by David J. Eloi

Created on: June 19, 2009   Last Updated: April 02, 2011

How to tell if you're an effective leader?

I really can't define leadership, but I know it when I see it.

-Anonymous

To be clear, leadership is not the same as management. Managers control, maintain, monitor, and regulate the current order. With the advent of powerful software tools almost anyone one willing to work hard can become a manager of affairs. Leaders are much less common than managers and tend to gravitate towards the ranks of artists, scientists, and all creative thinkers alike.

Since know one really knows how to create a great leader and very little quantitative research actually addresses leadership behavior the means to measuring effective leadership remains a tad allusive. Still, a common thread of suggested leadership traits has recently emerged from the coffers of academic and popular leadership literature.

Vision, the product of the minds imagination remains the trait most consistently attributed to the leader. From the battlefield to the boardroom leaders believe and communicate goals such that the group, team, organization or what have you become believers themselves.

Vision is the most important and challenging principle of leadership, for it demands that a leader continue to create an environment in which subordinates can function at a high level, performing all of the tasks required of an organization, while simultaneously preparing for the changes that will inevitably occur.

-Major General Franklin U.S. Army (retired)

In 2007 an article was published in Scientific American Mind discussing unconventional and intriguing aspects of truly effective leadership. Psychologists Stephen Reicher, Alexander Haslam and Michael Platow explain that a new understanding about leadership has come about. Effective leadership inspires followers to see the group's interest as their own. Leaders shape what others want to do absent of authority, rewards, punishment and the like.

The leader is most often the one who best represents the traits of the group. Therefore, the traits of leadership can vary greatly depending on the group being lead. The above-mentioned authors of The New Psychology of Leadership tout three facts on how to lead effectively:

1. Leaders must learn and understand the values and opinions of the followers.

2. The most desirable leadership traits depend on the nature of the group being led.

3. Leaders fit into the group and induce change such that the group eventually expresses the leader's own agenda.

Additionally, a leader's most important challenge is to not act superior. Always treat followers with respect and exhibit good listening skills otherwise ones credibility and ability to influence the group will dissolve. Frank LaFasto and Carl Larson, When Teams Work Best, explain how effective leadership involves creating a relationship with constituents. Trust, collaboration, exhibiting confidence in followers and providing assistance develop a group's identity of confidence in its ability to succeed.

Given the above, you know you're a leader when you have created a vision and have established a following. It is only when you have transformed the beliefs of the group to represent that of your own do you know you've been effective.

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