In this topic, we help you evaluate the health of your leadership. We look at the qualities and skills of strong leaders, and highlight some common problem signs to look out for.

Your leadership health

Taking the time to reflect on and evaluate your leadership is important for effective governance. Examining your past can often help improve your future.

A leadership health check-up is one tool you can use to help you look after your leadership health.

A leadership health check-up can help your group develop, implement and monitor a comprehensive leadership strategy. Its main purpose is to help you:

• identify major areas where leadership may need improvement
• identify leadership strengths
• encourage discussion
• get people involved in leadership issues
• identify priority areas for closer evaluation and possible change.

You can use the following leadership health check-up to begin your leadership evaluation process. There are sections in the Governance Self-assessment Tool that will help you continue to evaluate your leadership, including assessing the cultural systems, practices and strengths of your leadership history. The Governance Self-assessment Tool can also help you work through some of the leadership challenges you’ve identified from the leadership health check-up.

Leadership health check-up

The following check-up can be completed by leaders. It shows how effective, capable and legitimate your leadership is, and can help you identify your leadership strengths as well as areas that may need improvement. It can also be completed by organisation, community or nation members who want to keep their leaders accountable. Everyone in the community has a responsibility for what goes on, not just the leaders.

How to complete the check-up:

1. Think about how each statement applies to the leadership of your organisation, community or nation.
2. Tick your level of agreement or disagreement with each statement.
3. For statements with a rating that suggests a leadership issue, you may also like to note the level of priority (low, medium or high) you think it should be given. This will help identify your main leadership issues, and where to start making changes.

You can do the check-up on your own or as a group and compare results. Do you all agree on the same problems and issues? Or do some people see things differently? If so, why?

Consider getting someone from outside to conduct the process and provide a collective report. This means each person can give their assessment in confidence.

Once you’ve identified and prioritised gaps or issues in your leadership, you can start thinking about strategies and actions to make the changes you want.

Your leadership qualities and skills

Leadership qualities are the traits, characteristics or skills a leader has to help them perform their duties effectively. Many qualities and skills have been identified by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as being important in their leaders.

It’s important to understand your own skills and qualities as a leader. Find out from the members of your organisation, community or nation how they might judge the success and legitimacy of your leadership. Before you start making changes to your leadership, it will help to identify the leadership qualities that you support and want to strengthen.

Leadership problem signs to watch out for

Evaluating your leadership, including its problems, is all part of governing your organisation, community or nation.

It’s often easy to identify poor leadership qualities. Just because a leader shows some of these signs, it doesn’t mean they can’t improve their leadership skills. Recognising the signs makes it easier for a leader to take action and become a more effective leader.

You know something is going wrong if you notice that leaders are:

• dishonest or corrupt
• selfish
• bullying or intimidating
• unaccountable for their actions
• biased in their representation
• unilateral in making decisions
• power hungry
• cynical and inflexible
• not turning up to meetings or preparing themselves for important events
• not listening to others
• full of talk but no action.

“Integrity, strength and fairness. Integrity is an important quality for leaders to have. We need leaders we can respect and who are able to lead by example… A leader also needs to be strong. And they don’t just need to be strong talkers who are able to speak up and be heard… You need to be strong enough to make decisions that may not make you very popular but are fair. Which leads us into the last important quality of good leadership: the ability to be fair. Leaders need to be willing to consider the needs of everyone and represent the views of everyone… I’m not saying that these qualities are the only qualities Indigenous leaders should possess, but I believe they are the basic ingredients of a good leader.”
– Nicole Kilgour, The leadership challenge for young Indigenous women, 2005.¹Nicole Kilgour, “The leadership challenge for young Indigenous women,” (seminar series, Indigenous Governance—Challenges, Opportunities and Outcomes, 6 July, 2005).