Thanks to Gary Winters for a Great List!

Here is part of a recent post on Gary Winters’ blog, The Leadership Almanac.  He provides leaders with a great list to help them know if they’re on the right track as leaders. What I like about the list is that is focuses on the followers.

I often work on websites. It’s amazing how often content-providers just want to put information on the site about themselves. Many of them weem not to think of their users at all. What does the user need? What is he or she trying to do on the site? These are questions that, if answered, will always improve the quality of a website.

These leadership questions are similar. What does the follower need? What is the follower doing? How do his or her actions show progress? These are the best questions a leader can ask.

Here is the list:

• Are [my followers] passionate about the vision?
• Are they reaching their goals and objectives?
• Are they taking ownership of their role on the team?
• Do they hold themselves accountable for their performance?
• Do they demonstrate a passion for serving the customer? Each other?
• Are they stronger and more effective than, say, a year ago?
• Are they gracefully exercising more initiative?
• Are their skill sets improving?
• Do they challenge ideas instead of each other (or you)?
• Do they handle the inevitable conflict on the team well?
• Is your confidence in their competence increasing?
• Are they becoming leaders themselves?

Winters goes on to say, “Good followers are hard to find. Why? Because good leaders are hard to find as well! Your followers are a reflection of you – your strengths, your blind spots and even your idiosyncrasies.”

Answering the questions honestly might just tell you where you need to focus your leadership development efforts! As with websites, any such focus will almost certainly show positive results.