Leadership Test - Top 22 Questions

"Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without strategy.”

-General H. Norman

There’s a big difference between just being a team leader, and leading so that people will willingly want to follow you. The real leadership test is influence.

For example, what if you were employed with a volunteer organization, and your employees’ livelihoods, perks and benefits were not based on whether or not they did what you asked? Would they still do as you say? Do you think they admire, respect and trust you as a role model, mentor and team leader?

Leadership Test:

Below are 22 questions to ask yourself about how you are performing as a leader. Do you demonstrate honesty, credibility and competence? You may also want to pass this leadership assessment on to your team. How well are they performing compared with other team members? Consider using this leadership test in performance reviews and for discussions in meetings.

1. As a team leader, how do I show that I am honest? Do I do what I say I am going to do?
2. Do I make competence, character and credibility priorities? How?
3. Do I listen effectively to others with an open mind even when I may disagree?
4. How do I demonstrate honest yet tactful communication with team members?
5. Do I demonstrate good people skills, or effective leadership skills with my team?
6. How am I thoughtful and considerate of others in the department?
7. How do I demonstrate my vision and the organization’s vision in a way that others clearly can understand?
8. Do employees see how this vision applies to them and to the big picture?
9. Do I understand my own goals and how they tie in with organizational goals?
10. Are the company goals and my individual goals specific, measurable and in writing?
11. How do I take responsibility for my own job?
12. Am I proactive in taking on or looking for additional responsibility?
13. How do I tactfully suggest better ways of doing things?
14. How do I offer ideas for improvement without putting others on the defensive?
15. Do I show up on time for work and begin work immediately in a way that contributes to the team?
16. Am I alert and “mentally” present for work?
17. How do I work to promote better morale with my team and other departments?
18. How would I grade the overall quality of my work?
19. Do I complete assignments on time and without being negative?
20. How do I put forth my best in producing a product or service in which others can take pride?
21. Have I received leadership training in the area of conflict resolution?
22. Am I open to leadership training in the areas of personal and professional development? If I've received this type of training, am I applying the skills learned?

Go back and reread the first five questions of this leadership test. As a team leader or manager, how are you demonstrating character, honesty, and credibility? I’ve found that in conducting leadership training worldwide, these are key characteristics employees want to see for them to willingly WANT to follow their leader.

Were you able to answer "yes" to most of the questions? How would other team leaders in your organization score?Remember, if people know they can trust you, they’ll follow you.

Leaders - Leading Through Example

Leaders must lead by their own example. If subordinates see their leader doing one thing and saying another, they may follow the letter of the law and obey what is said without really following the spirit behind what the leader is trying to accomplish. Not following the spirit behind a rule can result in a very large loss in efficiency.

There was a CEO of a large company that was having a problem with parking. He told everyone they needed to park in a lower lot to give customers more space to park. By parking in his old spot, employees saw that he was following a different standard. While they followed the letter of the law, they didn't follow the concept behind what the CEO was trying to say about putting the customer first.

In a similar situation the president of a large university had a parking space near the building where she worked. Students had to park at the bottom of the hill and ride a bus to the campus. Several times a week, students found that they were riding on the bus with the college president because she wanted to park where the students were parking so she could make sure she understood how they had to park and get to school.

Students had a great deal of respect for the college president because she was following her own rules even though she didn't have to. The students felt like she valued them and as a result put a great deal of effort into helping the university succeed.

When you are able to lead through example, you show people the way to act and think. Showing people is much better than telling them. When you tell someone they will only understand a small percentage of what you said. When you show them they will understand not only what you meant to say, but the intent behind what you would have said. When people see you leading the way they can put their entire effort behind your intention and not feel like they have to reserve part of themself because you are trying to take advantage of them.

The Seven Cornerstones of Leadership

We hear so much these days about leadership, especially when things go wrong. The faults of so-called leaders are really highlighted when they are found wanting be they corporate executives, presidents, spiritual leaders, coaches, or parents. What qualities do true leaders posses?

