What Does Great Leadership Actually Look Like in Your Organization?

Most companies have their core values locked in. The behaviors that go with them are defined, rolled out, maybe even posted on the wall. That work matters.

But here’s what almost nobody has done: defined what great leadership looks like — specifically, inside their organization.

Not a generic competency framework downloaded from an HR database. Not a list of buzzwords that could belong to any company on the planet. What great leadership should actually looks like here, in this business, by the people who’ve lived it.

That’s the exercise we ran at a recent quarterly planning session with a mid-market leadership team. And it was one of the most powerful things I’ve seen in a planning room in a long time.

Start With the Best Leaders You Ever Worked For

We kept it simple. Five post-it notes in front of every leader in the room. One job: write down the behaviors and traits of the best leaders you’ve ever worked with.

Not the best leader in theory. Not what the books say. The actual humans who made you better, pushed you harder, or made you want to show up every day.

Those notes went up on the flipchart. We grouped them into themes, pulled out the patterns, and let the list take shape organically. No facilitator imposing a framework. No HR competency model driving the output. Just a leadership team telling the truth about what great looks like.

The list they landed on: Coaching. Care. Positive. Lead by Example. Change Leadership. Visionary. Encourage + Recognition. Business Acumen. Listening.

Nine behaviors. Every single one earned.

Then Something Unexpected Happened

This is the part I have to give full credit for — it came from the people and culture leader in the room, not me.

Once the list was up, we handed out another round of post-it notes. This time, each person wrote a colleague’s name and placed it beside the trait that person modeled best.

The room shifted.

Suddenly this wasn’t an abstract exercise about great leadership in general. It was specific. It was personal. People were being seen — publicly, by their peers — for the things they actually do well. The pride in that room was real. So was the appreciation.

If you’re looking for a low-cost, high-impact way to build connection and recognition into a leadership team, this is it. It took twenty minutes and it landed harder than most team-building exercises I’ve seen that cost ten times as much.

The Most Important Step: The Commitment

Recognition is powerful. But the part that moves the needle came next.

Every leader had to look at that list — the full list, including the names beside each trait — and identify one or two behaviors they were personally going to work on that quarter. Not the ones they’re already good at. The ones where they have room to grow.

Then they read their commitments out loud. And explained why leveling up in that area mattered to them.

That’s where it gets real. It’s easy to write something on a post-it. It’s a different thing entirely to say it in front of your peers and attach your name to it.

We tracked those commitments as rocks in their planning system — right alongside the strategic priorities for the quarter. At the next quarterly session, each leader will give their peers feedback on how they showed up against their commitment. Public accountability. Peer-to-peer. No ambiguity.

Why This Belongs in Your Quarterly Planning

Quarterly planning sessions aren’t just for strategy and rocks. The best ones build the business on every dimension — and that includes the people leading it.

Leadership development gets pushed to the back burner in most organizations because it feels soft, slow, or hard to measure. This exercise is none of those things. It’s grounded in real behaviors, defined by the team itself, tied to accountability, and tracked like any other priority.

Most importantly, it starts with a question that most leadership teams have never actually answered together: what does great leadership look like in this organization?

When you define it together, you own it together. And when you hold each other to it, that’s when culture stops being a poster on the wall and starts being how people actually show up.

Try It at Your Next Quarterly

You don’t need a lot of time or a complicated process. Here’s the sequence:

Give every leader five post-it notes. Ask them to write down the traits and behaviors of the best leaders they’ve ever worked with. Group them into themes as a team and define your list.

Then pass out another round. Have each person nominate a colleague for the traits they model best. Put the names on the board. Let the room feel that.

Finally, ask each leader to commit to one or two behaviors they’re going to improve this quarter. Have them say it out loud. Track it. Come back to it.

That’s it. Simple process. Real results.

Building great leaders is one of the highest-leverage things you can do for your business