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Metaphorically, the word leader evokes images of an animated person, exuding energy, enthusiasm and confidence, at the head of a procession of eager followers chasing a high goal with irresistible commitment. Being an effective leader must surely mean that you make improbable goals get achieved fast, effectively and efficiently. You know you are being an effective leader when the commitment you generate in subordinates, peers and associates is enduring and their motivation is almost religious.

You know you are being an effective leaser when team members relate to you, almost exclusively, from referent and expert power and almost never from your legitimate or reward power. Coercion is nearly never necessary because each team member is driven from an internal volition to serve the team cause. When you speak of the future and goals the team members' eyes light up and twinkle. Management literature points out General Electric, Apple, 3M, Microsoft and others as organizations where outstanding leadership has been at play.

You know you are being effective when the entity you lead is the best or nearly the best in its industry especially in innovating uncharted ways and directions. You and your organization are the ones everyone else is mimicking and emulating. You become a phenomenon to be beheld, studied and marveled at. This is the almost magnetic effect that separates effective leadership from merely excellent management. Leaders know they are being effective when they regularly cut paths to new universes of possibilities in which mere mortals then build their own arenas of ordinary performance.

The chairman of General Electric, Jeffrey R. Immelt, wrote this closing paragraph in his letter to investors in their 2007 annual report.

"We have averaged earnings growth of 11% over the past 25 years, including 16% in 2007. We have increased our dividend for 32 straight years. We invest and deliver: every day every quarter every year and we will in 2008. Thank you for all of your support. Our best days are ahead."

You know you are being effective when, month after month, year after year or decade after decade you continue achieving quantum leaps of progress, however measured. You know you are being effective if, over these long stretches of time, followers and members push themselves up impossible cliffs of performance from internal dynamos fired up by inspirational leadership and not carrot, or stick.

Finally, you know you are being an effective leader when you continually seek feedback from your team members; being sensitive to the common opinion on how your pursuit is going. Characteristically you inspire higher thresholds of tolerance to difficulty at the frontiers of performance. Your team remains fully charged for further assault on a future continuously re-created in your shared imagination. You cannot help knowing and seeing that you are being an effective leader if you are truly an effective leader - the results are too obvious to miss.

Learn more about this author, Mattie Mutare.
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