1.        Have you considered the purifying benefit of your crucibles and what they have taught?

·     Assuming that there have been moments in your life when you have failed, or perhaps were caught doing the wrong thing, what life lessons did you learn?

·     Did they teach you why and how to do the right things because they are right, or did they just teach you how not to be caught or exposed the next time? 

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2.        Have you profited from the wisdom of mentors or role models in your life?

·     Do you have a “consigliore”—a truth-teller in your life? 

·     Have mentors shaped your character and leadership?

·     Are you intentional about seeking out, maintaining and keeping your mentors?

·     Who are they? Do you listen to their wisdom or simply default to your own?

·     And finally, what are you doing to mentor others to cultivate their leadership?

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3.        Do you have a proper view of your leadership?

·     Does your leadership ascend high enough to understand its consequences on others and descend low enough to understand that leadership is not about you?

·     Do you consider yourself to be a trusted leader?

·     In your leadings have you, for example, ever taken the responsibility to pull a follower aside and explain that while your admonitions were necessary, that perhaps your tone was inappropriate?  When it becomes easier to confess, the trust you have built will strengthen.

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4.        Do you have a genuine sense of purpose or call in your leadership other than mere ambition?

·     Are you motivated more by the function of leadership and all the privileges associated with the title? Or do you truly seek to lead because you perceive a call? 

·     What is driving you?  What gets you up in the morning and causes you to assume your seat of trust? To make a living? Wealth? Privilege? Power? Recognition? “Search me, O God and know my heart…” (Psalm 139:23).

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5.        How are you handling the privileges of leadership?

·     Do you consider them a fragile trust to be carefully handled, or pleasurable benefits to be fully exploited? Or a little of both?

·     Are there specific ways to deny yourself such benefits in order to further develop trust? It doesn’t matter how extravagant or insignificant such privileges are, but how you manage them will impact the level of trust you build.

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6.        Are you tenaciously dedicated to the objective of your leadership -namely what benefits the organization and the followers you serve?

·     Is your ambition so narrow that your leadership is only about you? Who truly gets credit for success? 

·     Alternatively, perhaps you have lost the professional will or ambition for your organization and its followers?  If so, perhaps it is time to move on. Possibly, your call is elsewhere. It may either be time to vacate your leadership, passing it onto others, or a time to rededicate yourself to the objectives of your purpose or call.  Mediocrity and coasting only become a burden to real leadership.

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7.        Are you investing in the lives and leadership of those followers?

·     Will you leave an organization of followers in far better shape than when you first led? 

·     What are the specific ways in which you are now building this future leadership? 

·     What will be your legacy? In business? In public service?  In ministry?  In your family?  In your community?

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8.        Are you motivated as a leader to keep the trust?

·     We know that trust in leadership is slow and difficult to build, yet can collapse more quickly. As the apostle Paul put it, “Now, it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful” (1Corinthians 4:2).

·     Do you pursue the meticulous construction of your trust as passionately as you pursue your own leadership?  If so, where do you go to build it?

·     Whom do you consult in keeping it?  Where is your Keep?

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