How to (Actually) Run Exceptionally Successful Meetings

What comes to mind when you think about the meetings you have in your business or organization?

Are they productive, engaging, and helpful?

Or, are they boring, painful, and pointless?

Unfortunately, the answer for many people is the latter. There is plenty of data out there backing up the perspective that meetings are a terrible use of time. For example:

• Managers spend 35 – 50% of their time in meetings

• Employees consider half of their time in meetings to be wasted

• Executives feel 67% of meetings to be failures

The impact of unproductive meetings is considerable. They waste time and resources. They create dread and frustration. They directly affect your ability to get work done.

Bad meeting habits can spread like a virus – moving from one meeting to the next, team to team, and beyond. Here are some signs that your organization may be infected with “meeting-itis”:

• You always start late and/or drag on well past the stated end time.

• You finally get to your agenda after 20 minutes of small talk.

• Everyone is either looking at his or her phones, yawning, staring out the window, or trying to sneak out.

• One person dominates the conversation while others remain silent.

• You never get to the point because you’re missing key background information and data.

• The discussion is halted by failed technology (bad connectivity, dropped calls, broken projector, etc).

• Participants leave more confused about the meeting topic and next steps than they were before they came in.

• You and your colleagues jump for joy every time a meeting is canceled.

If you’re experiencing one or more of these symptoms regularly, you need to take action. 

“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’”

— Dave Barry

How to Make Your Meetings Great in 15 Steps

You’re going to have a hard time achieving your leadership goals or taking your organization to the next level if you and your colleagues are wasting 5, 10, or more hours each week in bad meetings. At worst, your meetings need to be efficient and productive. At best, you can and should aspire to create meetings that serve as an excellent way to communicate, brainstorm ideas, reach agreements, and work collaboratively.

Many resources suggest how to have better meetings, with a majority of the tips focusing on how to organize the meeting. This, of course, is an important aspect of any meeting which we’ll discuss here. However, just as important is what you need to do within a meeting to make it great.

Following these steps will help you conquer “meeting-itis” and set a foundation for leading productive and energizing meetings that people will look forward to.

Before the Meeting

1. What’s the Point?

When planning a meeting, the best place to start is by asking yourself the following questions: What do I want out of this meeting? Does something specific need to be discussed or decided? What would success look like?

These simple but critical questions will help you define a meaningful objective and reason why the meeting needs to take place. If you can’t come up with at least one or two clear objectives, you probably don’t need to have the meeting.

2. Create an Agenda

Don’t take this step for granted. A simple, well-written agenda sets clear expectations for everyone involved and will help to keep the discussion on track.

Be sure to include specific start/end times, a statement of objective(s), location and other logistical information, key topics, timeframes, and presenters. Send it out to participants in advance so they know what to expect and have time to prepare.

3. Check Your Invite List

Here’s a surefire way to guarantee that a meeting will be pointless – involve the wrong people.

That could mean missing important contributors or having too many people included. If you’ve left someone off that is a critical stakeholder or decision maker, you’re bound to have to have the discussion again. If some attendees don’t need to be involved, they may slow things down and are unlikely to be engaged in the conversation.

Be thoughtful and intentional about deciding whom you ask to come and why.  

4. Consider the Setting

Choose a location for the meeting that gives you the best overall chance of success.

For an in-person meeting, find a room that will be comfortable and appropriate for the topic. Make sure it has proper resources available to support your meeting plan such as wi-fi, computers, whiteboards, flip charts, markers, etc.

If you have to meet virtually, determine if video or a traditional conference call is best. Run a quick test in advance to make sure everything is working.

Hint # 1 – Some organizations get too comfortable using conference calls for important meetings, literally sitting down the hall from each other while meeting on the phone. If you’re dealing with a complex topic or an issue involving conflict and emotion, it is critical to get people into a room together. Not only is it easier to read reactions and facilitate discussion in person than it is over the phone, but participants on conference calls are also often multi-tasking and not giving the meeting their full attention.

5. Pick the Right Duration, Timing, and Frequency

Consider how long the meeting needs to be. Try to plan your meetings for 30 minutes or less. While this may not always be possible, capping your meetings at 30 minutes will force you to stay on point and minimize distractions.

Also, determine the best time to start. Are you more likely to get engagement first thing in the morning or later in the day? Are you working across time zones?

Finally, for recurring meetings, pick a reasonable frequency that makes the most sense for everyone involved. In some cases, that means daily. In others, it means weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. Look for opportunities to keep the frequency down by using technology and virtual methods to communicate and share information between meetings.

