What is the Measurement of Leadership?
How do our assumptions about leadership reveal our perceptions about leadership.
I’ve Been Thinking About Leadership
I realize that I am a failure.
For forty years, I’ve been studying leadership, taking leadership courses, reading books on leadership, watching videos on leadership, thinking about leadership, consulting, coaching, teaching, training, mentoring, writing, speaking, and now podcasting on leadership.
I am influential with people who know me. But obviously, not influential enough.
I’m no social media darling, but the people I know trust me and honor me with their friendship. They respect me and trust me, and them in return. Yet, my career proves that influence is not leadership.
I am privileged to know people all over the world. I communicate with them almost every day. I understand their challenges and opportunities. Our similarities are greater than our differences. I support them, believe in them, cheer for them, pray for them, listen to them, and learn from them.
However, when I step back from my work and look at the world, we are in worse shape leadership-wise than we have been over the past dozen or so generations.
I have failed to communicate the urgency of believing in leadership impact. I know people who say to me that they don’t believe we need leadership. As I look at the world, they just may be right. Or, are we where we are because we are starved for leadership?
I believe in people. I believe that each person can make a difference that truly matters. BUT, I believe that we have to think differently about everything. We can’t manage our way through what we are living in today.
If you are happy and satisfied with the way the world is functioning, you are probably one of those Ostrichs that I wrote about here. I want you stop for a moment and ask, “Why is he saying this? What am I missing?” Because from where I stand, the world is less prosperous, less peaceful, less free, less healthy, less happy, less fun, less hopeful, and less prepared to deal with crisis than at any point in my lifetime. Don’t give me data and opinion polls to prove me wrong with particulars. Look at the BIG PICTURE. Its where the real story is.
When I began my consulting practice in 1995, my purpose was to help strengthen organizations to strengthen families and local communities. Later, my purpose became "to help people take personal initiative to create impact in their local communities.” When I wrote my book, Circle of Impact: Taking Personal Initiative to Ignite Change, my purpose was the same, but my goal was “to see 1% of the world’s population take personal initiative to create impact in their local communities.”
I was asked, “How are you going to do that?” I said, “I’m not. I’m going to seed the world with the idea.” It is a big job in a chaotic environment.
I want you to answer this question now:
“What is leadership to you, and how do you measure it?”
We begin here because this will tell us what kind of world we’ll want and how we’ll get there.
Assumptions about Leadership
In preparation for a presentation, I wrote down some positive assumptions about leadership that seem to be commonly held today.
Leaders have followers.
Leadership is a role and title in an organization.
Leadership is influence.
Leadership and management are the same.
Leadership trust is a function of personal charisma.
Leaders know how to get people to do things.
There are also some negative assumptions about leaders.
Leaders can’t be trusted.
Leaders serve their own interest.
Leaders are not accountable.
Leaders have targets on their backs. Don’t ask me to lead!
Leadership is no longer relevant.
Whether these statements are true in general or specifically about a particular person or situation is not the point. Instead. these ideas represent our perception and relationship with leaders. If we assume that these statements are true, then we will fail to discover our own path to leadership.
10 Other Assumptions
In July of 2008, on my old, now extinct, weblog Leading Questions, I did a thought experiment called 31 Questions.
Each day during the month, I posted a question with a short comment. You can download the series here.
However, in order to provide some context to these questions, I posted a set of assumptions about leadership.
These are 10 Assumptions that I bring to the practice of leadership.
1. Leadership is both a role and a responsibility.
2. Leadership is role-specific based on position within the organizational structure.
3. Leadership is a responsibility when it is a matter of influence and impact.
4. Leadership occurs in the context of human relationships.
5. Leadership is measured by Impact. Impact is the change or difference that comes from decisions made and actions taken.
6. Leadership is everyone’s responsibility.
7. Leadership originates in the act of personal initiative. Initiative is the action that follows a decision to act.
8. Leadership initiative is an action that everyone can take, regardless of role, experience or skill.
9. Leadership development helps people understand how to think, relate and act to make a difference.
10. Leadership can take place within an organizational structure or within an informal relationship of people.
How Do We Measure Leadership?
Leadership in our world is in a very problematic state—or, shall I say, in a very confused state of understanding about what it is and how it is to be performed.
Let’s begin with this question.
“How do we measure leadership?”
For generations, business people have said that we get what we measure. If we want leadership, what are we measuring? I believe this problem centers around the context of leadership in organizations. We confuse management with leadership. Said another way, “Too often, good or bad management is assumed to be a product of good or bad leadership.”
A better way to understand the relationship between leadership and management is to say, “All managers can be leaders, but not all leaders will be managers.”
We ask again.
What, then, is the measure of leadership?
Based on my observations and engagement with leaders over four decades, the true measure of leadership is found in the leadership capacity of the whole organization. It is not one person or an elite group that is the measurement, but the whole organization.
In other words, the leadership of the people is the true measure of leadership. This is reflected in my observation about organizations as “a persistent, residual culture of values that persists because it resides in the relationships of the people.”
As a result,
the head of the organization,
whether owner, CEO, or general manager
is the facilitator of leadership.
We still need to answer the question,
“What is the measure of leadership?”
