Occupying a leadership position is not the same thing as leading.
Occupying a leadership position is not the same thing as leading. To lead, you must connect, motivate, and inspire a sense of ownership and shared objectives in your people and teams. Leadership requires reflection.
This is true; enhancing your leadership ability requires looking inward at how you think and act. You'll need to know or gain an idea of how your behaviors impact those around you.
Without a way to know and understand how you are leading, you’re simply flying blind and likely telling yourself that you’re doing a better job than what is happening in your workplace.
Revealing light on what typically confronts busy leaders:
Every day, multiple things vie for your attention, and you make hundreds of decisions, some good and some bad. Some consciously and others subconsciously. Do you take time to analyze your decisions? Are you aware of what gets your attention? With so much feedback around you (both direct and indirect), how do you separate signal from noise?
Without a system to measure yourself and actively monitor how you’re doing, you cannot determine areas that need your attention and the steps you must take to improve.
This leads us to 9 Questions Great Bosses Ask Themselves, a monthly self-assessment that managers can utilize to determine how well they perform as leaders. Absent having a company-wide, formal tool or resource for doing this, asking and answering these questions honestly will tell you what you need to do to improve.
They focus on the following nine key areas:
?* Priorities
?* Team Performance
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?* Taking Responsibility
?* Leading by Example
?* What Your People are Hearing
?* What's Not Working
?* Checking Our Ego
?* Team Collaboration
?* Maintaining Personal Sanity
Don't rely solely on feedback from those in your sphere of influence to help make this determination. Every month, pause and reflect to see how your thoughts align with those of your team and your managers.
Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences and failing to achieve anything useful.
Try self-assessing your performance on a regular basis.