Managing By Walking Around: Why is it so difficult to measure effective leadership? Columbus, GA Sunday, February 27, 2011 Leadership can be described as the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of directing individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared company objectives.

Most thought leaders evaluate leadership effectiveness by performance metrics, followers and other organizational stakeholders. The most commonly used measure of leader effectiveness is the leader's department or division performs its task successfully and attains its goals.

Examples of objective measures of performance or goal attainment include profit margin, sales increase, market share, return on investment, productivity, budgeted expenditures, ratings of effectiveness obtained from the leader's managers, peer ratings, and subordinates.

Why is it so difficult to measure effective leadership? Dr. Jakes, International Managing Director of Dwayne D. Jakes & Associates Management Systems, LLC believes the role of manager and leadership are confusing and some leaders are ineffective in both instances. There is a continuing controversy about the difference between leadership and management. A person can be a leader without being a manager and a person can be a manager without leading. No one has proposed that managing and leading are equivalent, but the degree of overlap is a point of sharp disagreement.

Managers are concerned with doing things right and Leaders are concerned with doing the right things. Some leaders are figure heads! They manage and lead by walking around giving instructions without any structure or guidance, playing golf, taking credit for employee's individual contributions and never sharing the success of the organization.

These are your Virtual C-Level Executives often missing in action. Stakeholders respect their position but not their leadership qualities. They are viewed as task masters and cannot influence mutual trust, motivation, and cooperation from team members.

Most C-Level Executives are Servant Leaders; they have open door policies, are highly visible, trustworthy and offer confidence and optimism. What type of leader are you? Are you effective?