Following exhaustive study from the best M.BA Business Schools they are:

1. Clarity of Vision

Leaders are all future oriented thinkers. They ask, ‘what would my organization look like 5 years from today’? Once they have this clarity in detail, they boldly act so as to go where they have never gone before.

2. Courage

Leaders roll up their sleeves and dive in. It’s one thing to have a set of objectives, another to have the courage to execute - hence the term ‘executive’. Leaders have the same fears and doubts as anyone else. The difference is that their courage is so powerful that it easily extinguishes the negative voices within. They take action.

3. Integrity

Integrity is the indispensable quality of leadership. Leaders deliver on their promises. 24 /7. Yet some people in positions of leadership operate as if their integrity is situational. In other words, they act honestly depending on the situation at hand. No, no. Integrity is like being pregnant. Either you are or you are not. This is especially the case in business, whereby goods and services are primarily bought not so much on what they can deliver, but on truth and honesty from the part of those doing the delivering.

4. Responsibility

True leaders never complain about how things turn out. You will never hear them make excuses. U.S. president Harry S. Truman had a sign with this inscription on his desk – ‘the buck stops here’. This was meant to indicate that he didn't 'pass the buck' to anyone else but accepted personal responsibility for the way the country was governed.

5. Commitment

True leaders are fully committed to the tasks required to succeed. You will find that they are passionate about the results they aim at. They never attempt anything that their heart isn't into. Passion is the fuel that allows leaders to push forward, up, over, and around any obstacles along the way.

6. Focus

Leaders concentrate their energies, strengths and skills that make the greatest positive difference to the situation at hand. They are very mindful of that most valuable of resources, time, and as such set clear priorities on the best use of it. They are aware of their many weaknesses, which they delegate, and hone in on a handful of strengths that bring the greatest value to the organization.

7. Excellence

Good enough is never near enough for leaders. They are very meticulous about detail, as they have a philosophy where everything matters. Everything. Achieving excellence is not that difficult, since the majority settle at mediocrity. Thus leaders always go that extra mile. They also know that in order to get extraordinary performance form their people, they themselves must be extraordinary. There is no other way to do this than to stand out from the pack through an excellence mentality.If you lack even one of the qualities listed, then you have yet to reach leadership status. Here’s the good news. Leaders are never born. They are made. The only way to acquire any one of these 7 pillars for leadership is to begin to practice it. In time, you will become a true leader.

Leadership Definition

Generally leadership and leader skills themselves require a professional knowledge, good practice and often intuition. It truly requires powerful potential from a pile of dull grey rubble. Sometimes the purpose of leadership is instructive, interactive, participative, mentoring, or dictatorial. In all cases, leadership involves influence and power.

When defining leadership power, it is critical to appreciate that the perception of someone as a leader is just as important as the legitimacy of that perception. Once the perception is defined and accepted by the group, its legitimacy becomes mute. But leadership has to be recognized by others in order to be effectively used. The important issues to remember about leadership are that perception is just as important as the position, rank, or office; and effective leadership occurs when everyone knows exactly what is expected, and what the rewards or risks will be. Scientists have developed six power categories which are necessary to be a real leader. They defined coercive power, expert power, information power, legitimate power, referent power and reward power. All of these powers however, would not be useful and effective if a person could not impress people by his potential. Good potential for leader is the ability to not divide and separate but to join without personal exception. In such case people surrounding a leader would come to realize that he would not give them an assignment that he himself was not willing to lead, and therefore because of his willingness to share the risk, his men were able to accomplish their goals with a high level of confidence and professionalism.

So why is leadership important to an organization? Without leadership the organization will lack focus or direction, and without direction there will not be any destination. Therefore, if the organization cannot find out where to go, then any road are open to a real leader.

