View your behaviors and see how they play out. Continuously hold up the mirror to see your reflection. Then, make appropriate adjustments. This leadership rule is your reminder to continuously build your self-awareness. It is also your reminder to monitor your adherence to the other six leadership rules. To practice self-monitoring, pretend you’re holding up a video camera and filming your every thought, word, and deed. Pretend to play it back and watch yourself in action. Are you effectively communicating with people, supporting them, staying focused? If so, great! If not, you can choose new thoughts, words, and deeds. Effective leadership is truly a choice, and it is about building trust. When leadership rules are broken repeatedly, trust is lost. When used as a tool for managing relationships, leadership rules build a foundation for long-term trust, and they can help transform your organization.

Seven leadership rules that help organizations rise to new peaks of performance are featured in my latest book, Energized Enterprise.