Now, if you are a manager, supervisor, or employer, take a good, long look at what you're doing at work.

I encourage to evaluate your performance periodically by answering these questions:

* How am I leading?

* Am I leading effectively?

* Do my employees consider me an effective leader?

The answers to these questions are open doors to where you are and what you have to do to improve your leadership talents. (You may want to take it a step further by having subordinate rate you periodically using these and/or supplementary questions.

However, you can assess your leadership qualities simply by looking at success of projects you handle and at teamwork you have created. Therein lies your answer to your effective leadership.

Remember: When you maximize your potential, everyone wins. When you don't, we all lose.

But executive who focuses on contribution and who takes responsibility for results, no matter how junior he is, is, in most literal sense of term, "top management".

And what applies to good executive applies to good parent, or good teacher, or good spouse, or any person of great responsibility.

People who do not ask themselves, "What can I contribute?" are not only likely to aim too low; they are likely to aim at wrong things as well.

Above all, they may define their responsibilities too narrowly, like person who sees something wrong that he can easily and quickly set right, but who says, "That ain't my job, man!"

Remember: When you maximize your potential, everyone wins. When you don't, we all lose.