Your boss and those around you probably point to things like metrics and organizational and team goals and targets to answer our title question—and they are right to do so—but only partly right. 

You are on a great, probably life-long, leadership journey.  And those outcomes that people most often look at are relatively short-term.  The dynamics impacting them will change.  How they are measured will change.  And new metrics will come along.  But most importantly, they are driven by something bigger, deeper, and more stable and long-term—something more root cause, something way more fundamental. 

At their deepest core, organizational metrics, goals, and targets are driven by who you are as a person and leader, what you believe, your mindset, values, and your own levels of engagement, excitement, and passion.  That's what drives your 'talk' and behavior.  And depending on what that is and how it's leveraged, it will either motivate and inspire others to follow you and make a positive difference in the world or not. 

It’s so easy to get caught up with (and sometimes, frustrated with) metrics and strategic goals and lose sight of why we became a leader in the first place.

I'm going to let you in on a secret.
When you identify, clarify, clearly articulate, and daily connect to your why and strategically use it to show up at your leadership best, all of those metrics will fall into place more easily and more quickly than ever before.

It all starts with self-awareness.
Self-awareness is an age-old starting point for anyone serious about any type of growth and development—and that certainly includes leadership development and amplifying your leadership effectiveness. 

Compare this to project management and change management.  You start with clarifying current state and why you need change (growth) before you start moving towards defining what future state should look like and setting goals or developing an action plan on how to get there.

In today's blog, I'm going to offer you three, very strong answers to today's title question.

1)  Leadership GPS
If you haven’t noticed from my blog and LinkedIn posts lately, I'm passionate about leading with meaning and purpose—about having an identified and clearly articulated Leadership GPS that is leveraged authentically and effectively.  Everything else you do as a leader is impacted by it.

It does you and those you serve little good to learn conflict management skills, for example, if that's not rooted in and stems out of a firm and clear belief in why you are here as a leader, strong values and principles, and how you want to make a positive difference in the world.  And the same goes for any other thing you try to learn and do as a leader.  All other metrics and outcomes are dependent on this—employee engagement, wellbeing, retention, revenue and financials, productivity, change and crisis management—all of it.  It is your rock, your foundation, your solace, your inspiration, and it serves as your guidance system under any circumstance. 

As one leader shared with me the other day, it unleashes in you an "irrational confidence."

If you think of your leadership and your life as a journey, then a journey without a destination, compass, roadmap, and/or some type of guidance system is not really a journey at all.  It’s simply wandering. 

So the first way to know the answer to our question—and a leadership fundamental, I might add—is to identify, develop, live, and lead by a Leadership Philosophy  and Core Values Statement—to lead with greater meaning and purpose. 

It's what gets us fired up in the morning!  Being in touch with that inspires us to show up at our leadership best and be more fully the leader we dream of being.  It's what Viktor Frankl and Simon Sinek call your why.

But just having one is not enough.  It's what academia calls, "necessary but not sufficient."  Like any guidance system, you have to know how to use it.  You have to know how to leverage your leadership philosophy in order to amplify your leadership effectiveness.  

The research is clear.  Those leaders who lead with greater meaning and purpose are simply more effective.  Those leaders who have a clear leadership philosophy score higher on pride in their organization, commitment to their organization’s success, their willingness to work hard, and their overall effectiveness compared to those who are not clear about their leadership philosophy.

And people who work for leaders who have a clear why, report feeling stronger team spirit, greater pride in their organization, working longer and harder, and feel like they're making a difference.  Most importantly was what they had to say about their leaders.  They rated their leader 140% higher on “Overall, my supervisor is an effective leader.”

Leading with meaning and purpose matters!

If you're interested in learning more about how you can develop your own leadership philosophy and leverage it to amplify your leadership effectiveness, check out this in-depth, expansive, and powerful leadership developmental experience that will show you how: 

2)  Feedback is Leadership Gold
Research shows that by collecting feedback from a variety of perspectives, especially peers and direct reports, leaders can understand how they are seen from all points of view.  They can then use this knowledge to assess the extent to which they actually exhibit exemplary leadership behaviors.  This gives the leader an opportunity to identify strengths to leverage and opportunities to improve on. 

In a recent HBR study of 51,896 executives by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, those leaders who ranked at the bottom 10% in asking for feedback—that is to say, they asked for feedback less often than fully 90% of their peers—those low-feedback leaders were also low-effectiveness leaders (rated at the 15th percentile in overall leadership effectiveness).  See the chart below.

On the other hand, those leaders who ranked at the top 10% in asking for feedback—high feedback leaders—those leaders were also high-effectiveness leaders (rated, on average, at the 86th percentile in overall leadership effectiveness).  See the chart below.

That's why I call this type of feedback leadership gold.

Unfortunately, Kouzes and Posner report that the behavior of leaders asking for and receiving feedback on themselves has been consistently rated by direct reports and one-ups of those leaders as one of the least frequently displayed leadership behaviors across industries and time.

