Are You Assessing Your Leadership?

In my book “Leading Toward Liberation,” I emphasize that we can’t simply claim we are good leaders — that we care, are inclusive, and are equity-minded. We need to prove it.

And who best to tell us if we are hitting the mark than the people “on the ground.” We might receive this kind of leadership feedback when people write us thank you notes or express spontaneous appreciation at a gathering. But if we want to be intentional in our leadership, then we also need to think about measuring our leadership impact on a regular basis so we can sustain practices or make timely course corrections.

Why We Need To Assess Our Leadership

Leaders often measure their success on CVs, in annual reviews, and in job interviews by noting how much money they raised, how many new programs were launched, or (in the current state of higher ed) strategic efficiencies achieved. I’m not arguing against measuring these things; when working with coaching clients who are revising their CVs, I encourage them to include key accomplishments like these, because how else would a search committee know of your successes unless you tell them?

What we don’t often measure is HOW we were able to achieve these things. It matters because the HOW of our work sets the tone for culture and climate. Students and families pick up on culture and climate during their visits, as do potential faculty and staff hires. Leadership candidates can also detect a vibe — I’ve known folks who withdrew after a campus visit because something felt off, dysfunctional, or unhealthy. How you lead is not only important for recruiting and retaining students, staff, and faculty; it’s also key for demonstrating your impact and legacy, whether you are on the job market or not.

How To Assess Your Leadership

How are you measuring your leadership to learn and contribute to liberatory change in which everyone can thrive? If you’re at a loss, here’s one way (and certainly not the only way; if you’re a social scientist, notice how this follows stages in construct development!):

Describe what “good” leadership looks like to you. For me, it is liberatory (no surprise there!). But before I got there, the construct I chose was “inclusive” based on my experience of other leaders, my personal mission statement, and scholarship on Inclusive Excellence. Operationalize your leadership construct. How would someone describe a leader who leans into this leadership description? What would they be doing that you could observe, track, or measure? You need to get more specific than “I’ll know it when I see it.” Do your research. Review scholarship and practice to learn how others might have operationalized and measured your desired construct. What words stand out? Or behaviors? Can you plug them into sentences that could be used to evaluate your leadership? Create your survey. Maybe there is already a leadership survey that you can use. But maybe not. I didn’t have a budget to purchase a ready-made survey but this article in the Harvard Business Review helped me identify six items for my annual anonymous leadership survey to faculty and staff (responses were on a Likert-type scale of strongly disagree [1] to strongly agree [5] with an option of “not observed”): The dean builds and empowers diverse, equitable, and inclusive teams. The dean models authenticity, vulnerability, and openness. The dean speaks out and acts against injustice, exclusion, and inequity. The dean shows curiosity to understand diverse points of view. The dean shows empathy to others. The dean communicates with transparency. I also included other items that other deans had used in their performance surveys. Communicate to your constituents. Explain to your constituents about your reasons for conducting the survey and encourage high participation. Knowing a bit about your institutional culture can help you strike the right tone. Collect your data. Request that another unit can collect and house the data to preserve anonymity and confidentiality of respondents. My survey was collected by someone in the provost’s office, which sent the emails and collected the data on a secure server. They sent me the results so I could analyze and review. Track your leadership over time. The maximum possible score of my “inclusive leadership index” was 30. My score was =24 each year, which indicated to me that, on average, respondents were perceiving me as an inclusive leader, and of course, there is always room to grow. Consider including open-ended items. Qualitative data can contextualize the quantitative results. One year, a handful of faculty noted that they thought inclusion was a fad or that it undermined academic excellence. One of these ended their comment with: “Overall Dean Grade … C-… while Cs mean degrees, that ain’t good for a Dean.”) Yet, 70% of respondents said they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “Overall, I am satisfied with the dean’s performance” and only 16% disagreed or disagreed strongly with this statement (the rest were neutral on the topic). The quantitative and qualitative data not only helped me appraise the impact of my leadership but also gave me valuable insights about the challenges that students, staff, and faculty were facing in their units. Share your results along with the actions you will take. Your transparency and forthrightness will build goodwill, but following through on your promises is key for the long haul. And as I share in some of my talks, you will gain some champions and acompañera/x/e/os (people who can accompany you) too.

Anonymous surveys of your leadership are not the only way to measure your leadership. Other methods might include seeking honest input from colleagues who will tell you truth, focus groups run by an external partner, or 360 assessments. I share more ideas in Chapter 6 of “Leading Toward Liberation.”

I know that the idea of assessing how you lead can seem like A LOT. But assessment is part of higher education — students assess instructors all the time, and faculty/staff have assessment plans in place for courses and programs. So, assessment is actually normal, so it would seem like an injustice if leaders were absolved of assessing themselves. If you’re not sure where to start, your teaching, learning, and assessment staff can be very helpful, as can industrial/organizational psychology faculty and organizational development staff at your institution.

Assessing our leadership can help build trust, while also giving us important information about whether we are truly living out our leadership vision. The people we lead can tell us how we’re doing. Are we asking them?