In Search of The Leadership Litmus Test

About a month ago I was speaking at a training session for a group of our newer teammates, and I was asked this question:

“How do you know if you are a good leader?”

Now that’s a query that I bet has generated a billion answers, at least.

Leadership has been dissected, discussed, debated, deliberated, delineated, debunked, debased, and deified ever since the first human decided to tell someone else what to do, or show them how to do something.

Do a “Leadership” search on Google and you’ll get 187,000,000 listings (that’s not a misprint).

Do one on Amazon and you’ll see 266, 982 books on the subject.

So how did I answer the question?

The first thing that came to my mind was an image, rather than a concept. This is unusual for me for it is not my usual thought pattern (that’s why I went to business school instead of the art academy).

The image was a hoop of fire. I was channeling a lion tamer, training and guiding his charges through the flames like it was just another day at the circus. Is that leadership? I wasn’t convinced, because the image quickly faded from view.

Then I thought of a brick wall – I’ve often heard people describe their loyalty to a leader by saying “I’d walk through a brick wall if he (or she) asked me”.  In other words, potentially putting your life on the line because of leadership.

Plausible? Of course. Workable in most every context? No – I couldn’t imagine asking the people in front of me to risk their lives for our business cause.

My mind then went elsewhere for inspiration (fortunately the process had only taken a few seconds up to this point, so I hadn’t lost my audience), and I landed at the base of a large hill.

Somehow I knew I was now in the right place, and I began to speak. Good leaders should be able to lead their teams up any hill, but when do leaders know in their hearts that they are capable of doing it, again and again, without doubt or hesitation?

When they charge up the hill and don’t look back the whole way. Great leaders get to the top, confident that when they turn around, the whole team is standing right there behind them at the summit.

And they are – every time. Over-confident leaders can get to the top without looking back, but see people still at the base of the hill when they turn around. Doubtful leaders may get everyone to the top, but not without turning around often and zig-zagging up and down exhorting their teammates, perhaps even dragging some people with them.

It’s not a case of never looking back – as Randy on Twitter quoted to me the other day, “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. It’s when the stakes are high, and the challenge is difficult, that a leader needs to step up, gather the team, issue the call, and then climb the hill, always pushing forward. When the challenge is met, then the learning can take place.

If the groundwork has previously been laid, with all the many other traits of leadership that are illustrated in all those books and all those posts, the team will hear, and respond to, a call to climb. They will trust your leadership, and watch your back. Because they know that to get to this point, the leader was always watching their backs too.

It’s not a perfect summation of great leadership, but as I spoke about it out loud for the first time it rang true, at least to me. Maybe that’s the thing – as leaders, we all search for our own “Litmus Test” that benchmarks our progress and helps us determine where we need to go next in our quest for greatness.

What’s yours?

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