If your organization is like most, leaders are focused on year end reviews, inventories, or reports. As another year comes to a close we enter a time of reflection and evaluation. If you stop evaluating after reviewing your bottom line, sales numbers, and direct reports, you are making a huge mistake. Let me explain.
Don’t Leave Leadership in the Dark
The intent of these year end assessments is to discern how well (or not) your organization achieved its goals. What were this year’s successes and failures? What should be continued? What needs improving? You likely know this concept well.
However, leaders often overlook the most important factor in their organization’s success – their own leadership abilities.
Why not leverage the same kind of critical thinking to improve your leadership?
Why Assess Your Leadership?
There are 3 undeniable reasons every leader should conduct an annual assessment of their leadership abilities.
1. You Have Blind Spots
You have weaknesses. You are likely very aware of some, while others may be subtle or even beyond your awareness.
The confirmation bias causes you to find supporting evidence for your beliefs (ex. I’m a great communicator) and ignore the data points that go against your belief.
Maybe you aren’t communicating as clearly as you think you are. Perhaps you effectively motivate your team, but need to do more mentoring.
2. You Can Always Improve
The very best leaders continue to improve and adapt their leadership skills. If you think you have it all figured out as a leader (perhaps in your current position) you are limiting the longevity and trajectory of your career.
If you want to continue to be effective, you must continually adapt, hone, and refine your leadership ability.
3. You Are Responsible For Results
Ultimately, if you are a leader you are to blame when goals aren’t met. Similarly, you will receive credit when your team is successful.
Regardless of the bottom line, assessing your leadership abilities gives you insight into how to better lead your team and increase results for next year.
Free Download
To help you conduct a thorough leadership evaluation, I developed a free checklist 5 High Impact Areas to Assess in Your Leadership Evaluation.
Lead Well
As you reflect on the past year, set some time aside to evaluate how you’ve led those around you. What have you done well? In which areas do you need to improve? Grab my free checklist to help you be thorough. The better you lead, the greater the cohesion, growth, and overall success of your team. For any leader that is your single purpose – to help your team win, whatever the arena.
Question: Why are some leaders hesitant to evaluate their leadership abilities? I’d love to hear your opinion in the comments section.
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