Great leaders understand a key indicator of their effectiveness is found in the answer to the question: How did I affect you?
The term, attitude gets a bad rap most of the time. We associate attitude with words such as bad, uncooperative, truculent, antagonistic. When was the last time you heard someone say, “That person has an attitude,” and you interpreted it as a compliment? Attitude needs a p.r. campaign.
I’ll wager a month’s worth of coffee that if you asked everyone that you know to generate a list on what makes an effective leader, the output would be nearly identical. So if this construct of an effective leader is so readily apparent, why is there a nearly endless supply of disgruntled workers capable of describing lousy leader horror stories to anyone that will listen?
At the beginning of my leadership workshops, one of the ice-breaking activities is to have the participants think about and jot down the characteristics and behaviors of great and lousy leaders that they've experienced in their careers. It's always fun to watch the small groups attack this task with relish.
t takes a strong reserve of self-confidence to be an effective leader. It’s also remarkably easy to get comfortable crossing the fine but dangerous line between self-confidence and arrogance. The best leaders are conscious of that boundary and walk along it but resist the lure to cross into this self-gratifying but credibility destroying country.