All about Health Insurance

Today having good health is the most important thing in an individual’s life. Poor nutritional choices might lead you in a major disaster. Another most important factor that one has to look for the best possible deals in order to be covered appropriately and that is called insurance.

Insurance might cover you at all the possible stage life. Finding affordable health insurance with good coverage could be a big tentative block to hitting the road. There is no easy answer. There is no method around doing your own research to see which state and policy that is right for you. Your search would be multiple by the fact that each state regulates insurance companies so you’ll find great difference in prices, coverage and consumer protections. Costs would vary too, based on factors like your age, type of coverage, state of your health and any preexisting conditions.

Health insurance is a necessity for all. With medical expenses soaring every day higher than a hang glider, paying for them could have you digging deep into the pockets of your jeans.

What types of health insurance are available?

Health insurance plans usually falls into one of two categories: indemnity plans (also known as reimbursement plans) and other one managed care plans such as health maintenance organizations (HMOs), preferred provider organizations (PPOs), and point of service (POS) plans.

An indemnity plan gives the privilege to choose your own doctors and pays for your own medical expenses totally, in part, or even up to a specified amount per day for a specified number of days.

Managed care plans generally provide wider coverage, but they all have an arrangement between the insurer and a selected network of health-insurance providers (doctors, hospitals, etc.). For example, an HMO would require that a primary care physician in the network coordinate all of your care and also refer you to specialists in the network.

No matter which type of health insurance you buy, you'll should to make sure it offers the right kinds of insurance coverage.

What should be covered?

• A good health insurance policy holds several types of coverage.
• Hospital cost insurance pays your room, board, and other incidental services costs if you're hospitalized.
• Surgical expense insurance covers surgeons' fees and all the related costs associated with surgery.
• Physicians cost insurance pays for visits to a doctor's office or for a doctor's hospital visits.
• Major medical insurance offers tremendously wide insurance coverage with a very high maximum benefit that's designed to protect you against losses from catastrophic illness or any injury.

Where can I get health insurance?

You may get health insurance through a group insurance plan at work or through another group affiliation (a school, a club, etc.) or by purchasing an individual insurance plan on your own. By purchasing an individual insurance plan on your own, you might even be able to modify the health plan. Shop online to compare rates from numerous companies to find the best plan and rate to meet your needs.

Which plan is best?

The best health insurance plan for you is the one, which gives you the greatest flexibility and the most payback for the lowest cost. You'll need to shop around and get several quotes before selecting a plan. Here are a few points to consider:

• What co-pays, deductibles, and other coinsurance requirements apply?
• How much freedom do you really have to select your own health-care providers?
• Does the plan cover the health services, which you need?
• Does the plan cover the health-insurance providers you're currently using?
• Does the plan offer family, individual coverage as well?
• Does the insurance plan cover pre-existing conditions? If so, is there a waiting period? (The average waiting period is three months to one year.)

The Eight Ways of Right Action in Leadership

To get the best results as a leader, the people you lead should be saying in one way or the other after you speak, "Let's march!"

When you speak to people as a leader, it's not what you say that's really important, what's important are the action people take after you have had your say. And if you are not having the people you lead take the right action, you're giving short shrift to your leadership, their trust in you, and their desire to take action for you.

Here are the 8 ways of right action to get people marching in the right way for the right purpose at the right time in the right direction.

Action must be:

(1) PHYSICAL.
Action is not what the audience thinks or feels. It is what the audience actually does. Usually, the audience takes action with their feet and hands and tools. When thinking of what action you want your audience to take, imagine their actually doing something physical, and you are on track. Getting your audience to take right action involves challenging them to do one specific thing. When Ronald Reagan said in his speech at the Berlin Wall, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" he was delivering a call-to-action that was a stunning turning point in the Cold War. In your day to day leadership activities, you are probably not meeting such daunting challenges as winning a war, but you can use the principle to raise the effectiveness of your leadership to much higher levels.

