Ever questioned what makes an effective leader? You’re certainly not alone.
Identifying the key qualities of an effective leader can be challenging because efficacy and success are so often seen as synonymous.
But there is a crucial distinction between the two.
Consider being given a target as a leader. Hitting it means you’ve been successful on paper, but what if you simultaneously lost employee trust and confidence in the process?
You might be regarded as successful, but it’s far less clear as to whether you’ve been effective as a leader.
This is because being an effective leader often doesn’t just come down to what you achieve, but what you help others to achieve, too.
How to be an effective leader checklist
Here are five key concepts that can help you to more accurately assess your effectiveness as a leader:
1. Mirror and window analogy
This analogy is centred around how you see yourself (mirror) compared to how others experience you (through the window).
In leadership, it’s common for us to think we’ve done a good job, but other people might have a different opinion.
This is because we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions, whereas others often focus on our behaviour. This is known as fundamental attribution error.
This is clear in everyday situations.
Consider someone cutting you up in traffic. You might assume that person is rude or inconsiderate.
However, if you did the same thing, you’d probably justify it with having a bad morning or running late.
As a leader especially, you often get judged by your behaviour, not what you were trying to do.
As a result, some of the most effective leaders don’t just look for the praise points, they look for constructive feedback – because they understand the importance of how others experience them.
Ask yourself: would your team describe you the same way you describe yourself?
2. The engine and the handbrake
Are you the engine that helps your team move forward, or the handbrake that creates dependency?
As a leader, it’s your job to help people improve, grow and develop. Building their confidence, capability and independence, rather than positioning yourself as someone that must be relied on indefinitely.
Unfortunately, some leaders can conflate this feeling of being needed with being effective. And it is easy to see why. We all like to feel needed, wanted and valued. But that can mean many leaders unintentionally fall into the trap of becoming the handbrake instead of the engine.
Truly effective leaders create more leaders, not just more followers. They build teams that can think, decide and act without constantly looking to them for answers and creating bottlenecks.
Ask yourself: are you the engine or the handbrake? And without you, would your team flourish or flounder?
3. The leadership shadow
Every leader casts a shadow. When they walk into the workplace, the mood can shift instantly, either positively or negatively, depending on their behaviour.
This is because a leader’s behaviours can become other people’s permission, directly influencing the way they behave and the choices they make.
Take, for example, a leader being willing to put their hand up and say ‘I don’t know’ in response to a question.
That’s actually a very powerful behaviour because it clearly communicates that it’s okay for the rest of the team to not know the answer sometimes.
On the other hand, if a leader acts like they have all the answers to everything all the time, everyone else can feel pressure to do the same.
The most effective leaders cultivate a healthy workplace culture through what they do and what they tolerate, not simply what they say.
Ask yourself: how do you want your team to behave, and would you want everyone behaving like you?
4. The harvest or the soil
Some of the most effective leaders are those who recognise that while results, performance, productivity and success matter, so too does sustainability.
If the short-term success (the harvest) ends up creating long-term damage (by compromising the soil), then the conditions supporting that success (such as motivated, productive teams) cannot be sustained.
Unfortunately, some leaders will justify sacrificing these conditions with well-known idioms such as “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”, believing that’s an acceptable response.
In reality, they’re failing to adopt a more effective leadership approach which protects the conditions that nurture performance on a long-term basis.
Ask yourself: are your people stronger because of your leadership or simply more exhausted?
5. Student versus teacher
Experience is incredibly valuable, especially when we take the time to reflect on it. But having too much certainty can be dangerous.
Experience starts to teeter into excess certainty when we adopt limiting mindsets such as, “Well, that’s just the way things are.”
Subsequently, effective leaders should be the teacher, but they should also have a willingness to learn and change their mind, too.
If you’re committed to staying curious, being humble and remaining open to change, this ‘student-like’ mindset is actually one of the most effective leadership approaches you can take.
Because leadership isn’t something you ever actually completely master, you just continue to get better.
Ask yourself: are you teaching or learning? And when did you last change your mind?
So, what makes an effective leader?
If you’ve struggled to answer any of the five questions posed in the heart of this article, then you might want to reevaluate whether your leadership approach is truly effective.
Because the most effective leaders aren’t measured solely through targets, profits, achievements and win/loss ratios. They’re assessed through trust, culture, growth, confidence and what they leave behind.
Because ultimately, the real measure of effective leadership isn’t your success, it’s the success you make possible for others.
This leads us to our last and final question…
Ask yourself: are people better because you led them or have you simply been successful because they followed?
Talk to Drew Povey Consultancy
Concerned that you’re missing some of the core characteristics of an effective leader or want to further develop your existing skills?
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