to know ourselves
- Self assessments to help you learn your strengths and weaknesses
- Connect with your teams to know who to go to for specific things to improve on
- Give focused attention
- “Nobody will know how much you know until they know how much you care”
- Challenge of managing vs leading
- How are the leaders growing around you and what are you doing to impact their growth?
- Lead Like Jesus Conference: measures the Heart, Head, Hands & Habits
RECAP so far
- Self-awareness
- Self-discipline
- Transparency
- Communication
- Build trust with others
- Am I reproducing leadership with those that I’m leading?
- We need to take care of ourselves as leaders first – create margin for ourselves
- Take the time to reflect
- Slow down to go faster
- Need to continue to calibrate / make our own course corrections constantly
TAKE AWAY
- Go away with one thing that we want to do and take what we learn today and improve ourselves
- Measure myself against Jesus
- Reproduce leadership & transcend vision & make communication meaningful & engage all from the top down
- Train & reproduce others
- Get feedback from someone other than a friend or faux – followers
- If we’re not applying the same principles in work as we do in our home lives we’re a fraud
- Leadership encompasses you in every day life
- Driven vs. called people = Driven people own everything;
Grand Rapids – Thursday, October 8, 2015
- Key Challenges
- Trust matters greatly. And, trust is usually harder to build than it is to destroy.
- Since leadership involves both tangibles and intangibles, AKA people and things, AKA performance and intentions… there is no single scale of performance metrics that can suffice.
- Sometimes you can build relationships with everybody you lead, sometimes that’s just not feasible because of the numbers involved. So sometimes you have to measure your leadership through the leadership of others.
- Fear is a formidable enemy, for leaders and for those being led. To lead better address and conquer your and your people’s fears.
- It is hard to lead people who are only mildly vested (or less) in the vision of the organization. I.E. If I’m really only here for the money, I’m only following you if you’re paying me more and more.
- Sometimes, we don’t discover what ulterior motives someone may have for being a leader until after we’ve made a significant investment, promotion or other delegation of authority to them. Then when we find out, we have to go backwards in order to move forward.
- Key Solutions
- Great strategic tactics, superb delivery performances, and good leadership of people are all important, but different skill sets. So, identify and separate these attributes, and measure them accordingly.
- Embrace conflicts, problems and issues when they occur, because growth happens through healthy reconciliation and collaborative solutions.
- Joyfully invest in succession planning; it models and inspires good leadership.
- The second tier of leadership matters a lot; tend to it with a sense of urgency.
- Choose somebody to follow. (Jesus is good…)
- No matter how well we think we are communicating, we must always be working on communicating better.
- Key Takeaways
- Good leaders identify and differentiate between good tactical strategists, high delivery performers, and inspirational leaders.
- Good leadership requires articulating a vision in a way that answers the big “WHY”, and then inspires people to want to join in.
- Good leadership begins with good core values. Leaders’ values create organizational culture. The culture of an organization reflects the effectiveness of its leaders.
- Be humble. Do your best to inspire others. Do what’s right. Be consistent.
Grand Rapids – Tuesday, October 13, 2015
- CHALLENGE:
- What does the measurement even look like. How do you measure “it”, how often and whom?
- Is the measurement limited to only the performance of the team?
- Is it better to be respected versus loved?
- Poor delegation
- Lack of really wanting to know, trying to protect position versus, “am I a good / great leader” and why or why not?
- Lack of wanting to ask peers, fellow board members, people from outside the organization – afraid of the real answer
- What happens if I am truly a poor leader…..then what?
- Lack of getting honest feedback from teammates
- Lack of a good objective measure
- What does success look like? Or can I quantify success, in all aspects of the business
- Lack of any true metrics
- Hard to measure certain things……..vision, culture, engagement, etc. (financial performance much easier to measure)
- Company maybe too small to create a safe haven for a real discussion
- SOLUTION:
- Define success (even in the broadest terms) – start with something
- Acknowledge that measuring leadership is tough (not perfect)
- Do it, ask and get input (360 degree reviews)
- Ask your board to give you a formal review / ask your team to give you feedback
- Receive feedback constructively, not defensively (you are not always right)
- Measure employee engagement with surveys
- Measure customer satisfaction with surveys (do you know what your customers really want……or is it what you really want)
- Find good balance in life with work, family and faith (in reverse order)
- TAKEAWAY:
- Start and do not be afraid to ask for input (with no ramifications)
- Be open and transparent
- 360 degree reviews a nice place to start
Continue to measure and improve the measurement (Excellence is a process not a destination)
Holland – Wednesday, October 14, 2015
- CHALLENGE:
- What do you measure?
- Do you really want to measure and do you really want to know?
- What is the health of the organization?
- How do develop a overall approach to measuring leadership?
- Lack of wanting to know (I know the answer and I really don’t want it validated)
- SOLUTION:
- Walk around and engage (less formal, but could be great feedback)
- Develop a formal review process – with board with teammates (document and share with your team)
- Answer the question – How well do I serve (servant style leadership)
- Practice the gift of presence
- Take a long term view of leadership versus just the now
- Ask for input and give grace for that hard to take input (and if you don’t want the input, ask why?)
- TAKEAWAY:
- Leadership is influence
- Have a long term vision