What's the best way to get that kind of feedback?
Hundreds of scientific studies have consistently confirmed the reliability and validity of the LPI and the Five Practices leadership framework on which it is based.  To date, it has been trusted by over five million leaders worldwide and it has become the gold standard for leadership development.  This led the Center for Creative Leadership to call the LPI the "most reliable and valid instrument for leadership development."

The LPI360
The LPI360 or Leadership Practices Inventory provides a self-assessment plus powerful, feedback from a variety of observers who are selected by the leader taking the assessment.  You and your observers rate how frequently you engage in each of the 30 leadership behaviors.  A customized, detailed, and confidential assessment report is then generated.

To learn more and setup taking your own LPI360, just click here: 

3)  Coaching
The last big way that you can discover more about your leadership effectiveness is by engaging with a coach. 

As part of my coaching, I want to hear about your why.  I'm passionate about partnering with people who want to make a positive difference in the world.  If you need help clarifying your leadership philosophy and core values, I offer you a safe and confidential space to do that.  I'll engage you with inquiry that can lead you to discover deeper and more powerful aspects of it and what that might mean for your leadership effectiveness. 

Then, I will work with you to strategize an action plan complete with your own meaningful goals that will help you leverage your why and put your leadership GPS into action—measurable action.  I think that's a metric you can get excited about.

In addition, I have administered hundreds of LPI 360s and consulted with and coached dozens of leaders on theirs.  I can offer you expert help with yours, too.

I can help you interpret your LPI assessment report with unique insights into strengths, possible blind spots, and patterns.  Then, we'll identify specific behaviors for you to zero in on and add to or integrate into your action plan that will skyrocket your leadership effectiveness.

And if you're wondering whether coaching is effective or not, a 2013 meta-analysis revealed that coaching has a significant, positive impact on:

• Performance & skills
• Wellbeing
• Coping
• Work attitudes
• Goal attainment

To learn more about coaching with me, just click here:

How do you know if your leadership is effective?
These three strategies, leading with meaning and purpose, regularly conducting a leadership 360° feedback assessment, and; coaching can, without a doubt, skyrocket your leadership to the highest levels, transform your leadership, help you and your team achieve the extraordinary, and even transform your life. 

They are the most fundamental and powerful ways to gauge and boost leadership effectiveness and get the most powerful ROI from any investment you make in yourself and your leadership.

When we stop and think about it, we know that there are many variations and depths to love.  The problem is that the word love can mean so many things. 

As Dr. Peck said in his timeless classic, The Road Less Traveled:

I couldn’t agree more.

Our culture tends to overemphasize and focus on romantic or passionate love—to the point that it has become idealized and idolized into a cultural myth.  We seem to have lost the word love from wider and more practical conversations about our lives beyond romantic love, our work, governing, and leadership. 

When it comes to personal and professional development, life mission, career, work, and being a leader, it seems that love is put to the side—and it may be due in part to the ambiguity when the word love is mentioned.  We don’t want to take the risk of being misunderstood; that we are not talking about a weak and sentimental feeling, but something more powerful that requires great awareness, courage, choice, discipline, and action. 

Love & Leadership
And yet, if there is one principal quality of great leaders that our inquiry should focus on, it is love.

Some of the most influential leaders in human history were models and messengers of love:  Buddha, Confucius, Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus of Nazareth, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, John Woolman (American Quaker and abolitionist), and Lao Tzu, to name only a few. 

The most powerful relationships we have in our lives are with those people who lead us and with those whom we lead—in which leadership is a central element of the relationship:  Parent-child, friendships, spousal, teacher-student, coach-player, boss-employee.  It is relationships like these that have the most influence in our lives and where the lessons of love and life are cultivated.

Love can seem mysterious and enigmatic and it may seem like it's not easy to measure or put on an MBO, spreadsheet, report, or SMART goal worksheet.

However, Robert Holden, PhD, author of the Success Intelligence, challenges us:

 
He wrote that to the seeker of success and happiness as part of the process of developing a life mission and setting goals.

It may seem difficult to quantify or measure love in its entirety, but we can operationalize its elements and measure those.  If we assume love is not only an emotion or emotional, then we allow for behaviors that can be measured.

How about starting with one of the fundamental elements of love?  Paying attention.  Put that phone down, or better yet, put it on silent mode and put it away and out of sight, and look at the person talking to you with curiosity.

When speaking on love and the work of attention, Dr. Peck wrote:

And when we follow paying attention with listening with curiosity and to truly understand the other, we are choosing to work—to act—against the inertia and automatic mental processes and instead show love.

Love may difficult to define and may be more difficult to give—and yet it is absolutely necessary for the successful and masterful leader of our times.