Transferring responsibility from a few leaders to all the people in the organization does not answer the question either. Even this major shift in orientation simply reveals that an organization that is leadership starved needs more than just more leaders to become leader-rich.
Facilitating a Leader-Rich Organization
Let’s now return to my 2008 assumptions about leadership and apply them to the whole of the organization.
We begin with defining leadership.
All leadership begins with personal initiative
to create impact that makes a difference that matters.
The key to facilitating leadership throughout an organization is the recognition that there are patterns of behavior that produce leaders. It is not just taking personal initiative to create impact. It is taking initiative in specific ways that builds strength throughout the organization.
These 10 assumptions are a guide to how to envision such an organization.
Leadership is both a role and a responsibility.
Everyone has a role in an organization, identified on the organizational chart. With that role comes specific responsibilities. The parameters of the role and the specificities of responsibilities must be clear and realistic. Once they are, the individual is free to take personal initiative within the boundaries of the position. The reality of organizations is that people do not work alone but collaboratively, so each person needs training and support in three distinct areas.
Adaptive problem solving
Networking for access to information and resources needed to fulfill their responsibility.
The freedom to change and innovate when circumstances dictate.
Leadership is role-specific based on position within the organizational structure.
In a collaborative environment, this means that the team operates by a strategy described by Robert Greenleaf as “a first among equals.” Whoever has the responsibility and the expertise in the situation under consideration functions as the lead in that moment. In this sense, there is no permanent lead with everyone else being followers. At all times, each person functions in a dynamic of leading and following.
Leadership is a responsibility when it is a matter of influence and impact.
Influence is the act and product of persuasion. Leaders influence by communicating so that others understand their responsibility.
Impact is change that makes a difference that matters. Impact is the product of initiative, whether personal or collaborative.
Influence is not an end product but a means to create impact.
Leadership occurs in the context of human relationships.
Management manages things and systems. Leadership leads people and groups.
The basis of human relationships is respect with trust and mutual accountability for the outcome.
Where respect is absent, leadership is lacking.
Leadership is measured by Impact. Impact is the change or difference that comes from decisions made and actions taken.
If impact is change, then what does change look like? What is the difference that matters that we seek? If our perspective of impact is obscure, then our leadership is obscure. Is this why influence is considered the goal of leadership?
A clear understanding of the desired impact is a product of clarity concerning values and purpose.
Leadership is everyone’s responsibility.
The expectation that people take leadership initiative within their role in the organization needs to be clearly articulated at the point of hiring and in evaluation processes thereafter. Training and support are essential if the expectation to take leadership initiative is to produce leadership impact.
Most organizational structures are not designed for leadership but for efficient management. Therefore, the key to facilitating leadership is the formation of relationships of respect, trust, and mutual accountability.
Leadership originates in the act of personal initiative. Initiative is the action that follows a decision to act.
Taking personal impact is part of a decision-making process. The challenge for an employee is knowing the limits of personal initiative for his or her role. This is done by first clarifying the purpose of impact and then identifying the measure for the achieved impact.
Leadership initiative is an action that everyone can take, regardless of role, experience or skill.
As my friend Don Flow reminds his key people, impact with customers is a product of personal character and competency.
At the core of our company is a commitment to relationships based on trust. Trust involves both character (tell the truth, be transparent, and never advantage yourself to the disadvantage of the other) and competency (keep our promises-do what we say we will do). If we only have one without the other, customer’s will not trust us.
To understand leadership from this perspective is to realize that each person sees themselves participating in the life of the organization. They don’t just show up, do their work, and go home. They are focused on contributing to the organization's impact.
Leadership development helps people understand how to think, relate, and act to make a difference.
The facilitation of leadership across an organization requires the development of resilience and adaptability skills. Not only does everyone learn to do their jobs well, but they also learn to change their jobs as necessary. Imagine a question asked during annual evaluation sessions, “How do we need to change your job to make it more impactful?”
Change benefits the customer as well as the organization. For it to have its most beneficial effect, it must occur in a collaborative environment. I have found in places where change is embraced, relationships flourish because a much higher level of conversation must take place to keep everyone informed of the transitions that are always happening.
Leadership can take place within an organizational structure or within an informal relationship of people.
Leadership is how humans function. It is how human beings flourish in life, throughout their lives, through their careers, and in their relationships with their community and family.
The Difference that Shared Leadership Creates
If an organization is dependent upon senior people to be the leaders and everyone else to be a follower, the organization is in a state of leadership starvation.
If a leader ignores his or her people, just expecting them to do their job, they are running their business, not leading their business.
If a company in the midst of change believes it can wait for things to return to normal, then it has accepted the marginalization of its business.
The reality that we live with today is that we need to be constantly vigilant in observing and reorienting to changes in the marketplace and community. Change is the norm, and constant change is the new normal.
As senior leaders, we cannot manage all of this alone.
We need our people to be alert to changes in their specific context through communication with the whole organization so that impact initiatives can be taken in a coordinated, collaborative way.
For this reason, senior leaders become the facilitators of their people's leadership. This is how impact becomes a focus of strategy.
Opportunities are available to every organization and every person within it. But they are only available if you look for them. Therefore the first initiative to take is to participate in a way that contributes to the impact of the organization.