Hint #2 – Beware of typical “status check-in meetings.” These are meetings with one-way communication or updates that are only relevant to a subset of participants. These meetings are bound to be tedious and wasteful.

A good meeting should be collaborative, not just informational. If you are looking to push or gather necessary information, consider scheduling smaller, quicker briefings or using other channels to share updates.

By working through these five steps, you’ll have laid the foundation for a great meeting. However, you haven’t made it to the finish line yet.

You need to lead your meeting effectively by staying focused on the goal, following your rules, getting everyone involved, and agreeing to what comes next. These next ten steps will help you achieve this.

During the Meeting

6. Who’s in Charge?

Be clear about who is leading the meeting. If you called the meeting, be prepared to chair it. If you’re not in a position to lead, identify the right person and be specific in asking them to run it.

The lead needs to be responsible for watching the agenda and clock, moving the group forward, calling out any bad behaviors, and keeping things on track. A meeting with no leader has a high chance of falling apart.

7. Set Ground Rules

From the start, especially if you are bringing a group of people together for the first time, set expectations for the meeting’s “rules of behavior.” This includes norms on how the team starts and communicates, whether phones/laptops are allowed, and what happens when participants are late or leave early.

If you’re gearing up for a long meeting, ask the group to offer suggestions to the rules. Write the rules down and post them where everyone can see them. If you’re looking to build better meeting habits within an organization, you may need to repeat this step several times to get the message out and set expectations.

8. Set a Standard by Starting and Ending on Time

Bad habits on meeting timeliness are hard to break. It’s easy to slip into a pattern of “sorry I’m late but…” The best place to address this is with yourself by setting a standard regarding timeliness.

Start the meeting exactly on time, even if some of the participants are late. Don’t feel like you have to start over or provide a re-cap every time someone joins. If you’re having a hard time getting people to follow along, consider what incentives/penalties you can put in place. People will notice and get the message.

End the meeting exactly when you planned, even if it means that you can’t cover all of the topics or have to convene again later to finish. Look for opportunities to follow-up on open items outside of the group discussion.

Hint #3 – As a leader, the number one success factor for having great meetings is by personally demonstrating your stated standards on preparation and timeliness. You can have all of the rules in the world, but no one will take them seriously if you’re the one with bad meeting habits. This same concept applies even if you are not the official leader or meeting owner. Be consistent and disciplined in following the rules. Lead by example.

9. Get Everyone Involved

As noted earlier, great meetings are not about one-way communication. That’s what announcements, speeches, and emails are for.

It’s your responsibility to ensure that everyone in the meeting is involved and participating. Pay attention to what is happening around you and the body language in the room. Are the participants listening or are they checked-out? Is one person dominating the discussion? Do you see that someone is withholding an opinion?

In all of these cases, you need to take steps to speak up and address these behaviors. You can share what you are observing without being confrontational. For example, “John, you seem distracted, what is going on?” or “Jane, we’ve heard your opinion on the matter, I’d like to hear what Sally has to say” or “Mike, I sense that you have something you’d like to add” are all effective statements.

This step is a little trickier with a virtual meeting, but you can still pay attention to the dynamics of the discussion and address them to keep everyone pulling together in the same direction.

10. Lead with Questions

Another way to keep everyone involved and engaged is to facilitate discussion by asking Powerful Questions. If you’re leading the meeting, don’t feel like you must have all of the answers ready in advance (in fact, if you do, there’s no need to meet).

Posing effective questions establishes active dialogue and gives members of the group an opportunity to provide their input and perspective. Check out our post on how to construct and use Powerful Questions for specific guidance on how to accomplish this.

11. Take Frequent Breaks

Even if you’ve got a great meeting going, people can only focus for so long. Everyone has a finite amount of brain power he or she can give before they become tired. Once tired, your participants are more likely to get bored and distracted.

A hungry group is also one that will have a hard time concentrating. Plan in breaks and add in others ad hoc when you observe that the group is fading. Give them just enough time to grab a snack, use the restroom, or quickly check email. Be sure to start back up promptly.

12. Have a Parking Lot

Inevitably, topics and questions that are important but not directly relevant to the objective of the meeting at hand are going to come up. You don’t want to lose those thoughts, but you also don’t want to go down a path that will lead you away from the meeting purpose.

Have a process for capturing these and tabling them for a future discussion. You’ll need to be disciplined in addressing these if you want others to trust that you’ll follow-up.

