How Will You Measure This Year? Do A Personal Leadership Review

It’s the end of the year. You’re scrambling to make the numbers, completing performance reviews for your people, finalizing business reviews so plans for next year can be fine-tuned. Sound familiar? For each of the last 20 years of my corporate career as each year drew toward a close it was a mad scramble to year end. As each of us rushes to get holiday gifts, let’s not forget ourselves. Each year I give myself the gift of reflection during the week between Christmas and New Year. Leadership guru Peter Drucker said “Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”

Most leadership is fairly unconscious, based on habits and behavior patterns we’ve learned over time.  A “Personal Leadership Review” helps us become more conscious of ourselves as leaders and over time we can choose to adopt leadership practices that will help us grow as leaders.  According to Emotional Intelligence 2.0, the traits of knowing and managing ourselves and knowing and managing others are highly correlated with our success and fulfillment. On average, those who score higher on Emotional Intelligence earn $34,000 more that those who don’t.

Here are some questions I am planning to ask myself during my “Personal Leadership Review”.

How Did I Lead Myself?

A big aspect of growth as a leader is in self-awareness of our strengths, our energizers, and our potential derailers. Here are some questions I am planning to ask myself.

1)      What did I learn about my leadership strengths? Were there any new strengths that I discovered?

2)      How well did I leverage my leadership strengths?

3)      What were the peak experiences this year where I found both success and fulfillment? What were some common themes among these peak experiences?

4)      How well did I take care of my personal energy? What have I discovered about my personal energizers? What demotivates or de-energizes me and what can I do about that?

5)      What were some areas where I did not meet my objectives? What would I do differently in order to have greater success in the future?

6)      How much did I get myself out of my comfort zone this year? In what areas did I grow this year?

7)      How well did I integrate my personal and professional priorities? What needs to be put in greater focus?

8)      Who are the people I can count on to give me honest feedback?

How Did I Lead Others?

I remember one of my biggest surprises was discovering what people truly remember about my impact in one of my corporate assignments. When I was running our company’s business in Mexico, we experienced great share gains, significant increases in innovation, and very good improvements in profit – the stuff great resumes are made of. Yet, what I hear from the people in the business – those who still keep in touch with me five years later – is more about the impact I had on the culture. What people remember is how a leader makes them feel. What they remember is the kind of environment for success the leader creates.

So here are some questions for reflection:

1)      What do my direct reports, superiors and peers believe about my impact on them?

2)      How well do I recognize and leverage the strengths of people on my team?

3)      How clearly am I communicating the vision and strategy?

4)      How engaged is my direct report team and the team under them?

5)      What did I do well in engaging others, what can I improve?

6)      What is the culture I am creating through my actions? Culture is simply the behavior we exhibit as leaders, not something we put on a fancy power point presentation.

7)      How do I leave people feeling when I meet with them? I had a boss who used to say that the mark of a good leader is not how people feel about the leader after they meet with them, but how the leader leaves them feeling about themselves.

8)      Who are the people that I mentored and sponsored this year? How well did I do as a mentor or sponsor to them? How well are they succeeding?

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Additional Resources:

To Unleash Employee Engagement – Make It Personal

This article was written by Henna Inam, C-level executive coach, global speaker, and author of the book Wired for Disruption. She helps leaders grow their agility to be a force for good and thrive in times of change. They create organizations that drive breakthroughs in innovation, growth, and engagement. In roles including Head E-Innovation and Chief Innovation and Marketing Officer, Henna drove transformation throughout her 20-year corporate career as an executive with Fortune 500 companies. Join the thousands who follow her blog here. Connect on Linkedin.