If you do a search on Google on leadership or management, you will find 10's of thousands of books on the topic.
With that much content, as well as many many more videos, articles, and courses, it can be overwhelming to explore the topic, not to mention, evaulate your own performance as a leader or manager.
I don't want to get into a discussion about the differences between management and leadership here, but I will focus on management as my role directly working with my team.
I was introduced to a book early in my career called, "First Break All The Rules, What The World's Greatest Managers Do Differntely". While it's been over 20 years since I read the book, I still come back to the principles and framework I learned in the book and have been applying them ever since.
The book highlights four roles of a "great" manager - select for talent, set expectations, motivate, and develop. When I am embarking on a new year and navigating significant change like right now or evaluating my performance, the four roles are a simple and effective starting point.
Right before the end of last year I started the process of "selecting for talent" by revisiting the StrenghtsFinder results from my team. Some people I have worked with for years while others are new and/or working with me in a different capacity with me than before. The process helps me and the entire team gain clarity on how to leverage each others strengths and guides development priorities. From here it will be important to have a clear plan of action for the existing team and prepared for when we have the opportunity to add new team members. My evaluation on a scale of 1-10: 5 because our team in this form is still new and there's more work to do in this space to understand my teammates talents, although I am confident we are on the right track.
I won't bore you with the dealtls of the other three areas, but for each - set expectations, motivate, and develop, I evaluate my actions and impact then prepare and execute steps to affect positive change.
I don't know that I answered the question of whether or not I am a "great" manager, but equipped with a simple yet effective framework and a commitment to regularly evaluate and seek areas of improvement, I'm confident I'm learning and improving as a manager and my team and I and those around us will benefit from the effort.
Learn In The Flow Of Life
Jason
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