Quiz: Are You a Top-Tier Leader?

Are you close to becoming a Premier 100 IT leader? Take our quiz to find out.

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Do you aspire to be a Premier 100 IT Leader? Do you have what it takes to lead your team or organization to greatness and to earn a seat at the table of executive decision-making?

Ouellette & Associates Consulting Inc. has developed the following quiz to help you assess whether or not you are truly doing what it takes to demonstrate and sharpen your leadership capabilities, effectiveness and contributions. We invite you to have your leadership team take the quiz and compare notes. Using these questions, discuss your leadership (individual and team) strengths and weaknesses along with strategies for raising your level of leadership capability and maturity.

Good luck. We look forward to seeing you recognized as a future Premier 100 IT Leader!

Please respond to each of the following statements according to your leadership tendencies. Use a scale of 1 (highly inaccurate) to 5 (highly accurate).

Leadership

1. Through 360-degree feedback, you assess your leadership capabilities, identify your strengths and challenges, and create and execute your leadership development plan.

1 2 3 4 5

2. You assess your direct reports' leadership capabilities, accomplishments and challenges, and provide the necessary leadership coaching to strengthen their performance.

1 2 3 4 5

3. You balance strategy with tactics to be certain that you are leading your team with a compelling vision while not losing sight of basic IT "blocking and tackling."

1 2 3 4 5

Strategy

4. You work closely with your direct reports to develop your team's strategy so that it closely aligns with the business strategy and key performance indicators.

1 2 3 4 5

5. You seek out global, competitive landscape, trend and industry knowledge, looking for opportunities to leverage this information to increase your company's profitability.

1 2 3 4 5

Best Practices

6. You look for opportunities to optimize performance through best practices adoption.

1 2 3 4 5

7. You recognize that best practices are a means to an end, so you "keep it simple" by implementing the right level of discipline while never losing sight of the real value -- the end result.

1 2 3 4 5

Business Partners

8. You identify key business partner and IT relationships that are critical to your team's and company's success and take specific action to build or strengthen those relationships.

1 2 3 4 5

9. You look for ways to identify your business partners' unmet needs and closely partner with them to package those needs for business case consideration and prioritization.

1 2 3 4 5

10. You look for ways to seek out your internal business partners' complaints and proactively act on their concerns as opportunities for improvement.

1 2 3 4 5

11. You look for ways to make it easier for your business partners to work with your team and approach each business partner interaction with a positive, can-do attitude.

1 2 3 4 5

Execution

12. You capture key metrics that are meaningful to your business partner and leverage those metrics to measure your team's success.

1 2 3 4 5

13. You align each team member's performance plan with the team strategy and metrics, closely evaluate results and either reward employee accomplishments or tackle performance issues head-on.

1 2 3 4 5

People

14. You invest the necessary due diligence in the hiring process to ensure that you select only those people who have the proven capabilities to get the job done.

1 2 3 4 5

15. You value each member of your team and create an environment that encourages candor, respect, trust, diversity, creativity, innovation, collaboration, quality of life, humor and the pursuit of individual and team performance excellence.

1 2 3 4 5

Copyright 2005 by Ouellette & Associates Consulting Inc.

Ouellette & Associates Consulting Inc. (O&A) is an IT leadership and professional development firm that focuses on the human side of technology. Working in partnership with CIOs and IT Leaders, the firm specializes in helping IT organizations make the transition from a reactive, technology-centric, order-taker culture to one that is the consultative, client-focused, leadership-savvy, business partner of choice. For more information about their IT leadership and professional development services, visit the O&A Web site at www.ouellette-online.com.

Special Report

2006 Premier 100 IT Leaders

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Copyright © 2005 IDG Communications, Inc.

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