If you’ve spent time in a leadership role, you know that it is remarkably difficult to get good quality feedback on how you are doing and for that matter, how everyone else is doing under your leadership.

If you haven’t wondered about this, you are either naïve or you are caught up in all of the nice things that people say in your presence. Newsflash: almost no one tells the boss he stinks, when he’s in the room.

Some of the worst leaders that I’ve had the displeasure to cross paths with, plied their evil practices with glee, protected by the cheering throngs around them. Behind their backs however, conversations sounded a lot like a planning session for a greeting party for Caesar during March. If I’m not mistaken, I heard the sound of knives being sharpened.

Alternatively, some of the best leaders and managers that I’ve encountered struggled a great deal with this issue. They heard the same cheers but were curious and concerned enough to wonder whether the cheering was for the title or the person and practices.

Some organizations attempt to remedy this by the use of assessments of various types, and these absolutely can be helpful. Nonetheless, I find assessments a lot like wondering what the temperature is outside on a sunny day by turning on the television.  It’s a lot more real if you stick your head out the door and feel it for yourself.

I write and talk and mentor from the perspective that a primary task of a leader is to create the effective working environment. While the pace and energy of the environment may vary depending upon business or cultural circumstances, it is always up to the leader to infuse the environment with the values and practices that support accountability, results, innovation, fair-play and even creativity and innovation, to name a few.

Taking this a step further, I encourage leaders to look for signs in the environment that their leadership practices are working. While this approach lacks the rigor that some HR professionals like about formal assessments, an astute leader can learn to stick her head out the door and get a pretty good feel for the temperature of her leadership practices.

The Seven Indicators of the Effective Work Environment

  1. Individuals and teams display a great deal of pride, collaboration and cooperation to meet and exceed objectives.
  2. Failure to meet or exceed objectives is met with healthy frustration that quickly is channeled into lessons-learned and “what we’ll do better” discussions.
  3. Regardless of individual roles, teams spontaneously assemble to meet specific challenges and then dissolve once the challenges have been met.
  4. The group becomes self-policing on quality, timeliness and conduct.
  5. The drive to innovate and create value comes from within the team not from management.
  6. The teams learn how to fight and to play together.
  7. Output tangibly supports strategic objectives and improves the ability of the organization to meet customer needs.

While there is a great deal of subjectivity in judging the Seven Indicators, I’m OK with you’ll know it when you see and feel it or when you don’t. The weatherman can give you all of the meteorological reasons behind the sunny day you see through the window, but until you step outside of your Chicago office in February and feel your nose hairs freeze on your first breath, you don’t truly know what it’s like out there. (OK, metaphors aren’t my strong suit!)

The Bottom-Line for Now:

The best leaders are critically aware of their role and power in shaping the environment on their teams and inside their organizations. They are also aware that almost no one will ever provide the boss honest, actionable feedback on performance. I encourage leaders to develop an extreme awareness of what is going on around them as the best indicator of their effectiveness. Pay attention, look, listen and then ask questions and take actions that help people solve problems. Do this enough and that sunny day might just feel a whole lot warmer.