13. Take Good Notes

There is nothing worse than having a great discussion only to realize that no one captured what was said. Taking notes sounds trivial, but it’s a vital step in meetings where participants are sharing ideas or making decisions. In addition to providing a helpful reference, it lets everyone know that someone is bothering to record what he or she shared.

The level and detail of notes should be relative to the complexity of the meeting. Sometimes you may need to capture very specific comments while in other cases a few quick bullet points summarizing the discussion will suffice.

If you can’t take them yourself, ask someone else to do it. There are fewer excuses to mess this up now that recording technology is readily available. Have a simple and consistent format and process for the notes that makes them useful and accessible for anyone who might review them.

14. Agree to Action

Go back and reflect on the objective of the meeting. In almost all cases, there is some outcome that should be produced as a result of the meeting.

It could be a plan, a list of ideas, feedback, or a specific agreement. In all of these cases, the question is, what comes next? What actions are the group agreeing to? What specifically needs to happen, who owns it, and by when will it be done?

Even if a meeting is interesting and engaging, it is by definition pointless if nothing comes out of it.    

15. Take a Long View

You might be thinking to yourself, running through all of these steps doesn’t sound very fun. And truthfully, if you’re taking on a team or organization where bad meetings are the norm, instituting these steps to great meetings may not be fun at first.

It might feel like you’re putting more time and effort into meetings than you ever were before. That’s ok because the energy you are investing will pay off in the long run.

Leaders don’t look for quick fixes and aren’t afraid of driving change when the organization stands to benefit. Once people see how much better meetings can be and how much time can be saved, you’ll reach a tipping point where good habits take over the bad.

At that point, meetings become fun. The value of having great meetings will be very real and you and your staff will embrace the planning and discipline that it takes to keep them going.

Share Your Experiences

Use the comments below to share your experiences with bad meetings and how they have impacted you and your teams or businesses. Let us know where you’ve used these steps to make improvements or where you’ve struggled to change to a great meeting culture.

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Sources:

• http://www.inc.com/laura-montini/infographic/the-ugly-truth-about-meetings.html

• https://www.atlassian.com/time-wasting-at-work-infographic

• https://e-meetings.verizonbusiness.com/global/en/meetingsinamerica/uswhitepaper.php

• https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201204/why-meetings-kill-productivity

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Interview Secrets Top Companies Use to Hire Outstanding Talent

It was the most gut-wrenching moment of my life.

I was young, inexperienced, and ill-prepared. Our company was young, full of hope, but lacking revenue.

It was a recipe for disaster, and I was the cook.

So I sat in front of a dozen good people, preparing to deliver words I’d rehearsed many times but that now seemed so insensitive. All eyes were on me, and everyone knew something was wrong. They were about to be laid off, and I was the one to do it.

I’ll save the details of this lay-off, the preparation it entailed, the emotion, and the end-results for another article (subscribe and receive it directly to your inbox when it’s published). It is, after all, important to handle these things appropriately, sensitively, professionally should you find yourself in the same situation.

More importantly, however, is to look at how and why it happened to begin with.

You see, these people had tried their best, worked hard, and done some good things for us during their employment. They were professional, ethical, and eager to please.

At the end of the day, they simply didn’t fit our company. Moreover, it all boiled down to one thing… a different moment in time before this layoff:

The moment we decided to hire them.

Looking for anybody... Anybody? Really?

Hiring The Best is Hard

If this layoff taught me anything, it’s that hiring a good employee is easy.

But we’re not looking for good, are we?

We are looking for great. We are looking for the best!

If this layoff taught me anything else, it’s that hiring the best of the best is incredibly difficult.

The best people have qualities that are hard to quantify. They not only have the skills and experience, but they also have the motivation to always be their best, the drive to help the company succeed, the aptitude to learn new skills, and character to lead the charter for which they were hired.

These are the “A players.” These are the employees that make a difference in your organization. They solve the unsolvable problems, they jump in and help where help is needed, and they are instrumental in helping drive new business.

So how do you consistently hire A players in your organization? Before I tell you that, let me share with you the worst way to hire so you never do it again.

The Worst Way to Hire

The typical hiring strategy—the one that my company started out with and the one that I’ve seen most companies employ—is based on two simple criteria:

1. Does the candidate have the skills I’m looking for?
2. Does the candidate have the experience I’m looking for?

Managers using this strategy sift through resume after resume, looking for keywords and job titles that fit as closely as possible to the job for which they’re being hired. If they’ve got 3 years of experience, they might work.

5 years? Even better.

15? They’ll cost too much.

10 years? Bring them in for an interview!

