If you ask most people what good leadership is, they will typically reflect on leaders who have been effective for them in the past. Most people can confidently describe what good leaders do that effectively engages them to achieve great results.

If you then get these same people to reflect on how well they do these things themselves, you start to realise that it is not just a matter of knowing what works. Turning knowledge into effective action is a much greater challenge.

Most people are comforted by thinking that if they know something, they can do it. We therefore tend to have some illusions about our effectiveness. The only real test is to look at our results. What is the evidence of our effectiveness? Objectivity is the key.

Try this quick assessment of your leadership effectiveness:

• Is your organisation/team/project vision being realised?
• Are you executing the strategy?
• Is the organisation/team performing against budget, achieving engagement with stakeholders and results in the terms of your purpose?
• How is your reputation with all your stakeholders?
• How healthy is your culture?
• How do you score on engagement, job satisfaction and retention?
• How healthy is each individual’s psychological contract with the organisation?

Many leaders have areas of strength and so are effective in some aspects but not others. The leader’s areas of weakness typically limits their effectiveness in their areas of strength.

It can be quite confronting to discover that we are not as effective as we would like to believe. This is why people use their minds to create distortions that comfort them. However, these distortions have a very real effect as they frustrate attempts to achieve results. Developing the appetite for facing the truth and dealing with it is crucial to leadership effectiveness. It gives you a substantial advantage.

The challenge in facing the truth is based in our own relationship with ourselves. There are three questions that everyone seeks an answer to internally, whether we are aware of this search or not.
1. Who am I – my identity?
2. What’s my value?
3. How is that significant?

If you know the answers to these questions, you will have an internal stillness that creates the foundation for effectiveness.

With a strong and positive relationship with yourself, you will be willing to face the truth. However, if something challenges your internal answers to these questions, you are more likely to avoid that thing. For example: If you have established your sense of identity based on a position, title or reputation but it comes under threat, then so does your identity. However if you are not basing your identity on any symbols then you will not be vulnerable to that threat. You can move into discovery, seeking understanding and clarity.

In addition to facing the truth, there is the challenge of the desire for a sense of control over the situations and circumstances we have to influence. In reality, it is the essence of empowerment, the internal power you have to create.

Do you believe you have the ability to respond and deal with whatever you discover?

Leadership effectiveness requires resourcefulness, resilience and staying focused on what it is you are seeking to create.

Try this exercise:
Think about a leadership challenge you are facing; a result you are seeking, but have yet to achieve:

• What truth are you not facing about the situation, yourself or the people you need to influence?
• What would it mean if you faced that truth?
• What would you need to do if you did?
• What is your relationship with doing that (e.g. do you feel comfortable, afraid or something else)?
• What are the consequences of not doing that?
• What choices do you need to make?

Many people aspire to leadership without realising the challenges that effective leadership presents. If you embrace the challenges as a pathway to develop and expand your capabilities you will ensure that leadership, rather than being an exhausting commitment, becomes a quest of discovery.