Happy Mother's Day!
So, on this Mother's Day, I celebrate love and loving leadership, especially the love from our mothers—some of the most powerful and influential leaders in the world!  So, thank you to my Princess Leah!  You are such an amazing mother and partner!

And here, I would like to make a great, big shout-out to my mother!  From when I was at the young age of about 3 or 4-years old, she did not ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  No, she asked me, "Alan, what's your vocation?"  That has had the most profound and meaningful impact on who I am, what I do, and why I do it.  Thank you, Mom!

Leading (and Living) With Meaning & Purpose
I am on a mission to partner with like-minded leaders who want to make a positive difference in the world!

Join me on an unparalleled leadership development journey! 

Check out this new and powerful leadership developmental experience that helps leaders to lead and live with greater love, meaning, and purpose:

If Maureen is right—that leaders are the most significant leverage point for success—then we need to be spending more money and more time on our leadership development.  Leadership development was one of five trends for 2023 that Maureen wrote about on Forbes late last year.  But we want to get the most ROI out of any investment in ourselves, right?

WHAT MAKES A LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM SUCCESSFUL?
In a February 2023 article, Harvard Business Review's top two answers to this question were:
     1)   A focus on whole-person growth and
     2)  Providing opportunities for self-reflection and meaning-making. 

What drove those top two answers stemmed from research they reported on in an earlier June 2022 article.  Their research identified three components of successful leadership development:

• Sense-making
• Experimenting
• Self-discovery

They report that learning is greatly enhanced through the pathways between those components rather than directly focusing on any one.

For example, you learn something in the classroom or online and reflect on how that makes sense for you and how it may fit into your leadership.  Then, you experiment with it.  Through trial and error and seeking feedback from colleagues and others, you learn more about who you are as a leader and what works best to amplify your leadership effectiveness—and that leads you and your team to achieve new and amazing results.

LEADING WITH MEANING & PURPOSE
This is exactly the approach of a new leadership development experience that launched today.  Leading With Meaning and Purpose is an empirically-driven, engaging, self-directed, and on-demand leadership development course and experience.  It also provides access to an exclusive, private community of like-minded leaders and a once a month, live networking and Q&A event.

If you have a growth or learning mindset...
If you are ready to learn new strategies and techniques...
If you can block just one hour a week to learn and process...
If you're ready to experiment with something new or different...
If you're ready to amplify your leadership effectiveness and achieve the extraordinary...
If you're ready to invest in yourself and your leadership...

Then this course is for you!

Alan Mikolaj and Lædan Professional Services, LLC are excited to announce that pre-enrollment for Leading With Meaning & Purpose is now open from April 30 - May 6, 2023.

Access to the course opens May 7.

Leading with greater meaning and purpose has been shown to positively impact:

• Employee engagement
• Productivity
• Innovation
• Revenue & financials
• Wellbeing
• Retention
• And most importantly, your leadership effectiveness

ABOUT THE COURSE
This developmental experience is designed to integrate with any busy leader's schedule—virtual, on-demand, and self-paced.  The course includes a private, on-line community where you can network with like-minded leaders and share thoughts, challenges, questions, best-practices, files, websites, and more!  An optional, once a month, live, virtual networking and Q&A session with the instructor is offered at no extra cost.

This is not training, but a developmental experience designed to help you grow as both a person and as a leader.

This course will empower you to identify and clarify your meaning and purpose and teach you how to activate and leverage it so that you can amplify your leadership effectiveness.  The skills, tools, and strategies you learn in this course will last you a lifetime and can create a legacy of your leadership that will last for generations to come.

Developmental experiences that includes all of these benefits and offerings can go for well over $1000.  But not Leading With Meaning & Purpose.

You can get 50% off the regular price ($499.95) during pre-enrollment.   At checkout, simply click on the "Have a coupon?" hyperlink and enter the coupon code below.  Start the journey to amplifying your leadership effectiveness today.

WHAT YOU GET

• Access to a comprehensive, empirically-driven, engaging, self-directed course and developmental experience hosted on Thinkific
• Ten compelling (but short) video introductions for each lesson and key activities hosted by your instructor, Alan Mikolaj
• A comprehensive companion eWorkbook
• Over 20 engaging and thought-provoking activities including five video activities
• A proven, step-by-step process for developing your very own, personal leadership philosophy & core values statement
• Best-practices, tools, and strategies to leverage, lead, and live by your leadership philosophy
• Access to an online, private community for free (priceless value!) where you can network with like-minded leaders
• Optional free, once a month live, virtual networking and Q&A events hosted by your instructor, Alan Mikolaj
• Group/team discounts available
• All course participants are offered 50% off any first-time coaching program/bundle with Alan at any time (details inside the course)
  

COURSE SYLLABUS
Download and preview the syllabus here:  Leading With Meaning & Purpose Course Syllabus

To watch a short video about this unparalleled leadership development experience and learn more, just click here:  Leading With Meaning & Purpose