The interview itself is simple. The candidate comes in and fills out a job application. You “get to know them” and ask a few questions. Maybe some questions you’ve read online. Others are ad-hoc. After 60 minutes of chatting, they meet a few team members and get sent on their way.

If there’s a decision process for the candidate, it’s mostly a formality… you’ve already decided whether they are going to be a good fit, likely upon first impressions.

Sound familiar?

Hopefully not, because this is the one of the worst ways to hire.

Why Experience and Skills Matter (to a Small Degree)

Experience and skills are valuable to a degree. These things help new candidates hit the ground running, help them make informed decisions, and help them fit in with the team.

But in many cases, hiring someone with a particular set of skills for a specific job at hand pigeon-holes them into this role for their tenure at your company. They will find it difficult to branch out, help in other areas, and won’t be the type of person that takes it upon themselves to gather new skills and experiences.

In other words, this hiring process will land you a few good employees. Maybe even a few A-players. But this process doesn’t land the best and the brightest consistently. More often than not, a B-player sneaks through.

And while B-players are good, they’re not great. What’s worse, B-players never attract A-players… and many times attract C-players. Do you see where this is going?

With just a few of these on board, they will drag down your culture and efficiency, increase your cost, and balloon your schedules.

It’s that same recipe for disaster I found myself in above. This time, though, you’ll be the cook.

Hacking and Hiring

To be Mr. Obvious, we want to avoid that situation at all costs. But how do you do that?

How do you consistently hire people who do great work every day, who make your company successful, who look for ways to grow and expand themselves and your organization?

Let me tell a story of how I went from laying off good people to hiring great ones. It’s a story about how I stumbled into a new way of recruiting that changed our business, our culture, our effectiveness, and our productivity.

This discovery wasn’t a new one. It’s a process top companies in the world—companies like Google, Apple, and Proctor & Gamble—use to find high performers.

Everyone has a different name for it. We called it, “hiring for aptitude.”

Our company was in the business of professional hacking. We took our customer's computer systems, broke into them, then wrote up reports of the vulnerabilities we found and ways they could protect their systems from attack.

We had a small, dynamic team and were growing fast. So we posted job requirements on all the typical online hiring websites, pulled ads in the local newspaper, and contacted universities.

Our job requirements listed certain skills… skills that we quickly discovered were easy to find. Unfortunately, these skills also came with certain personal characteristics that we couldn’t stomach: lack of ethics, highly egotistical and, in general, bad actors.

I recall some phone interviews we held with candidates bragging about their attempts to break into government systems or innocent peoples’ personal computers. Their skills were impressive, their character wasn’t.

I couldn’t get them off the phone fast enough.

We couldn’t hire those people. We couldn’t bring them in. They weren’t going to be professionals. They were going to get themselves and our company into trouble.

How did we get around this issue?

We created a test.

Hiring Smart

This test was a set of problems that mirrored the problems we typically solved for our customers.

We wanted to find out whether somebody had both skills and the ability to learn how to get the job done. If we could find the right problem-solving skills, we could find a professional candidate, an ethical candidate who maybe didn't have the experience, but had the technological background and the ability to solve any problem we threw at them.

We call this the hacker aptitude test and it was awesome. 

It started off minimal, and we enhanced it over time as we better understood how to assess the aptitude of each candidate. Interestingly enough, we found that there were far more people who had the talent for hacking than there were actual hackers. They didn’t have the experience, and that was OK. We knew with their technology, background, and mindset, they would fit in great and begin solving problems in all areas of our business.

We were hiring smart. We were hiring for aptitude.

Why Does This Matter?

But, you say, I don’t run a company of computer hackers. How does this matter at all to what I do?

I have good news: We’ve applied this “hiring for aptitude” concept to other companies and found it works great. In fact, Google (widely considered an expert at finding extremely high-quality candidates) spoke with Wired.com about their hiring practices. The result is a fascinating article entitled Here's Google's Secret to Hiring the Best People discussing Google’s VP of Operations’ experience with different types of recruitment.

The Value of 6 Various Interview Techniques to Employee Performance Over Time

Here’s Google’s Secret to Hiring the Best People | Wired.com | April 2015 (Hover mouse to see segment labels)

In short, 6 variables in the interview process explain a candidates’ performance over time: unstructured interview questions, reference checks, years of work experience, a work sample test, cognitive ability, and structured interview questions. The last three (work sample test, cognitive ability, and structured interview questions) explain a full 81% of the hires performance over time.

Unstructured interviews? Only 14%.

I think this sums up nicely why anyone should consider building a new interview process. The current way most companies hire means they are only 14% likely to get an A-player on board. But if we shift to hiring for aptitude, we can have an 81% capture rate.

