A couple of months ago, I was presenting to a group of future student leaders at St. Mark’s School, a private boarding school in Massachusetts. The topic for the day was inspired leadership.   While developing my presentation, I stumbled upon a great video that provides a rather elegant example of how to be so inspirational as to build a movement.   In short, while every great movement has a visionary leader at its beginning, it is the first group of early followers that give the leader’s crazy dream legitimacy.  Never overlook the power of being the first follower.

In the past year I have written on ways of diagnosing bad leadership, techniques for leaders to inspire, and given examples of both good and bad leadership.  Taken in aggregate, you might, with a bit of mental wrangling, be able to piece together some sort of rubric for being a good leader.  Well, allow me to save you that cognitive energy by sharing Seven questions for leaders, from blogger/author extraordinaire Seth Godin.  While i am sure there are more explicit and academic examinations of leadership in existence, these seven questions are a good start for leadership in the digital age.  Enjoy!

Seven questions for leaders

Do you let the facts get in the way of a good story?

What do you do with people who disagree with you… do you call them names in order to shut them down?

Are you open to multiple points of view or you demand compliance and uniformity? [Bonus: Are you willing to walk away from a project or customer or employee who has values that don’t match yours?]

Is it okay if someone else gets the credit?

How often are you able to change your position?

Do you have a goal that can be reached in multiple ways?

If someone else can get us there faster, are you willing to let them?