(2) PURPOSEFUL
People who take action are useless to an organization. It is only those people who take action for results who are useful. Make sure their action has purpose. The secret of success is constancy of purpose. When your audience does take action, they should know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it. Purpose in leadership talk has three aspects: reason, feeling and awareness. People should understand the rational justification for the action; they should have an emotional commitment to the action; and be fully mindful that they are taking action.

(3) HONEST
If you trick people into taking action or lie to get them to take action, you'll damage that element on which all motivation is based, trust. Afterward, you may be able to order them to do a job, but you will never motivate them. Be honest with yourself in developing your call-to-action. Marcus Aurelius said, "Never esteem anything as an advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect." Be honest with them in challenging them to act. I do not recommend this merely on trustworthy grounds but on eminently practical ones as well. After all, we do not know how good we are as leaders unless we are challenging the people to be better than they think they are. And they cannot be persuaded to accept that challenge if they think we're deceiving them or that you are deceiving yourself.

(4) MEANINGFUL
Action gives meaning to the emotion your audience feels. Emotion alone cannot get results. It's action that gets results. Action validates emotion, and vice versa. Leaders who find little meaning in their jobs or the results associated with those jobs, shouldn't be leaders, or they should change jobs and/or results. Most leaders understand this. But few leaders understand that meaning also involves the jobs of the people they are leading and the attitudes of those people toward those jobs and the results the jobs aim for.

Your cause should be meaningful to the people who must carry it out. If it is only your cause and not their cause, the action they take will get insufficient results. Your cause will be meaningful to them when that actions they take to meet the challenges of that cause are solving the problems of THEIR needs. So, before you challenge them to take action, identify their needs and the problem solving actions.

(5) LINKED TO NEED
The people's needs are their reality. If you are an order leader, you clearly do not have to know their needs. You simply exhibit a my-way-or-the-highway attitude. But if you want to motivate them to take action, you need to understand that reality. Because their motivation is not your choice, it's their choice. Your role is to communicate, their role is to motivate, to motivate themselves. It's their choice. It's not yours. So their needs are not only their reality, in the leadership equation, their needs are the only reality. They don't care about your needs. They don't care about your reality. They only care about their reality. Tie the action you want them to take to THEIR NEEDS, not yours. Which means of course that you have to clearly identify their needs.

(6) URGENT:
Patience is a virtue, but it can also be a tender trap. Urgency is a results-multiplier. A Roman centurion said the secret to instilling urgency in the troops was summed up in two words, "hit them." His credo lives today in the order leader -- not necessarily in a physical sense but more importantly in a psychological sense. But trying to gain urgency through "hit them" is far less effective than having urgency come from the people's internal motivation. Here's a process to have people take urgent action: IDENTIFY THEIR NEEDS, SEE THE PROBLEMS IN THEIR NEEDS, AND HAVE THEIR TAKING ACTION PROVIDE SOLUTIONS TO THOSE PROBLEMS.

For instance, in a police academy, an instructor came into the room with a note that said CLEAR OUT THIS ROOM IMMEDIATELY. The first cadet ordered his colleagues out. A few cadets left but most stayed. The instructor handed the note to a second cadet who pleaded for his classmates to leave. Again, a few left but most stayed. Finally, the instructor gave the note to a third cadet. This cadet understood how to identify needs and have people take action to solve those needs. He said two words, which emptied the room. "Lunch break!"

People are always willing to take ardent action to solve the problems of their needs. The question is can you identify those needs. Once you do, you hare half way home to getting them to take such action.

(7) DEADLINE:
All action you have people take must have a deadline. Otherwise, it might become a low priority for them, and they will not be especially urged to take it. Be constantly monitoring yourself when motivating people to take action by asking, "Have I a put a deadline to this action?" If you haven't, do it.