81%!!!

In a nutshell, once you stop worrying about the skills and experiences your job candidates have and start focusing on their ability to solve the types of problems your company faces daily, you will build a team of A-players that can be deployed on almost any project, put in front of any customer, and learn new skills that will carry your company into a successful future.

So how do you go about hiring for aptitude? Let’s build the process from the ground up.

1. List Your Problems

Get out a pen and paper and list your problems.

List the problems your company runs into on a daily basis. List the problems your customers bring to you. List the kinds of problems your engineers grapple with when building your companies’ products. If you are hiring for a specific position (e.g., Software Engineer), list the problems they are going to have to solve for foreseeable projects and in general.

Don’t just focus on the problems you need for one position. List ALL the problems you face.

Do all this BEFORE posting your job.

Without these problems listed, you really don’t know who you are hiring. Your job posting may be specific, but it will be specific to a title and not ability (e.g., Engineering Manager, Documentation Specialist, etc.) You’ll find yourself looking for skills and experiences. But we want to look for the aptitude to learn and grow and build a better company with you.

Your list is going to be the basis for your aptitude test, your structured interview questions, and your entire hiring strategy for bringing on the A-players you need to succeed.

2. List Your Candidates Required Problem Solving Skills

With a good understanding of the problems you are faced with on a daily basis, think about the kinds of problem-solving skills your candidate will need to have to assist in resolving those challenges.

Be careful with this one… you’re not listing raw skills like “knows how to use Microsoft Office” or “can program in Java,” you’re listing problem-solving skills such as persistence, out-of-the-box thinking, drive, ability to find new information quickly, flexibility, etc.

Remember, if you ask for candidates with specific skill sets like Microsoft Office, you’ll get them.

What you won’t get are the candidates that know how to solve your problems using faster/better/cheaper tools. What you won’t get are candidates who know that your problem may already be solved. What you won’t get are candidates who can think independently, take appropriate risks, and drive forward to get the job done.

3. Map These Problem Solving Skills to Questions

Here is where we begin development of your interview and the aptitude test.

For our “Hacker Aptitude Test,” we went searching for Mensa type puzzles that represented the kind of thinking we needed in computer hackers, namely persistence, creative thinking, and the ability to unstick themselves from a path of thinking that’s not working.

For your aptitude test, you will use your listed problems above to think about abstract questions you can ask candidates that will give you a good feeling for whether they will be able to solve your problems, and any future problems your company can throw at them.

Let’s take software engineer as an example. In the past, you may have specifically asked for a “Java programmer with a math background and 5 years of experience.” Now you are looking for someone who can build math software that runs on any computer. Your test may have some of the following types of questions to find just those candidates:

1. Math problems of varying difficulty levels
2. An open-ended question asking the candidate to list programming languages they know will create programs for any computer, or where to find such programming languages.
3. Show them a program one of your current employees has created that is similar. Ask your candidate to explain what’s happening. More importantly, ask your candidate to make changes to the program to make it more efficient or explain why it can’t be made so.

4. Create Your Test

Now comes the easy part. Creating your test.

I recommend having multiple sections to your test that embody the different characteristics you’d like to see in your candidates.

Put all your questions together in a single test that you will give to each new job applicant that comes through the door. Weight each test question based on how important each problem is to your business.

Our test looked like this, yours can be structured similarly:

Section 1 – Skills

Here we asked specific questions about the candidates hacking skills, computer programming skills, computer architecture skills, etc. We wanted to know what they already knew about computer hacking.

You will ask questions unique to the skills for which you are hiring. Find out what they already know about the types of problems your company has to solve.

Weight answers in this sections low… no more than 15% of the total test. The thing about skills is that you can always train your candidate for the specific skills you need them to have. You are more interested in the next two sections.

Section 2 – Cognitive Ability

Questions in this section need to get to the root of how candidates think. This is a bit of an IQ test, with IQ-test-like-questions.

If you can, create cognitive questions that align to the types of problem-solving skills you defined above. For example, if out-of-the-box thinking is required for your work, find some questions that exercise this thinking.

Weight this section high. Over 25%. You want candidates that have quality thinking when faced with unknown problems. For specific work-related problems, we should look to the next section.

Section 3 – Problem-Solving

You are asking your candidates to do one thing in this section: prove that they have the ability to solve the types of problems related to your work.

Take some time to design questions that force your candidate to “perform” the kind of work they would have to perform on the job. For our software engineering example, it’s easy… ask them to create a computer program (either on paper or live).

