How to Create Your Leadership Scorecard
Like a lot of my executive coaching clients, I believe that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. When it comes to leadership development, measuring your progress doesn’t have to be complicated or burdensome. You can drive a lot of change and hold yourself accountable by creating a simple leadership scorecard for yourself.
Let’s say, for instance, that you’ve identified two or three leadership behaviors that if you moved the needle on them in a positive way over the next six months, would make a big difference in your effectiveness as a leader. They might be some of the behaviors related to the list I shared in my recent post on what the best bosses consistently do. Or it might be some of the others that my executive coaching clients regularly take on for their development like delegating more often and more effectively, coaching by asking great questions, or creating space to think strategically.
Let’s take those three and put them in a simple daily scorecard that looks like this:
With a scorecard like this, you can take five minutes at the end of each day to assess how you did that day on the leadership behaviors you’re working to develop. If, for example, you delegated something new or had a good follow-up conversation on something you’ve already delegated, make a short note about what worked in the plus column for delegation. If, on the other hand, you realize at the end of the day that you held on to a task you should have delegated or got into the weeds on something you supposedly gave away, then make a note on that in the minus column.
The beauty of a process like this is you create daily accountability for yourself in the short run and, over the long run, you have a database of the patterns in your behaviors that are either helping you progress or that are holding you back. If you adopt the five-minute daily scorecard review, you’re pretty much guaranteed to progress.
Give it a try. Get clear about two or three behaviors that, if you move the needle on them, will help you be a better leader and create a daily scorecard for yourself. Keep your scorecards in your journal or a file on your computer and pull up with it once or twice a month to observe the patterns. Double down on what’s working and make adjustments where you identify the need. Let me know how it works for you. After you have some data points gathered, send me an email and share the difference keeping a leadership scorecard is making for you.
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