Is there a test – just one single test – that can pick out ‘good’ leaders from the novices?

There are more books on leadership than one can throw a stone at. There is nothing that one can say that hasn’t been said.  And while the key point of this post has probably been thought of as well, it is still worth mentioning again.

Building a good Team

Any leader will tell you that their most important task is putting together a quality team. A team that gets the big picture – and strives to get the company/group to that destination.

How do you know if you have put together a good team?

Let us assume that you, the leader, have put together this great team. What is the true test of whether your team is truly effective? Some might say ‘Results’, ‘Sales Growth’ etc. These are all ‘textbook’ answers. The real test of whether you have put together a good team is the following:

If you (the leader) were to go on vacation, would the team still function as effectively?

I call this the Vacation Test (The credit for developing this test goes to Biman Mitra). It sounds simple, but captures a lot of the key aspects of good leadership.

A good leader starts disseminating knowledge and responsibilities from day one. He continually empowers his employees/team members till they get to a point where they are able to take responsibility for critical tasks themselves. This, in itself, is a full time job. If a leader can accomplish even 50% of this task, he/she is in a position to go on vacation. If this task has not been done successfully, chances are that the entire company will drown in the absence of the leader.

Fortune 500 to Mom and Pop Stores

Apart from the simplicity of this test, there is another aspect that is noteworthy. This test applies equally to large companies as well as smaller ones. It applies equally to 2 member teams as it does to 50 member groups as it does to 500 (or 5000).

Empathy and the Vacation Test

If you have done right by your employees, chances are that they will do anything to make your vision a success. This can only happen if they a) Respect you b) Like you as a person. Neither a) nor b) is possible if you yourself have not treated your employees with empathy.

Only an empathetic leader can get results out of his employees without constantly bossing over them or micromanaging them. Only an empathetic leader can inform his employees that he/she will be out on vacation for the next 4 weeks – and that he was entrusting the company to their capable hands. If she has done her homework, she will have a wonderful vacation – and be able to return to a stable state of affairs.

Summary

Are you at the helm of a company or group? Are you doing enough to empower the people below you? If you were to go on vacation, would your company survive? Are you treating your employees with both respect and empathy? If not, chances are you will flunk the vacation test.

The post Leadership – The ‘vacation’ test appeared first on Anuj Varma, Hands-On Technology Architect, Clean Air Activist.

If more people had the courage to stand up to mean bosses, there would be a feedback mechanism which may eventually cause the extinction of the ‘meanness’ gene (at least in the workplace).

And if more people started every human interaction with kindness, the whole ‘meanness’ problem would not even arise. To all the mean bosses out there, I pose a question – If you are relatively healthy, have a roof over your head and food on the table, what reason do you have to be mean to another person?

What makes meanness even harder to digest is when it comes from a public figure – a figure that younger generations often look up to. Two examples come to mind from the world of sport. Serena Williams, the number one women’s tennis player, cursing (and threatening to kill) a woman umpire at the U.S. Open semifinals.

What would cause a person who has been given everything in the world react in this way? To make matters worse, Serena refused (and to this day refuses) to apologize for the incident. Andy Roddick has taken this arrogance to an art form. Linesmen, Reporters, Umpires – are all part of his daily abuse squad. His meanness is so publicly evident that there is a forum devoted to discussing just how much of a jerk he is. Where are the Agassis and the Chris Evert Lloyds of American tennis?

What I would like to see is linesmen standing up for themselves – and getting back at these ‘behaviorally challenged’ superstars. I would like the lineswoman that Serena threatened to stand up and say ‘Just you try’. At the same time, I would encourage Serena and Andy to do some soul searching. They have the opportunity to be real role-models. Instead, they continue to display the loser side of their personalities on a highly public stage. No matter how many tournaments they win, they will never be considered winners.

Courage (from the yelled at) and kindness (from the yellers) – still hard to find.

The post Courage and Kindness – Still hard to find appeared first on Anuj Varma, Hands-On Technology Architect, Clean Air Activist.