For other types of jobs, ask them to describe how they would solve a particular kind of problem you are faced with. Better yet, have them do it live.

Score this section high. Over 25%. You want candidates that show an aptitude for doing the type of work you’ll expect them to do on the job.

Section 4 – Experience Questions

The final section gets to the bottom of their experience. You’re not going to weight this section high. Less than 15% I’d recommend. Their previous experience is less important than their future performance. However, this section will help you gauge whether the experience they listed on their resume was accurate and relevant to your job requirements.

Section 5 – Structured Interview Questions

Drill your candidate here with questions you’ve designed up front to get to the bottom of their character. You want to find out what they’re all about, how they work, when they get frustrated, what they do about it, etc.

If you’ve had problems with past employees, ask them specific questions that will indicate whether similar problems will surface with this employee.

If you’ve had great experiences with past and current employees, put those questions on here too.

At the end of this section, you want to have a solid understanding of how the candidate will interact with your team, how they will work under pressure, how they will deal with unknown situations, etc.

Weight this section high, over 25%. Teamwork and character are far more important than years of experience or skills that can be taught. 

Final Thoughts

Having gone through the above steps, you should have a solid framework for a new interview process that lands you A-players.

Yes, it will take some up-front work and planning. It will take thought and development. But the time you will save when your new employee hits the ground running will be orders of magnitude more than the time you will lose developing this interview process to begin with.

Hiring great employees cannot be an afterthought. It takes foresight and dedication. I hope this guide has given you the tools you need to stop bringing good people onboard and instead start bringing on the best.

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Listen to the Podcast

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About the Author

Michael Mehlberg

CO-FOUNDER | TECHNOLOGY, PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT, MARKETING, AND SALES

Michael Mehlberg helps small businesses owners achieve their goals and live their passion. His approach to technology, corporate strategy, product development, marketing, and sales is both practical and highly effective, and has helped multiple small businesses grow into the company their owners envisioned. Reach out by emailing him at mike@moderndavinci.net or learn more on our About page.

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20 Behaviors the Best Leaders Use to Get Remarkable Results

You know a good leader when you see one.

They’re easy to spot – they communicate well, they’re trustworthy, people respond to them, and they get good results. There is more than one type of good leader and they may have many different styles, but most have some basic traits in common.

You also know a bad leader when you see one.

They lack self-awareness, are typically poor communicators, are inconsistent, and drive people crazy while failing to accomplish their goals. There are plenty of types of bad leaders. Their ineffectiveness is likely the result of leadership deficiencies in one or more critical areas.  

So, spotting a good or bad leader is easy. However, how do we learn to look a little deeper to understand why someone is or isn’t a good leader?

Being able to diagnose a leader’s type, strengths, and weaknesses is an important skill for several reasons. First, it gives perspective on how to identify, encourage, and develop good leaders. Second, it can help us avoid the damage from a bad leader and understand how to coach them to improve. And finally, if we know the basic components of effective leadership, we can assess ourselves to see where we have strengths to leverage and opportunities to grow.

With that in mind, and to give ourselves a simple model we can work with to assess leadership styles and characteristics, let’s take a look at three primary leadership profiles. We’ll call them Absent Leaders, Fake Leaders, and Real Leaders.

Absent Leaders

These are people who occupy leadership positions but are mostly lacking any real leadership skill, behavior, or ambition. They may have attained their leadership role through technical competence or tenure but do a poor job of transitioning to actual leadership responsibilities. They will avoid and retreat from challenging situations that involve conflict or interpersonal skills. They may be friendly and seek harmony but do so at the cost of results. Their inaction eventually exhausts and frustrates employees because they fail to provide guidance and don't achieve results. An absent leader would often be described as weak and ineffective.

Fake Leaders

Fake leaders superficially look like strong leaders. They actively seek leadership positions and won't hesitate to take charge. However, they have selfish motivations. They rely on titles and positional authority to validate their leadership. Their number one priority is self-advancement and they will shamelessly self-promote. They will often be viewed as arrogant and are not interested in feedback from others. These people will judge others and use force and intimidation to push their perspective. Fake leaders may initially have success in certain situations but they eventually alienate others and leave a trail of destruction in their wake. As you can see by this description, fake leaders are essentially self-serving bullies.

Real leaders

Real leaders are those who truly embrace the role of leadership and see leadership as a form of service to others. They are authentic, honest, and empathetic. They have a good degree of self-awareness and are constantly looking to learn. They avoid "or" choices in their leadership style and approach. They are fair and steady. They balance candor and respectfulness. They are positive and yet grounded. They value others but they also hold them accountable to commitments. They are motivated to succeed but also believe in investing in others. These leaders may be described as visionary or inspirational. While some people may naturally exhibit aspects of this style, achieving this type of leadership typically requires intentional planning and development.

