How good are you at Leadership?

Did you know that Leadership is a competency that you can develop? We define the Leadership competency as, "Organizing and influencing people to believe in a vision while creating a sense of purpose and direction." Who do you know who is highly skilled at Leadership?

With practice, you can grow and develop this skill just like other "hard skills" you might be good at like cooking, public speaking, employee coaching, or playing golf.

How do I grow as a leader: Leadership?

Those with a highly developed skill of Leadership exhibit the following:

• Inspires others with compelling visions.
• Takes risks for the sake of purpose, vision or mission.
• Builds trust and demonstrates integrity with a noticeable congruence between words and actions.
• Demonstrates optimism and positive expectations of others.
• Delegates appropriate levels of responsibility and authority.
• Involves people in decisions that affect them.
• Addresses performance issues promptly, fairly and consistently.
• Adapts methods and approaches to create an environment to allow others to be successful.
• Makes decisions that are best for the organization and attempts to mitigate the negative consequences for people.
• Demonstrates loyalty to constituents.

Behaviorally, it comes more naturally and requires less focus for some of us to effectively lead others. For the rest of us, it is a skill we may need to invest energy into developing in order to be more effective. Our Driving Forces will reward for some skills and not others. If your job or your environment demands something from you that isn't naturally present in your Behaviors or Driving Forces, you can develop it in your Competencies. 

What about you? How developed are you at the competency of Leadership? What about the people on your team? Is this something you want your team to be strong in?