Quiz Yourself: Are You a Good Leader?

“You don’t get points for predicting rain. You get points for building an ark.” – Louis J. Gerstner, chairman and CEO of IBM

How good a leader are you? Answer the following questions by giving yourself a score of one point for every “inadequate” answer, two points for every “competent” answer, and five points for every “masterful” answer:

1. How well do you know the important secrets of your business?

2. How good are you at sharing that knowledge with your key people?

3. How effective are you at inspiring others to follow your ideas?

4. How demanding are you in terms of getting others to reach their goals and objectives?

5. How good are you at following up?

6. How strong are you at coming up with useful, new ideas?

Now tally up your score.

If you scored more than 20, you are a natural leader. Work primarily on your greatest strength. Try to fix your greatest weakness.

If you scored between 10 and 20, you have great potential. The most important thing you can do to be better is commit yourself to being so — make it a specific goal. Then start paying attention to what good leaders do and listen to what we say about leadership in your daily ETR messages. Don’t pay too much attention to the “regular” stuff on leadership. It’s mostly wrong — written by people who have never really led.

If you scored below 10, well … you have your work cut out for you. Consider freelance consulting, copywriting, etc.

Whatever your potential … the most important thing a leader does is come up with a compelling idea about what needs to be done. If you can do that, you can do all the rest.

[Ed. Note.  Mark Morgan Ford was the creator of Early To Rise. In 2011, Mark retired from ETR and now writes the Palm Beach Letter. His advice, in our opinion, continues to get better and better with every essay, particularly in the controversial ones we have shared today. We encourage you to read everything you can that has been written by Mark.]