For leaders to be successful in today’s competitive business world they must “learn how to learn and continuously keep learning to grow (Latham and Vinyard, 2004, p. 38)”. Measurement systems support organizational learning because they provide the information that is needed for leaders to identify areas that need to be improved. (Latham and Vinyard, 2004) Leaders can use performance scorecards to assess their performance against their targeted goals. Just like any other measurement system, before scorecards are developed, leaders have to decide what they want to measure and ensure that their measurements are aligned with their organizational goals. (de Waal, 2003) The results of scorecards must be analyzed to help leaders understand the underlying reason for their organization’s performance. Leaders must understand how to accomplish the following (1) determine the factors to be used in evaluating desired outcomes and (2) how to use their assessment results to identify opportunities for improvement.
The Value of Leadership Assessments
Leaders are expected to be effective in the face of increasing uncertainty and ambiguity in the business world (LaRue, Childs & Larson, 2004). Evaluations and multi-rater assessments have proven to be effective tools for individual performance improvement and organizational effectiveness. The advantage of multi-rater assessments is that they incorporate perspectives from employees, customers, clients, colleagues as well as the focal individual’s assessment of self (Church & Waclawski, 1998). For top leaders with few peers, self-assessment provides an additional tool that allows leaders to evaluate weaknesses and misperceptions so that they can identify areas of improvement. According to Church and Waclawski (1998), “if data-based feedback is to have any effect on changing behavior and improving performance, it must be tied to an individual’s level of self-perception” (p. 87).
The Importance of Assessing Communication
Effective Communication is critical for any successful organization and leaders should continuously assess communication within an organization. An interesting point is that “Companies [with leaders] that are highly effective communicators are 20 percent more likely to report lower turnover rates than their peers” (Wyatt, 2006, para. 1). When a leader effectively communicates his or her vision, he or she “reinforces the organization’s vision, connects employees to the business, fosters process improvement, facilitates change and drives business results by changing employee behavior” (Wyatt, 2006, para. 1). Leaders must assess their communications strategies often to determine if their employees are connecting with their vision.
The Importance of Assessing Leadership Decision Making
Effective decision making is crucial for organizational leaders. Leaders must frequently solicit employee feedback to gain insight on their decision making (Jones, 2003). Leaders must understand how to make decisions that are well informed and timely. As transformational leaders, leaders must ensure that they include their employees in their decision making process. Leaders must also frequently solicit employee feedback to keep employees engaged.
The Importance of Assessing Commitment to Innovation and Change
Leaders must assess their commitment to innovation and change. Leaders must cultivate an innovative work environment when they give their employees the freedom to be creative. When leaders tell their employees that they want to be innovative, leaders must also demonstrate their commitment to innovation in their actions. Leaders must empower their employees to be knowledge workers and give them some freedom to make some decisions about how they will accomplish their jobs. Leaders have the primary responsibility to ensure that their employees stay focused on their vision for the vision to be ultimately accomplished.
The Importance of Assessing Leadership Relational Skills
Leaders cannot effectively relate with people if they don’t take the time to build meaningful relationships with them. (Dyer, 2001) Employees in a transactional system follow orders out of fear of punishment or reproof—this type of system does not help employees to be motivated or inspired by the organizational vision. (Klemper, 2005) They simply work because they “have to work” and not because “they want to work”. Unlike the transactional leadership model, transformational leaders inspire their employees to “participate” in accomplishing the vision. Because transformational leaders welcome feedback from their employees, their employees are empowered to contribute their skills, knowledge, and experiences to the organizational knowledge base. (Moorcroft, 2003) The benefit of this is that it builds a diverse workforce with various talents and various and various skills. (Lewin and Regin, 2000) Leaders are able to build effective teams and accomplish organizational work more efficiently.
Conclusion
As discussed above, leaders are expected to be effective in the face of increasing uncertainty and ambiguity in the business environment (LaRue, Childs & Larson, 2004). Leaders need to continuously assess their performance and make necessary adjustments to keep improving. Self-evaluation and multi-rater assessments have proven to be effective tools for individual performance improvement and organizational effectiveness. As leaders, to continue building learning capabilities, it is important to remain flexible and continuously evaluate performance and make changes in identified areas of weakness.
References
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Church, A. H., & Waclawski, J. (1998). Designing and using organizational surveys. New York: Wiley.
Church, A. H. & Waclawski, J. (1998, April). Making multirater feedback systems work.
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Day, G. S., Gunther, R. E., & Schoemaker, P. J. (2000). Wharton on managing emerging
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LaRue, B., Childs, P., Larson, K., (2004). Leading Organizations from the Inside Out.
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