Leadership Goals: Set, Action, Measure

It’s easy to set the goals for your company or department. It may even be easy for you to set your personal and family goals. But, what about your leadership goals. What about the goals that you can’t attatch a sales quota to, or employee retention percentage rating. One of the most important goals you can set for yourself are your leadership goals.

Take a moment and think about hour your team would rate you on your performance skills.  What do they really think about how you lead the company, team or department?  If your team was in charge of you next bonus or raise, what would they have given you and more importantly, why?

It can be really tough to hear the critiquing of others, especially those that report to you directly.  As a business & leadership coach, there’s no way to truly help someone that has a team improve without connecting with their team.  One of my favorite questions to ask direct reports, when the boss is out of the room is... “now tell me what’s really going on”.  Why?  There are always issues or concerns that direct reports are not comfortable brining up in front of their leaders.  Or, because of past experiences, they may not feel that its beneficial or a waste of time because nothing changed in the past. Guess what?  It’s necessary.

Let me challenge you to do three things. It’s old school, but why not just ask your team three simple questions.  What should you “start, stop and continue” to do to help the team and them grow as individual congtributors.  WOW!  Allow them to do it anonymously if they choose and let them know that you are working on your leadership skills.  It’s your craft, just like an athlete or artist, you want to keep sharp and continuous improvement helps accomplish that.

Inside story.  I did this same practice with my kids, ages 30, 18 & 14.  You can just imagine the feedback.  But, it was amazing that when one of them didn’t agree with the others they had their own dialogue and I didn’t have to say much at all.  The areas that they asked me to work on were pretty consistent . 

Finding out what your team really needs from you takes the guessing game out of it and helps you become a leader with influence.  Be sure to ask them to give as much details behind their answers as they can. (This is one of the best coaching sessions when working with an executive that cares about leading well)

Take the details and begin to SET your goals, 1-3 at a time.  Let your team know that you’re going to take some ACTION and they have to be ready for it as well.  Ever change won’t be comfortable for you and your team.  Finally, MEASURE it.  How, by the feedback, attitude and results of your team.  Measuring attitude can be tough if you’re not close to your team or not taking notice of body language and facial expressions.  (Something to work on.) Often it’s what’s not being said that’s important.

You can improve your leadership influence, impact your team and company, with steady and consistent change. Training, coaching and development is key. 

#Leadwell

Mary Ricketts-CEO

Turning Point Training & Development, LLC