By Steve Moran

Okay, senior living leaders … we need to have a serious conversation.

A few weeks ago I ran a poll asking leaders whether or not they were better leaders today than they were a year ago.

A whopping 92% said yes. 3% were not sure and 5% said no. I would love to hear from that 5% as to why they don’t see themselves as better (this does not mean they see themselves as worse, just not better).

It’s actually a more complicated question than one might at first imagine. First, being a leader means you have a pretty high degree of confidence in yourself and your ability. This more or less goes hand in hand with leadership.

Leaders are not supposed to show weakness, which means the only possible answer for many is yes.

More Interesting Question

But the more interesting question to me was what those being led in senior living think about those who lead them.

The following week I asked this question:

Are the leaders in your company, those you report to, better leaders today than they were a year ago?

The response did not come close to matching the first poll. Only 38% of those responding thought their leaders were better than a year ago. A third thought their leaders were actually worse, with the remaining 29% saying they were the same.

This suggests there are a lot of leaders who don’t really have a good handle on how the people they lead are responding to them. This is unhealthy for leaders and unhealthy for teams.

Team members who do not respect their leaders will underperform all of the time, and as they lead, their own teams will model whatever behavior they see, including bad behavior.

More Information Needed

There is more information needed. We don’t know how many of them were thinking about their C-suite leaders rather than direct supervisors. It is very possible that many who answered responded to both polls because they both are leaders and have leaders.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that all leaders need to spend significant serious time growing their leadership skills. This does not really happen at senior living conferences. (I am not down on senior living conferences, but the bites are too small and too varied to be really helpful.)

Books, conferences focused specifically on leadership, mastermind groups being mentored will all pay huge dividends.

Most important, listen to your team members — figure out how they are responding to the things you do as a leader.