Measuring Leadership With Real Numbers

Most people will tell you that leadership, and all of its soft skills can NOT be measured quantitatively. And I agree. We will probably never know how much ownership or how much kindness or the degree of honest that I really am. However, we can measure leadership and soft skills indirectly.

Perception Drives Reality

Luckily we can measure people’s perceptions. Some might say: “Perception is too subjective to accurately measure leadership.” I respond to this challenge with a question:

Is great leadership a way of being, or is it a way of being perceived? I believe these are two sides of the same coin. Great leadership is generated as a way of being, and it is manifested as a way of being perceived. Since we can’t measure the “being” very well, we’re left to the perception.

And how accurate is the perception? It doesn’t matter. The perception can be way off, and that is not the fault of the perceiver. It’s a fault of the leader.

For example: If the 20 people who Bob works closest with all perceive Bob to be dishonest, then it doesn’t matter how “honest” he is. Bob needs to change his behavior, or go work somewhere else. The perception is the most important factor when it comes to soft skills.

Is It Possible To Cheat Perception?

Is it possible to deceive people? Indeed. And, when we use micro 360 tools like the Deliberate Practice Rubric (DPR*) to gather continuous feedback of perception from all angles, it’s extremely difficult to work the system.

Further, whether you’re working on your skill as perceived by a group of people or by just one person, it may be to your advantage to fake it till you make it. There is a good deal of evidence that shows that trying to smile in a genuine way helps you to feel good, and can help other people feel good, even if you didn’t feel good before you smiled.

The old adage says: You can fool all the people some the time, and some the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. Unless you’re a professional con-man, you’re going to have a hard to gaming the system with consistent 360 feedback, especially if it is regular and repeated like the DPR*.

Sure, Bob could pay people to say they like him. And honestly, how often is this going to happen? If this is your concern, you might be in the wrong company.

Measuring Performance Via Perception

How does one actually do it? The simplest way I’ve found is to ask a behavior based question with a Likert scale. There are other easy methods such as asking someone to mark tallies, and these require more attention. The point is to ask your audience a specific question based on the perception of the skill you're trying to improve.

I’ll give you a personal example of using the DPR for a very important relationship. I periodically ask my wife what I can do to improve myself as a husband. At one point she responded that she sometimes didn’t feel that I supported her — specifically in her more quiet and subdued personality. So I asked her to help me know specifically when I did something that gave her that feeling. Over time she was able to give me some examples, and I worked at improving.

And still, I didn’t know if I was actually improving or just spinning my wheels. I had no idea. This is often the case with soft skills. We try and improve, and really we have no clue in the universe if we’re getting better or not. It might feel better. And we’re not sure if there is a successful behavioral change or if we’re just getting used to ignoring each other’s idiosyncrasies.

I even asked: “Am I doing any better?” And truly she couldn’t tell. I thought I was doing a little better, and because she couldn’t tell, I wasn’t satisfied that I had actually improved.

So I began asking this question every day or so: “On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree), how much do you agree with this statement: “Tyler respects, appreciates, and supports me as a unique and valuable person.” To my delight, she was able to answer this question with confidence. My original score was lower than hoped, and that’s exactly why I wanted to tackle this specific question.

For context, we discuss the scores, which helps. And this little number based solely on my wife’s perception is tremendously valuable to me, so I can see that I’m improving (which I am).

Summary

Measuring leadership ability with real numbers no longer has to be like chasing a nymph. We can measure leadership based on perception of the people who matter most. These people are experts at telling us how your soft skills and behaviors affect them personally. It can be a simple survey with only one or two questions. It can be verbal, paper, or digital. You can even track and plot your leadership ability over time, setting goals and pushing for breakthroughs to achieve them.

*I’ve also written about DPRs in general, and how DPRs can bring the Leadership Development industry out of the dark ages. Please let me know if you’d like to discuss the topic or work on a case study with me. I’m very interested in a continued study of this topic.