Becoming Conscious of Your Leadership Abilities

When we are new leaders, we often start by deciding what we don't want to do. I attribute this to the leadership traits we dislike in other leaders. At least this was my mindset, but in reality I knew very little of what it meant to be a leader. In fact, I'm still learning and will be a life long learner of leadership.


I started in leadership at young age out of college and I was blissfully ignorant of how to lead a group of people (I can tell you some stories later of what I did as a leader with the best of intentions that still make me cringe.) Leadership would be amazingly simple it weren't for people to lead, but sadly many leaders never actually lead anyone and so they never grow.


How do you grow as a leader?
One of the first steps in growing in any area, is to become conscious of your incompetence and conscious of your competence. 


Many times when we start something new we are unaware of how bad we actually are. This lack of awareness is described as "Unconscious Incompetence." We also need to be aware of the area in which are competent- the abilities that are more natural to us This similar lack of awareness is described as "Unconscious Competence." The first step to growing as a leader is becoming aware of where you are incompetent and competent as a leader. The process is not easy and sometimes painful, but if you want to grow you must create an accurate view of yourself and your abilities.


I love John Maxwell's leadership assessment in his book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership in which he covers 21 timeless laws of leadership including, "The Law of Influence," "The Law of the Big Mo [momentum]", and "The Law of Empowerment." In this assessment you give yourself a score of:

• 0 - Never
• 1 - Rarely
• 2 - Occasionally
• 3 - Always

The structure of the ranking helps force you into a decision as you are asked to score statements like, "I rely on my influence rather than on my position or title to get others to follow me or do what I want," and "It is my regular practice to give people I lead the authority to make decisions and take risks."


He also suggests asking 2 colleagues, 3 people you lead, and your boss to rank you from 1 to 10 in the following areas:

• People Skills
• Planning and Strategic Thinking
• Vision
• Results

This helps identify gaps in the self assessment where you may have ranked yourself too high or too low. 
Of course, you don't have to read John Maxwell's book on the laws of leadership (although highly recommended), but whatever you decide, it is important to get an accurate picture of yourself, of your strengths and your opportunities for growth.