There are many threats to your business. These include outside threats that are likely very specific to the type of business you are in, and dealing with them may require very specific responses. But there are also threats from within that are common to all business, and they have to do with leadership.
How are competencies and threats related?
Competencies and threats are the flip sides of the same coin. A lack of competency in the leadership team is perhaps one of the greatest threats to your business. No-one is more powerful, and more of a potential threat, than a company’s own senior management, so it is critical that you develop the right leadership skills. Though it may be shocking at first to think of leadership as a potential threat to your business, it is also a great motivator. Best of all is the fact that this is a threat that you have the exclusive power to address, because it comes from within. Once you acknowledge that your business is under threat from a lack of competency, including your own, you can move to address it, and, most critically, assess whether your solution is working.
Universality of leadership assessment criteria
We can identify another threat here, and that is the one posed by a bad assessment of existing leadership competency or attempted improvements in leadership competency. By the very act of engaging in the process, however, you cease to be an independent observer. When we embark on something, we become attached to it and lose objectivity. What may come as a surprise is that the optimum criteria for assessing leadership at this level are common to such an extent that they are effectively universal, including across industries and cultures. But should this really come as such a surprise? This is not about managerial duties, or productivity targets, that are specific to a business or its work culture, but concerns the essence of truly inspirational leadership and thought leadership. An example of this type of leadership is being able to convey to subordinates that you are not better than them by virtue of your higher rank, but rather have a different role in working to a common goal.
Specific assessment protocols
This knowledge has been translated into a series of specific questions and methods of analysis applied to the responses to those questions that can directly assess whether this type of thought leadership is being exhibited, and also serve as an ongoing metric to determine if it is being developed correctly. Bad assessments can lead to bad policy and bad execution of even the best ideas, so it’s important to partner with someone who is already an expert in performing this type of assessment. Our multi-point assessment of leadership style measures eight distinct styles that leaders can display at the individual level, and then assesses how those individual leadership skills are combining within your leadership team. You will learn the predominant styles that your leadership team exhibits, and what is missing.
When considering their own leadership development, it’s easy to focus on task-oriented areas of growth. But effective leadership requires more than functional skills. Today’s leaders also need to be skilled at nurturing professional relationships.
Keep reading to find out relationship-based leadership skills shared by successful managers and CEOs.
