Who's Monitoring You?

This past week I experienced my first encounter with a Holter Monitor, an electronic device designed to capture detailed information about the function of one’s heart. For two separate 24-hour periods my chest was wired to this gizmo, recording everything that was happening in my cardiovascular system as I went about my work and play. Besides the inconvenience of sleeping on my back and a couple of trips to and from the hospital the entire experience was mundane.

The monitor was prescribed because I reported symptoms that felt like my heart was racing on several occasions in the past month. Naturally, I’m hoping the results won’t identify any significant problems but, if there is something wrong, the diagnostics will tell my cardiologist what course of treatment to recommend.

My experiences this week prompted me to think about how leadership effectiveness is being monitored. Wouldn’t it be great if we could attach a special “Effectiveness Device” to ourselves and every other leader in the organization, a diagnostic tool that could record how well we are doing in our leadership roles? Some might argue that we have these instruments already in the form of 360-degree feedback and various other assessments. My experience tells me there are limits with such measurements including a lack of honesty when the feedback is offered or an unwillingness to acknowledge deficiencies by the leaders themselves.

Who should be responsible to monitor leadership? In the political, entertainment, and sports arenas of today it seems like leadership has little to do with accountability so maybe scrutinizing behavior won’t help very much. After all, if my Holter Monitor reveals a problem and I choose to ignore it, the consequences only affect me, right? Try making that argument with my family and you will likely find little support. So why is public leadership permitted to stray from the path of responsibility with few, if any, ill effects? Are we so cynical about leadership, so hungry for power, so envious of their positions of authority, that we willingly abandon any attempts to examine their behavior?

Effective leadership should be something we aspire to, with clear measurements that show us when we have abandoned a principle, broken a promise, failed to live up to our core values, or strayed from the organization’s vision. We need processes in place that reveal these shortcomings while offering prescriptive feedback and plans to help us practice healthier behaviors. It will require unusual courage to acknowledge our shortcomings and persistent discipline to change our behavior.

Since I’m not an inventor, don’t expect the debut of a new monitoring device anytime soon. Instead, I invite you to dialogue with me and other leaders about creative ways to observe and measure leadership effectiveness. Perhaps together we can model leadership behavior that becomes the standard for others to emulate, not for 24-hour periods but by creating legacies that last a lifetime.