Ever wonder why employees refer to some leaders as toxic even with good Wallstreet reviews?

Profit is not = Leadership Effectiveness (this might sound a little controversial). 

Profitability is important in leadership, but it is not the totality of effective leadership.  

As a leader, you could have some lofty achievements that have made your shareholders happy and not be perceived by your team or organization as an effective leader.  Your top talents are consistently interviewing to leave the organization. 

Leadership is a process of influence and impact

Leadership effectiveness is a perception.

Perception involves feelings, results and impact through influence. As you can see, result is one of the considerations not all that is considered.

Effectiveness is ascribed, you can say it is earned because followers or the people you lead determine whether you are effective or not.  

Factors of favorability and effectiveness depend on the perceptions of followers and their identification with the leader, which affects the leader’s ability to be influential. 

Over the years I have studied what makes a leader effective, theories abound (leave that for the scholars).  Results indicated that the more leaders engaged in these five leadership practices:

inspire, 

model, 

encourage, 

challenge, and 

enable

 the more favorable the followers’ evaluations of the leaders’ effectiveness.

Put differently, leaders who engage in more transformational behavior such as developing a vision for the future, motivating, and encouraging followers to work toward achieving exceptional performance will be more effective.

As a leadership coach, the core of what I do is to help leaders gain insights.  Insights into how they are being perceived, insights into behaviors that are working and behaviors that are not working, insights into behaviors that limit influence and impact.  

Leadership effectiveness is not only what you do, skills you acquire, it is also what you unlearn, and what you stop doing.  It is understanding the behaviors that diminish your ability to influence, your ability to inspire and motivate your team.  It is being sensitive to know what needs to change.

Connect with me to see how we can work to increase influence, consistently inspire and motivate your team and organization members to achieve exceptional results.