Most people don’t fit 100% into any one of these categories. Even excellent leaders may exhibit some characteristics of absent and fake leaders while weak leaders may have some traits of a real leader. However, all leaders should strive to adopt the characteristics of a real leader for one key reason – real leaders will ultimately get the best results for themselves, their people, and their organizations.

Here is a handy chart you can use to take a closer look at how an Absent, Fake, and Real leader typically behave across 20 different leadership competencies.

Leadership Skill / Behavior	Absent Leader	Fake Leader	Real
Accountability	Does not hold others accountable for work or policies because they are afraid to or because they don’t care. This often results in inconsistency, resentment, and frustration.	Uses accountability as a "club" to beat up anyone who makes a mistake or to cover up failures. Not interested in understanding why something might be wrong. More likely to fire or marginalize someone who errs.	Willing to hold others accountable to their commitments. Comfortable speaking up to address issues when needed but does so thoughtfully. Looks for ways to improve processes and support others to set them up for success.
Building Relationships	Wants to be friends with colleagues and employees. Treats some as "insiders" or favorites while avoiding others where there are personality differences. Creates cliques which typically do more harm than good by creating division.	Does not invest in developing substantive relationships with others. Sees most relationships as a waste of time and energy unless they serve a specific purpose. Keeps others at arm's length.	Has a genuine interest in getting to know others and learn about their goals and interests. Recognizes that relationships are often a key to success. Strikes a good balance between professional relationships and friendships.
Communication	Communicates passively or reactively and only when absolutely necessary. Avoids delivering difficult messages.	Mostly demonstrates one-way, selective communication focused on their own perspective. Tone deaf to what others might expect to hear. Not interested in two-way communication or in hearing from others.	Communicates constantly through a variety of means. Sends consistent messages and does so through appropriate channels that meet the communication expectations of others.
Conflict Management Read: 3 Steps to Conquering “People Problems” >	Afraid of any conflict. Avoids it even if it becomes significant and negatively affects the organization. Gives in when conflict becomes avoidable but doesn't solve underlying issues.	Creates an environment of negative conflict which becomes destructive, hurts morale, and causes division. May relish confrontation as a way to show superiority.	Embraces and encourages constructive conflict. Looks to get stakeholders into dialogue and to openly debate differing perspectives.
Creativity	Creativity feels like a burden. Feels uneasy about change and prefers a risk-free route by sticking with the status quo.	Views time and energy spent on creativity as a distraction from "real" work. Not interested in the ideas of others. Takes credit if there are new ideas that do work.	Fosters creativity by giving others the opportunity to provide input. Leads by asking questions. Willing to let others test new ideas to see what can be learned. Willing to look outside the organization for new ideas.
Decision Making	Indecisive. Will let decisions linger regardless of the impact. Won't commit to decisions unless there is total consensus on an answer.	Makes rash decisions as a show of assertiveness and power. Ignores input from others. May make excuses or blame others for poor decisions.	Balances thoughtfulness and thoroughness with decisiveness. Consults others as much as possible but ultimately owns decisions.
Developing Others	Treats development passively. May allow staff to pursue development but will not actively support it or give employees the time or resources to genuinely pursue it.	Sees professional development as a waste of time and money. Prefers to keep others in their place. Views emerging leaders as a threat.	Prioritizes the development of others and will provide time resources for learning even if it requires making tradeoffs. Not afraid to create new leaders.
Emotional Regulation	Often overwhelmed by emotions and either expresses them at extremes or withholds them in ways that are unhelpful.	Shows little emotion. When emotions are expressed, it is often an explosive reaction characterized by anger and frustration.	Emotionally balanced. Considers and expresses feelings but does so thoughtfully by thinking before acting. Skillfully controls emotions to enhance leadership effect.
Empathy	Overly sympathetic, easily dragged into and swayed by emotional situations.	Lacks empathy. Not interested in the concerns and circumstances of others. Judgmental.	Empathetic and sincere but balances this with the need for steadiness and accountability.
Giving Feedback Read: Effective Feedback Made Simple >	Avoids giving feedback or provides ineffective feedback that is non-specific or softened to prevent from "offending" anybody.	Gives harsh and judgmental feedback with a focus on punishing or embarrassing others.	Provides timely, effective feedback with a genuine interest in helping and developing others.
