Effective Leadership Summary

So, let's recap.  The Trilateral Leadership Ledger is a tool that can be used to measure leadership effectiveness.  The formula posited by Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward is:

Character x Tasks x Relationships = Leadership Effectiveness

There are a number of items that define each factor.  Over the past few weeks, I have unpacked each of these items and discussed their importance to effective leadership.

In summary: 

Effective leaders are people of high moral and ethical character.  Character matters immensely!  If people don't trust the leader, leadership does not occur.  Effective leaders will always strive to do the right thing for and by their teams.  Effective leaders can be trusted, without exception.  

Effective leaders are people who are task oriented.  They are not afraid of hard work and they employ a strong work ethic.  Just as important, effective leaders are able to positively motivate others to get the job done.  The effective leader inspires their team members to stretch beyond what they thought was possible and to realize their potential.

Effective leaders build strong and lasting relationships.  They understand the necessity of building strong rapport.  They genuinely care about people and, as such, put people first before their own self interests.  People have to truly know that the leader has their back.  The effective leader will always think people first!

At this point, the Trilateral Leadership Ledger is a self assessment.  Self assessments are tricky.  People tend to either rate themselves far too high or far too low, but, usually the former.  By doing so, one can get an inflated sense of their effectiveness  It is critical that the leader taking this be brutally honest with themselves!

There are a number of assessment that rely on asking others to rate you, but these have their own issues.  In most cases, the person being rated chooses who will fill out the assessments, typically choosing people who they think will rate them high.  This can lead to a distorted picture of reality.  Another drawback of having others assess you is that there can be the fear of the person doing the assessment being identified.  Even when the assessments are supposedly anonymous, people can believe that there are truly ways that they can be identified (and frequently there are!).  Fear of retribution for a less than stellar assessment can skew the responses.  Please understand that I am not advocating NOT using such methods, I am just suggesting that one goes into it with their eyes wide open!

Being effective is the goal of any sincere leader.  Using the Trilateral Leadership Ledger is an excellent start toward effective leadership.  I also highly recommend reading the source material: Launching a Leadership Revolution by Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward.

Chris Brady & Orrin Woodward: "Launching a Leadership Revolution."  Business Plus. New York. p.93-110