Increase Leadership Effectiveness With These 3 Steps
How Are You Measuring Your Leadership Effectiveness?
We all should be striving to increase our effectiveness at all we do. When we cease to do so then we are truly cutting ourselves short of reaching our potential and purpose in life. If you are leader or interested in leadership, you should be measuring your leadership effectiveness. But how exactly do you increase your leadership effectiveness? Moreover, what areas should you focus on to increase your effectiveness that will have the biggest impact? A great example to use in this case is a football or basketball coach. If they are not effective at producing wins the end result is usually them being fired. They are perceived by many to be an ineffective coach. However leadership effectiveness is not solely based around winning, losing, hitting sales numbers, etc. In this post I am going to cover three ways in which you can increase your leadership effectiveness so keep on reading…
Increasing Your Leadership Effectiveness
There are many ways in which you can increase your leadership effectiveness but I am going to just cover three for the sole purpose of not muddying the waters. Keeping things simple and straight forward especially when it comes to increasing effectiveness is the only way to do it. If you throw non-descriptive vague steps or solutions at increasing leadership effectiveness the outcome will be just that, nondescript and vague. So with that said let’s get into the three steps that you can use to increase your leadership effectiveness.
Step #1 - Vision and Values. One of the most straight forward things you can do is take an objective and honest look at if your values are driving your vision. They need to be interdependent, your values should be your compass pointing you to reaching your vision. A vision without values is a weak one, one that is subjective to being changed or abandoned when times get hard. Honestly ask yourself if your values are in tact, and if your vision is rooted in them. If you are leading and you are unsure of your values and vision then you are not being effective due to the fact that you cannot measure your effectiveness on either of these. Leaders need to have a vision, or in other words a purpose. No purpose and no values equals one confused leader randomly walking in the woods bumping into trees. How can you showcase leadership effectiveness if you keep running into tress?
Step #2 Strategy. Is there a sound strategy that is enabling you to reach your vision that is in line with your values? Strategies can be put into motion without an aim but the end result is a broken system. If your strategy does indeed align with your values and is getting closer to you reaching your vision/goal/aim/purpose whatever you want to call it then you are showing leadership effectiveness in this area. However with any strategy and operations a leader should always ask “how can we do this better”? That simple question will help you and those that you lead increase how effective your strategy and leadership effectiveness are.
Step #3 People. Are the people that you are leading better off with your leadership? Are they growing and thriving in what they are doing? Are they empowered to make changes, to seek better ways to do things, and be part of the vision that has been cast? A shared vision is far more powerful then a isolated one. If you have a vision that is rooted in your values and have a sound strategy to get you there but the people that you lead are suffering then you are not being effective. In fact, if you miss this step your leadership effectiveness will only be as effective as those perceiving it. Therefore if those that work for you perceive that you are not advocating and investing in them they will not believe you are showcasing leadership effectiveness.
Closing Thoughts On Leadership Effectiveness
I hope that by reading this post on leadership effectiveness you asked yourself the questions that I put in this post. I also hope that you are thinking of other ways to increase your leadership effectiveness that I did not cover in this post and will put those in the comments below. You need to be effective in what you do, and the more effective that you are the more people will want to follow you. Same is true if you are ineffective in all that you do, people will not want to follow you because they simply do not trust your abilities as a leader. Leadership effectiveness needs to be in the forefront of a leader’s mind. They also need to ask those that they lead, their peers, and their leaders if their leadership effectiveness meets their expectations. Honest feedback is crucial to increase leadership effectiveness so don’t stuff it away.
What steps would you take to increase your leadership effectiveness?
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Such a great post to increasing leadership excellence. Each of these 3 points is so essential and important.
Thanks for the comment Dan. I think at times we can make it far more complicated to measure effectiveness than needed.
James