How do great leaders measure their own success? Is it through peer feedback, self-assessment or through something like performance data?

Success is what everyone seems to be after, so how do great leaders measure their success in ways that enables them and their teams to use more of their potential.  Ask others the question: “How do you define success?” and you will probably get as many answers as the people you ask!   That means there are no universal right answers and the answer is the one that is right for you.  That being true, there are some insights into how great leaders measure success.

How do you measure success?

In your leadership role, you need to define success for you.  For sure, part of your success is hitting your numbers.  However, a bigger part of your success is growing your people and your culture to hit even bigger numbers in the future (in other words, for your organization to create the future faster).  One way to look at success is using your own potential and helping everyone around you to use theirs too.  That requires self-awareness, feedback, and the strength to continually step out of your comfort zone and encourage your people to step of out theirs too.

Success in business starts with your people, and success in life starts with your relationships (family, friends, etc).  Leaders often first look to the numbers to define their success.  However, it’s the people in their team and the relationships they have built around them that enables the leader and their teams to deliver the numbers and to be the best for their families at home too.

What does a great leader do to measure their impact?

Great leaders start with their most important impact…growing a team and a culture that can deliver more on their own.  As a leader, it’s not about you, but about the team you have assembled around you.  Therefore, great leaders measure their impact more on how their team has grown and the performance they can deliver on their own.  In this way, great leaders understand that their success is based on their ability to get out of their people’s way…and to help their people use more of their potential.  Remember this…micromanagement comes with a speed limit, so great leaders never want to be the one slowing their team.

This means that great leaders measure their impact on both culture and performance, with the performance going beyond this year’s numbers, and to the value the company is creating (both financially and in their communities too).

What does a great leader ask themselves first?

If your role is to grow a team and a culture to deliver more on their own, then what should be your focus?…and how much of your focus is on today, and how much of your focus should be on the future?  To illustrate this, listen to the words of Jeff Bezos of Amazon: “When somebody … congratulates Amazon on a good quarter … I say thank you. But what I’m thinking to myself is … those quarterly results were actually pretty much fully baked about 3 years ago”.

Which quarter are you focused on?…and what changes in you (has to happen first that) will enable you to focus less on this quarter and more on future quarters?…as this will enable you as a leader to achieve greater success and to make an even bigger impact.

Give me a call…I would love to help you focus more on the future.