(8) FED BACK:
True motivation isn't what the people do in your sight. True motivation is what they do after they have left your sight. Many leaders get the "head fake" from the people they're leading -- their nodding their heads and saying, "Yes," face-to-face with the leader; but inside saying, "No." When they leave your presence, they do what they want, not what you want. Make sure that the action you challenge them to take is fed back to you, so that you are aware -- and they are aware that you are aware -- of that action.

Leaders do nothing more important than get results, and results come from people taking action.

The trouble is, most leaders have people get a fraction of the potential results because these leaders misunderstand what action really is -- and in that misunderstanding misapply and misuse it.

When speaking to people, keep the eight ways of right action in mind so people take the right action to achieve the right results.

Coping With Anger

We all have felt the hot flashes of anger. However, even though you might not be driven to radical lengths, the ability to control your temper, whether or not your anger is justified, remains crucial to both your personal and professional life.

When you are angry, you should first examine why you are angry. Be specific in describing to yourself the cause of your anger. Then try to see the situation from a different point of view. We can become so wrapped up in our own feelings and difficulties that we forget that, for the most part, people are truly trying to do the best they can. They aren’t out to get us.

When we are angry with others, we are often being unfair to them. Our anger usually arises out of a misunderstanding or an unrealistic expectation. What seems like infuriating behavior is more often just the other person’s effort to keep his or her balance.

When you’re angry you should ask yourself, “Am I jumping to false conclusions? Do I have unrealistic expectations?” It also helps if you try to see things from the other person’s point of view, and avoid believing you know how he or she ought to be acting. For example, suppose a man is furious with a boy in his neighborhood who hits his new car with a rock, but his attitude toward the boy changes when he learns the boy’s sister is dying.

If you decide your anger is justified but that it is not an appropriate time to engage in an all-out confrontation, you need to control your anger. One strategy to stem the rising tide of anger involves becoming more aware of how your body reacts, as you grow irate. Through various relaxation techniques, you can learn to bring the physical effects of anger under immediate control.

It’s important to pay attention to how your posture changes when you are angry. For example, as you struggle to keep your composure, you might find yourself tightly gripping the telephone receiver, or clutching the steering wheel of your car in traffic. The jaws are also a target for stress.

When you’re angry, you will most likely find yourself tensely clenching your teeth. Realizing that these are common reactions and that they are not helping you calm down is a big first step in coping with your anger. Now you should take additional steps to do something about it.

I always recommend to my clients and people who attend my seminars to use progressive relaxation exercises. These exercises help you center; they teach you to be aware of your body’s reactions when you’re angry and to assert some control over them. In progressive relaxation exercises, you alternately tense your muscles and relax them. You can start at your feet and work your way up to your head, or you can focus on a particular tense area.

Here are some other techniques to help you cope with anger:

# Take deep breaths.

Like the progressive relaxation exercise, deep breathing encourages you to relax and normalize your body’s reaction to anger.

# Take notes.

This can help you reflect on what the person who angered you has said. The very act of writing will force you to take some time before you respond and will help you obtain a more objective point of view.

# Close your eyes and use positive visualization.

Closing your eyes gives you time to relax and shut out the world. Couple this with positive visualization, a technique where, for example, you picture yourself speaking calmly and objectively with the person you are angry with until you reach a satisfactory resolution of the problem, and your results are very effective.

# Use the hold button on the telephone.

If you are on the telephone and find yourself growing angrier by the minute, don’t be afraid to use the hold feature on your telephone. Be polite, of course, and don’t get off the telephone too abruptly or keep the person holding for too long. Make sure you take the time to calm down so that you don’t end up saying something you’ll regret later.

# Lower your tone of voice.

When people are angry, their voices tend to get louder. Be aware of this, and consciously turn down your volume. When you are shouting, nobody is listening, and you are only exacerbating an already tense situation.

Anger can be a frighteningly overwhelming emotion. Whether your anger comes on like a sudden storm or simmers slowly, you must learn how and when to express your anger. It is healthy for us to acknowledge that we are hurt or threatened or frustrated, but we must make sure that our expression of anger is appropriate.