Being a Competent Leader in Any Role

I just read an incredibly good article about incompetent leaders, and to clarify, I think that most people are leaders in their roles, or at least should be, regardless of titles. I especially think that Project Managers have to be leaders and I think that their natural career progression is to move into the C-suite positions, because they know so much about the organization, far and wide; they have to work with many different types of people, including introverts and demanding drivers; they usually can’t do the work that the project requires, but they influence the teams to get the work done by building relationships and holding people accountable; and they can switch their focus as needed at a moment’s notice.

This article speaks to the fact that we need to be better at assessing, evaluating, and hiring leaders, and there are nine very simple questions towards the end that we can use to spot incompetent leaders before hiring or promoting them. P.S. This article actually dovetails nicely with the article that my colleague shared a few weeks ago, about how strong leaders can improve team performance, but only when they go into a situation with a sense of humility about their own relative power, whereas dominating leaders, who think they know more than everyone else and have been empowered to do as they wish, will actually destroy their teams.