What makes you a good leader?
According to Kouzes & Posner in their book The Leadership Challenge, a good leader can be broken down into 5 leadership practices that all inherit certain leadership behaviors.
- Model The Way – this states that a good leader must set the example they would like others to follow. They follow through on their promises and make sure others support common values and principles.
- Inspire A Shared Vision – Good leaders envision the future by describing or showing ideal capabilities in an upbeat and positive manner, while including and recognizing others interests
- Challenge The Process – Leaders search for new and innovative opportunities, they take risks, and are willing to experiment. They challenge skills and abilities, often breaking projects into smaller do-able portions while always asking the question of what can be learned.
- Enable Others To Act – A good leader will foster collaboration with cooperative relationships to strengthen others. They give others freedom and choice, supporting decisions made by others with respect.
- Encourage The Heart – Good leaders will creatively recognize, praise, and celebrate others contributions and successes through appreciation and encouragement.
A recent assignment I completed in the High Performance Coaching and Technical Leadership program through UBC, we conducted a 360 analysis through Kouzes and Posner’s Lerdership Practices Inventory. This allowed me to assess my leadership skills and practices from my own viewpoint and from my peers. I found this to be a very useful tool in which I was both humbled and relieved. It showed that my peers saw me as a strong leader; however, it made me realize certain practices and behaviors in which I need to work on, along with practices and behaviors I should continue to be strong with. An interesting fact that became evident was that I may be harder on myself than needed to be. There were certain practices in which I thought needed improvement, in which my peers actually thought I was stronger than I presumed. The little things count, and although these leadership behaviors may not be a major thought to my own leadership practice, certain behaviors can be viewed different in others who receive it. With this new knowledge of where my strengths and weaknesses lie within my leadership practices, I have a new focus and direction with how to lead my team of coaches and athletes.
Are you a good leader?
What might your strengths and weaknesses as a leader be?
References
- (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.studentleadershipchallenge.com/Assessments.aspx
- Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1987). The Leadership Challenge: How To Make Extraordinary Things Happen In Organizations (5th). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
- Kouzes, J. M., & Pozner, B. Z. (2013). Leadership practices inventory workbook: Understanding and making sense of your LPI feedback(4th ed.). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Sean, thanks for the blog post. This is good evidence of where there is a linkage between some of the other courses and KIN 598. I was curious what your action plan would be to maximize or improve your leadership practice. Further, it is interesting that across all of the coaches there seems to be some Leadership practices that are rated lower than others. One of these is the practice “encouraging the heart” which seems interesting for coaches as this is a practice which we have a lot of impact and influence. Yet, time and time again I see this practice rated lower across most coaches compared to the other practices. One project that I want to undertake is analyzing the LPI scores across coaches and practices. Thoughts?
Thanks for the reply Dave, I had also had the same curious thought on wondering what common scores might be high or low for proven successful leaders. I’d be interested to see what you come of that research.
Hi Sean,
I also found the 360 exercise insightful and humbling. It is certainly a great tool to assess where we are as leaders. Do you think you will conduct another one to see where you have closed some gaps in your leadership skills to compare what has changed?
Best wishes in the New Year!
Shawna, I think I might one day, however I feel this gives me some good insight and a way to reflect on my intentions to actions with coaching and leading. I can say that I have certainly thought twice about some actions and changed my way of delivering those actions due to recognizing certain traits and skills from this exercise.
Thanks for that post Sean – how is the progress on your development of these leadership skills described above? I agree, that feedback and self-reflection are massively important for becoming a better leader. I also think that self-reflection leads to self-awareness. When you have self-awareness, you can enter into challenging situations authentically. Leadership is important to me and I want to be a good leader. I think there are some situations when I display behaviours consistent with good leadership and other situations where I don’t. One thing I am working on this year is to not indulge in negative emotions. Feeling anger, frustration, jealousy, and contempt are normal for all of us. However, when we hold onto these emotions to punish others or to make a point, we can end up burning our own energy in unproductive ways and it also diminishes our leadership ability. I’m working on self-awareness and making a conscious decision to not let some of the above mentioned emotions rule my behaviours.
Thanks for sharing that Matt,
I feel like this has helped me in a few situations in the way I create actions from intention. Having an understanding that actions can be perceived differently, and the manner that they are delivered can drastically dictate that. I have been able to pick up on my weaknesses and spend a little more thought and care into those areas of leadership. I feel that this has also helped me understand the coaches that I lead a little bit better. I have taken some time to reflect and understand them better, in the sense of how they respond to certain situations. I am naturally a realist, which sometimes has me make some unnecessary rational decisions, I have been working on looking at the overall picture better and sometimes giving the benefit of the doubt to let things work itself out a bit more.