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The Real Measure of Leadership Success

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This article is more than 10 years old.

I very much enjoy discovering great fellow bloggers on Forbes. Just today, a colleague of mine referred me to a post by Glenn Llopis, titled Leadership Success is No Longer Measured by Money or Power.  While I think that, unfortunately, leadership success is still very much measured by money and power in today's world - I completely agree with Glenn's core assertion, which is that those measures are both limited and limiting.

He feels, as do I, that leaders who measure their success by how much money they amass or how much power they have over other people are missing the point.  Such measures reduce the purpose of leading to a mere king-of-the-mountain game: the one who dies with the most toys wins.

But the real purpose of leading is to create positive change.  One dictionary definition of the word 'leading'  is 'providing direction or guidance; showing the way.'  True leaders help people to see what's possible and work with them to make it so.  I think the most essential measure of leadership is whether others accept you as their leader.  You don't get to say whether or not you're a good leader - your followers do.

One line in Glenn's post I particularly love: "Successful leadership is something that happens organically when a leader focuses on the true impact of his or her actions." Absolutely. If leaders focus on supporting the success of their enterprise, and judge themselves honestly based on whether or not they're actually able to catalyze that success - the people in that leader's organization will say, "I'm with you - let's go."  And that's the true measure of success.