OK, I know that leadership can’t really be measured. But then, how do you differentiate leadership skills between two professionals? When you say that someone is a great leader, what are you implicitly measuring?

We can simplify the leadership equation by giving it two simple characteristics: quantity and quality.

Quantity

Although there’s no such thing like “a lot of leadership”, let’s think about what it means. A leader is someone who influences others to do something or act in a way that he/she desires, without using means like threat and abuse of power. So, you can measure how much leadership there is in someone by understanding the influence that he/she has over other people. This cannot be turned into a number, but if you use influence as the parameter, you can at least compare how much leadership difference there is between people.

Quality

The quality of leadership will be different in each case. It is measured by determining if the leader is leading in the desired direction. A company may want leaders that bring the team together, while one of the employees is leading everyone towards a “winner takes all” attitude. Therefore, a quality leader is one that can influence other people towards the company’s vision.

How can you use this?

Trying to “measure” leadership can help in employee evaluations and performance appraisals. A lot of discussion can be avoided if an objective characteristic is given to leadership. The organization has to decide what type of leadership it desires, and identify who is showing it, and how strong it is.

Bad quality leadership has to be mitigated or even eliminated from the organization as soon as possible, especially if it is growing in quantity. Good quality leadership must be stimulated, awarded and developed, to make it grow in quantity.