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The Leadership Skills Quiz

30 September 2019

One of the mysteries of business is how people, who have reached a senior position in their organisation, often deem themselves to be good leaders on the strength of being promoted.

It’s as if promotion confers leadership ability, with the logic being that if they weren’t a competent leader they wouldn’t have been promoted.

As a result, they don’t feel a need to undertake formal training, or at least have some personal coaching.

Even though coaching is now mainstream I’m still surprised when an organisation will buy a new machine and insist on a full maintenance and support package, and yet spend nothing to do the same for the people who are running the business and impacting daily on the lives of their subordinates.

I love sharing leadership skills with senior managers and if you know someone who could do with a top-up then please get in touch. At least I can recommend a couple of good books …or you can download the free pdfs from my website. I take the view that anything is better than nothing.

For fun and to get us all thinking, here are some quiz questions to ponder over…

1. What’s the difference between a directive and a delegating style of leadership?

2. When setting tasks, how often do you think of competency? In terms of us being competent to accurately define a task and our colleague being competent to fully deliver the work?

3. When would a collaborative style of leadership not be as useful as a directive style?

4. How often do our colleagues need time with us, to check out their issues and feel attended to?

5. In terms of colleague engagement do you know how to use Working Styles, to offer support and to challenge unhelpful behaviour?

6. When do you get stressed?

7. What’s your worst leadership trait?

In terms of providing answers there are a few pointers to ponder over.

If we are being directive we set a clear task and retain responsibility for the delivery. If we delegate then our colleague becomes responsible. Lots of managers confuse the two, in my experience.

We have to consider the issue of competency to know if we are using the correct leadership style. It’s too easy to delegate to someone who lacks competence and then get cross when they fail to deliver.

Working Styles are a good way to tailor our language to get the best from people. You can find out more by downloading the Time Management pdf from my website. Of course you can use Mr Google as well!

Knowing ourselves is vital. If we know what sends our stress levels up up up then we can take care of ourselves.

And as for time, colleagues benefit from monthly, or weekly, 1-to-1 time with us and even a telephone call is better than nothing. Leadership is about giving, not about setting tasks and retreating into our office.

If we know our worst trait then we can get support for ourselves and can smile and laugh and change our ways.

Leadership is a learned skill and we all have the potential to be great leaders. We spent years at school learning to read and write and so it make sense to put in the effort to learn the language and behaviour of leadership.

If you’d like to know more about useful leadership concepts from Transactional Analysis then please get in touch. Your colleagues could perhaps benefit from my TA Skills for Leaders course.

This week, have fun being a leader!

Next week: Skype Love (And Frustration)