One of the best leadership skills you can possess is to consistently live in the real world; to be able to clearly distinguish objective reality from your subjective perspective or impressions.
A powerful tool for doing this is known as reality testing, which can be defined as: the objective evaluation of our internal interpretation of 
situations – emotions and thoughts that it triggers, against the facts – what really happened.
Essentially, it is the ability to see a situation for what it really is, rather than what one hopes or fears it might be.
This is a critical skill for anyone in a leadership position because it has a direct effect on how you make decisions that can affect not just yourself, but others.
Reality Testing in the Workplace
Poor reality testing tends to be an emotional response to a trying situation; the criticism of a superior or missing an important deadline by the member of your team, for example. Another example might be the team leader who claims, or thinks: “My performance is great, I don’t care what my team have to say about me as a leader”.
Symptoms of poor reality testing include:
- Giving in to fear or fancy
- Misreading cues from the surroundings
- Turning small problems into large ones
- Viewing situations from a single perspective
- Setting goals or objectives that others consider unrealistic
In other words, for a good leader, gathering feedback from your manager is not enough. Your team is a great source of feedback on the reality of your leadership skills.
Why Reality Testing is Important
If you’re a person with even a modest amount of self-awareness, you know that you sometimes have thoughts, feelings, and ideas that can feel dominating, controlling or overwhelming and, as a result, it can be easy to imagine a worst-case scenario. During those times when you experience feelings and worries at a heightened level, you can begin to think negatively, which can lead to poor outcomes.
Below are some of the reasons that reality testing is important, not just in the workplace but in your everyday life:
- It allows you to distinguish between what is real and what isn’t.
- It allows you to judge situations appropriately.
- It allows you to notice your own feelings and what they mean.
- It gives you a basis of comparison for a variety of situations
- It allows you to improve how you react to those situations.
In the workplace, such skills define a good leader; someone who does not play favorites or hold grudges. You want to be a person who is dependable and helpful, and who is engaged in a positive way, making this one of the best leadership skills you can possess.
Positive Reality Testing
As a human being, it’s fairly easy to allow your thought processes to influence your level of anxiety and add to stressful situations. This can hold you back from making good decisions, as well as from making positive behavior changes.
For examples, “all or nothing thinking” or using “over-generalizations” can lead to the belief that a team member who makes a mistake is “all bad”, or that they are locked into a never-ending pattern of making errors, respectively.
This is definitely not the type of thinking required of a leader who is interested in building high performance teams.
Rather, you should work to develop these positive reality testing skills:
- Accurately assess your environment, resources, and future trends to set realistic plans/goals
- Stay objective, even if you do not like what you see
- Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses objectively
- Stay grounded instead of caving in to the self-defeating talk
- Gather external information to get a better understanding of strengths and weaknesses
- Stay aware of biases
- Anticipate and predict situations
While it’s true that reality testing is just one of a seemingly endless list of what might be called best leadership skills, it’s absolutely critical to your success as a leader.
In fact, reality testing is so important that I included as a key component of the training I offer in my Free Leadership Workshop: 5 Steps to Excel in Your Leadership Role.
