compassNote: the Seven Key Questions for Ambitious, Aspiring Leaders are presented in Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro. I’ll explore each question here at Building Better Leaders through individual “Leadership Tip of the Day” posts, offering ideas for investigation.

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One of the fundamental tasks of any leader is to identify and develop his/her leadership bench strength.

In the ideal situation, the leader is watching her associates for signs of effective informal leadership skills, and then providing developmental assignments to those individuals interested in moving into more formal leadership roles. In this case, the aspiring leader gains valuable context for the role and challenges of leading and the manager is able to provide feedback and coaching.

Another scenario occurs when individual contributors or early career professionals recognize the potential benefits of a leadership role (usually it’s about money or title), and declare to their manager that they are ready to lead a team. Ask any experienced leader if they have been on the receiving end of someone walking into their office and making this declaration, and the leader will likely smile.

In either situation, the leader in charge can benefit from some simple but powerful questions to guide the ensuing discussions and activities.

The First Question:

1. Why do you want to lead other people?

This straightforward question can be disarming to the erstwhile leader. Often, well-intentioned professionals have not thought through what it is about leading others that they find appealing.

If the motivation is simply money, title or overall advancement (all reasonable desires), this question provides the opportunity to draw these objectives out and begin discussing the many ways that advancement can occur.  Often, this question will clearly indicate that the individual does not have proper context for the true role of a leader, again opening the door for an important discussion.

The aspiring leader or coach/manager of the aspiring leader can use this simple question to encourage exploration and investigation into this heady topic.  Try talking about the motivation to lead with other leaders of varying experience levels.  A senior engineering manager offered to me that his motivation was very straight-forward: “I can contribute more to the firm by helping a group of engineers, than I can by working on my own.”  Another people-savvy manager had discovered that one of her strengths was building coalitions across organizational silos.  She found the ability to do this nearly-full time in support of helping people achieve their goals to be a rewarding experience and her primary motivation for leading.

Until the aspiring leader can plainly and genuinely articulate the answer to “Why?” they are unprepared to lead.