Leadership Assessment

So often we hear the phrased question "what makes a great leader" and if you asked a thousand people this question, chances are you would get at least 86 answers with the same tagline of...

• Great leaders treat their team with respect
• Great leaders practice effective cross-cultural communication
• Great leaders practice accountability
• Great leaders encourage strategic thinking, innovation, and action
• Great leaders focus on developing others
• Great leaders are ethical and civic minded. Here are a few more common phrases/words (integrity, empathy, resilience, vision, and influencer).

While the above are the behaviors that a great leader should be practicing, but that's not always the case especially in the society that we are living in today.

Here is my story as a GREAT LEADER... I acknowledge that I am a human being, am NOT the smartest elephant in the room, I never build a team with professionals all having the same skills ~ instead I form teams that have perhaps 2 out of 4 of the same skills I already have and that another member of the team has and 2 or more skills that I do not have but want to learn. I love practicing team appreciation in acknowledgement of what ALL team members bring to my table otherwise there would be no food on my table to eat.

I always assess my leadership style and acknowledge when I screwed-up and I bring that to my team so they can help me to get it right. This is the same practice I use when a member on my team gets it wrong - we don't point the finger, instead we brainstorm collectively and fix it while at the same time giving acknowledgement / giving credit to that team member for their initial idea.

Here is another one of my leadership assessments I practice. I currently have an intern as part of the NYC Summer youth employment program, and I gave her blog writing assignments to do for the next week. She submits 3 per day for my review and I take a quick scan and respond (received and nice job). In all honest, she does write well, and I saw at best 1 or 2 mis-spelled words, but here is the deal. My immediate focus is on something big happening tomorrow that I have waited 18+ months for and while I do need to check my interns work, do I really need to tell her I found mis-spelled words, especially when I have mis-spelled plenty of words when writing.

I am on edge so I will naturally be looking for something. This is the same practice I use for my team whom I told I would be away on vacation - I spotted something on one of the websites, and I fixed it. Well, the person saw that and emailed me to apologize, and I responded "no worries, I was bored, and I only spotted it because I went looking - you always do a fantastic job".

Communication, appraisal, respect, trust, self-assessment, human acceptance, accountability, and honesty are the main ingredients to being a great leader.

I hope that my readers will find some take aways from this article and always remember that YOU are a human being just like members of your team, it is okay to take a step-back for personal reasons with the assurance that your team got this when you delegate task because this will produce positive morale and mutual respect. These practices not only help you to stay honest with yourself, keeps you focused on dynamic skills your team bring to the table and makes work more efficient and enjoyable, but grooms you into becoming a great leader.?