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Leadership Assessment #22 – Leaders are Enablers

Guest post by: Robert Whipple

Article Overview: There are hundreds of assessments for leaders. The content and quality of these assessments vary greatly. You can spend a lot of time and money taking surveys to tell you the quality of your leadership. There are a few leading indicators that can be used to give a pretty good picture of the overall quality of your leadership. These are not good for diagnosing problems or specifying corrective action, but they can tell you where you stand quickly. Here is one of my favorite measures. It is the ability to be perceived as an enabler rather than a barrier.

Leadership Assessment #22 – Leaders are Enablers



Leaders are Enablers

On this dimension there is a stark contrast between great leaders and poor ones. In organizations with great leaders, people view their leaders as enablers. They provide a clear and believable vision of the future that is truly compelling to the workers. They provide the resources and support required to reach that vision. They encourage and empower people to put their best efforts into the journey toward success. They celebrate the small wins along the way. If there is a problem, the leaders work to reduce or eliminate it.

When leaders are weak, you see the exact opposite. Leaders are viewed by the employees as barriers. They get in the way of progress by invoking bureaucratic hurdles that make extra work. They use a command and control philosophy that stifles empowerment. There is a foggy vision or the vision is not that exciting to employees. Like if they struggle to make it happen, the result will not be so great. I felt that in my final years with a company I worked for. The vision was very clear they had to shrink their way to success. The meant huge stress and more workers who would be let go year after year. What an awful vision! I left and never looked back. In these organizations people feel they are operating with both hands tied behind their backs. This leads to poor performance, and so the leaders pour on more and more pressure to compensate. It is a viscous circle that reminds me of the water funnel in a toilet. In fact, it is very much like that.

If you want to measure the caliber of a leader, just start asking the people in the organization if that leader is an enabler or a barrier to progress. Their answer will tell you quickly how talented that leader is.

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Article Tags: barrier, enabler, Leadership, perception, problem, Transparency, Trust



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