Today and tomorrow, leadership expert Alan R. Zimmerman, PhD, CSP, CPAE, presents nine tests that every leader must pass. Are your efforts on point to overcome the everyday obstacles that leaders face? Even if you don’t pass every test, you can use Zimmerman’s insight to learn and improve.
For hundreds of years, people have wanted to know the answer to one question: Are leaders born, or made? In other words, is leadership a matter of having the right genes or the right education?
After decades of research and thousands of published research studies, the answer is definitive: “Yes.” In other words, some people are more inclined to exhibit leadership behavior; it comes to them more naturally. However, anyone can learn to become a more effective leader.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re a CEO, a vice president, HR director, manager, supervisor, team lead, or parent—you can become a much more effective leader. You can exert more influence and make a bigger, and better, difference in your organization.
The learning process starts with your own self-examination. From my 30 years of research, teaching, corporate consulting, and speaking to thousands of people, I am convinced that the best, most effective leaders play these roles quite well.
Take a look at how you’re doing with these roles. Today we’ll look at the first five. Ask yourself the following questions, which are tests every leader has to pass.
1. Do You Have a Clear Vision of the Future That You Are Actively Driving?
Leaders have a vision for a bigger, better, and brighter future, and they have the courage to stand up for that vision when it is under attack.
However, effective leaders also balance future vision with present-day reality. They know enough about the details to know whether or not the vision is being achieved and whether they’re on the right course.
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Have you noticed that some of your employees have the potential to be effective leaders? Get them the training they need with BLR’s TrainingToday Leadership for Employees Library. Get the details here.
2. Do You Have Written Goals for What You Hope to Accomplish?
Visions are often grandiose. Specific goals make them more manageable. So exceptional leaders are goal-setters, without exception. They do more than wish upon a star and wait for the law of attraction to give them everything they want and need.
While leaders understand and use the power of attraction, they do more than that. Leaders write down their goals, because they know a written goal is hundreds of times more likely to be achieved than a goal merely thought about.
3. Are You Focused on the Actions That Must Be Taken?
Leaders take action on the big vision and specific goals, and they refuse to make excuses for inaction. Leaders also delegate actions that others must take and make sure their followers take those actions. Leaders assertively ask others, “How are we going to get this done?”
In the final analysis, a leader cares more about getting things done than who gets the credit.
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Trying to get your employees trained to show leadership? It isn’t easy to fit it in—schedulewise or budgetwise—but now there’s BLR’s Leadership for Employees Library. Train all your people, at their convenience, 24/7, for one standard fee. Get More Information.
4. Do You Pursue Change? Are You Always Looking for Bigger and Better Results, Rather Than Sticking With the Status Quo?
Leaders initiate and shape change rather than passively accept the status quo. They challenge others when they hear them say, “We’ve never done it that way before.”
Change-making leaders are also readers—but they don’t just read for reading’s sake. Leaders read so they can get new ideas about how to change things for the better. When I coach executives, I ask them what they’ve read recently to improve themselves as a leader. But then I take them off guard when I say, “I don’t care what you’ve read. I want to know what changes you’ve made as a result of what you read.”
5. Do You Spend a Significant Amount of Time Communicating With Others? Are You Continually Improving Your Ability to Communicate?
Effective leaders communicate consciously and constantly. They think before they speak to make the impact they desire, and they communicate with everyone possible in the organization.
The best leaders are also known for the way they listen and the questions they ask. They adhere to the ageless advice that says you should “seek to understand before you seek to be understood.” Leaders stop assuming they understand and start asking a lot more questions to make sure they are truly communicating.
The best leaders practice paraphrasing—that is, they rephrase what they heard to see if they understand what the speaker intended to say. They listen, paraphrase, and then ask, “Did I get it right? Is that what you were trying to say?”
We’ll cover Zimmerman’s final four leadership tests in tomorrow’s Advisor.