Ten Questions Your Team Wishes You'd Ask Yourself

In the prior newsletter the focus was on how you’re leading.

In this edition, a different question. Are you giving your people what they actually need from you?

Those aren’t the same thing.

A leader can score well on the skills that define leadership effectiveness and still leave their team feeling unclear, unseen, or unsupported. Skill and impact aren’t always the same story. The team experiences the impact, not the skill.

Most leaders have good intentions, but they can fall short when they lose track of the small, daily commitments their people are counting on.

• Expectations get fuzzy
• Feedback is inconsistent
• Recognition doesn’t occur as often
• The bigger picture gets assumed rather than communicated

None of these things show up as an immediate crisis, but over time a leader's credibility is diminished.

A short, honest self-check changes that. Your answers may surprise you because the questions force you to look at what your team actually needs, not what you’ve been focused on.

That’s what this leadership resource is about.

Free Download: 10 Key Questions Leadership Quiz

The 10 Key Questions Quiz is a short leadership self-check built around the ten commitments your people need most from you.

Each question highlights is a specific leadership behavior.

You rate yourself one to five on each question. The whole thing takes about five to ten minutes. Your total score gives you a read on where your leadership stands today, and your two or three lowest answers point to the highest-impact area to focus next.

The download is available as PDF, Word, or Google Docs. If you want to use it as a discussion guide in a one-on-one or with a mentor, the printable versions work well for that.

What you’ll come away with is a clearer view of which of the ten commitments are landing for your team, and which one specific commitment would change the most if you tightened it up over the coming weeks.

Leadership Quiz: 10 Key Questions →

The 10 Key Questions quiz pairs well with the Leadership Assessment you saw in an earlier edition. The Assessment tells you how you’re leading. The Leadership Quiz tells you whether your people are getting what they need from you. Run both, and you’ll see your leadership from two angles at once.

Richard

P.S. When you take this quiz, picture specific people on your team as you read each question, not the team as a whole. The honest answer to “do I recognize good performance in ways meaningful to each individual” is different when you’re thinking about Maria than when you’re thinking about everyone. The individual lens is where the real insight can be found.