A Leadership Self-Assessment: A Simple Tool that Reveals All

“Am I good leader?” How to evaluate yourself and answer the question.

Here are two maxims that — if you embrace them — will transform how you lead and manage:

• You can only manage others as well as you manage yourself.
• You will lead out of who you are.

How you lead will reflect your core values, preferences, and habits.

In short, how well your team or organization relates to each other, serves your customers, and produces the result is a reflection of you.

Different kinds of leadership situations require different skills and approaches. A fire captain needs to dip into a slightly different bag of leadership tools than the coordinator of arts collaborative. But at the core, who the leader is will have a greater impact on the quality of their leadership than the tools they use.

Below is A Leadership Self-Assessment tool.

Answer it as honestly as you can. There aren’t “right” or “wrong” answers.

The intent isn’t to produce a score. Instead, we want to reveal areas about you and how you approach life that impacts how you lead. If you are like most leaders, you’ll discover topics that you hadn’t even considered.

Use this to identify areas of strength that you can pull from and lean on as well as areas you’d like to grow in.

After you’ve completed it, my recommendation is to do two things:

1) Identify one or two strengths that you think come most naturally to you.

• How are others currently benefitting from those strengths?
• How can you lean into those even more to benefit those you lead?

2) Identify one low-scoring area that you think has the greatest impact. *

• What are the consequences or effects of not growing or changing in this area?
• What are two or three behaviors you can start, stop or change that will help you grow?
• What kind of help or support do you need?

*Why only one? Because it is enough, and you can do it. In my experience, leaders who attempt to change “everything” end up overwhelmed and changing nothing.

Instead, focus on one area you’d like to improve. Work on it until you see change. Typically, the change will be systemic. For example, improving your ability to identify and pursue a priority will reduce stress, increase productivity, improve focus, mitigate conflict, and so on.

Take good care,

Christian

FREE PRINTABLE PDF: Leadership Self-Assessment 5.23.23 (8.5 × 11 in)

Originally published at christianmuntean.com on 05/23/23