Listening Read: Listen Up! How to Improve Your Listening Skills >	Listens but primarily does so at a superficial level. Focuses conversations back to themselves and their own interests.	Does not value listening and is generally not interested in what others have to say. Views leadership as telling others what to do, not listening to them.	Listens empathetically. Shows sincere interest in hearing what others have to say. Will give others their full attention and presence.
Motivation	Limited motivation. Looks to do the minimum amount of work to get by. Lacking a focus on long-term goals and progress.	Motivation can be high but is primarily self-focused. Goals are aligned to self-gratification and attaining personal recognition.	Intrinsically motivated. Consistently shows passion and optimism for achieving goals. Creates infectious commitment in others.
Negotiating	Averse to conflict and, therefore, takes an accommodating approach to negotiation (e.g. giving in to all demands). Gets poor results.	Views negotiation as a way to assert themselves and "win.” Will look to take as much as possible regardless of the impact on the overall outcome or other party.	Seeks real collaboration in negotiation. Prioritizes shared goals and outcomes across all parties. Sees negotiation as problem-solving, not adversarial.
Problem Solving	Similar to decision making, they will ignore or work around problems to avoid causing tension. Hopes the problem/situation go away.	Looks for quick fixes. Will not spend time to find systematic solutions.	Has a consistent and disciplined approach to problem-solving. Thoughtful but willing to commit to solutions. Involves others but takes ownership of decisions.
Receiving Feedback	Retreats from any feedback seen as negative. Takes it personally. Does not use feedback to attain improved performance.	Not interested in receiving feedback. Thinks they already have things figured out. Generally ignores it or blames other causes for poor performance.	Open-minded and truly interested in feedback that can help them improve. Actively seeks feedback from supervisors, colleagues, and employees.
Resilience	Easily discouraged when things aren’t going well. Likely to be devastated by any setbacks and is paralyzed moving forward.	Seems to be oblivious even if things around them are falling apart. Resilience is more a function of blindness to reality than a strength.	Steadfast. Not deterred by challenges or setbacks. Looks to learn and adjust from tough circumstances.
Risk Taking / Failure Read: All Great People Fail – So Should You >	Will not take any risks to avoid failure. Afraid to make mistakes. Sees failure as debilitating and as a reflection of themselves.	Can be thoughtless and reckless. Does not take responsibility for mistakes and is prone to repeat the same mistakes again in the future.	Willing to take reasonable risks to benefit the organization. Sees failure as inevitable and a learning experience.
Self-Awareness	Lacks of self-confidence. Has observable low self-esteem. Overly self-depreciating.	Overinflated sense of self. Seen as arrogant. Views self as superior to others.	Grounded and realistic assessment of themselves. Confident yet humble. Doesn't take themself too seriously.
Strategic View	Does not look out into the future. Lacks the ability to see beyond short time horizons. Focused only on short-term assignments.	May become overly focused and personally invested in one goal while losing sight of impacts and tradeoffs. Tunnel vision.	Consistently looks at the big picture. Invests time and process in setting goals. Re-evaluates progress and makes adjustments. Aligns resources and decisions to top priorities.
Trust / Integrity	Will tell people what they want to hear. Will be inconsistent on how they act and respond to certain situations as they seek to appease others.	Prioritizes outcomes over trust and hides mistakes to save face. Willing to lie or bend/break a rule to get a certain result.	Has clear personal and professional values. Demonstrates them consistently in communication and action. Consistent with honesty and follow through.

Now that you’ve spent some time considering these three basic leadership profiles and behaviors, ask yourself the following questions and let us know your answers in the comments below:

• Consider examples of leaders you’ve known that have been ineffective. Which absent or fake leadership qualities did they exhibit? How did their leadership style affect others around them?
• Consider examples of leaders you know that have been very successful. What are some situations where you saw them demonstrate the skills and behaviors of a real leader? How did others react?
• How do you assess yourself against each of these behaviors? Do you mostly fit one of these profiles? If you catch yourself acting as absent or fake leader in one more areas, how might those behaviors be holding you back? What real leadership skills do you have that you can build on?

Remember – learning to become a world-class leader is a journey. There is no shame in admitting you have room to improve. In fact, a willingness to learn it is a sign of being a real leader. Look for opportunities to gather feedback, set a plan to work on your weaknesses, invest in your personal development, and seek the help of others who are willing to help you grow and thrive.

In future posts we’ll dive deeper into each of these areas to discuss specific strategies you can use to achieve your leadership goals. Receive our weekly posts by becoming a free Modern da Vinci Member today. 

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