2. A map for your development as a leader
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In the introduction to the series, I wrote about using Leadership Circle Profile® as the map to cover the areas of beliefs, behaviours and results. In this text, I will introduce you to this powerful tool and the three ways in which you can go through this series with me.
What is the Leadership Circle Profile® (LCP)?
LCP is an assessment grounded in psychology, backed by statistics and used by thousands of leaders around the world to map their development. As described by Leadership Circle:
The Leadership Circle Profile provides a detailed snapshot in time, enabling leaders to answer the question: “How are my behaviors and mindset enabling or constraining my intended leadership impact and our business performance?”
Since this is our "roadmap" in this series, I recommend using the LCP to assess your behaviours so that you make the most of this material.
You can choose one of the three levels of involvement to go through this series, from least involved to most:
1. Just curious (little involvement)
Use a blank template below to assess yourself based on the definitions I will provide in the next article. Limitations: may not be as accurate, although quick to complete. Some of you may prefer to do this first before taking 30-40 minutes to complete the free proper LCP self-assessment (see the next point).
Download the blank TLC below
2. Want to put in more effort (medium involvement)
Take 30-40 mins to complete a free Leadership Circle Profile® Self-Assessment on their website. You will receive your self-perceived leadership effectiveness results as compared to the database of over 460,000 real leaders who have gone through this assessment. You will also receive an interpretation guide from Leadership Circle, which I will be using to help you understand what each of the areas on the assessment represent. Your self-assessment result will look something like this:
The graph like above indicates that you're currently unbalanced and prioritise tasks over relationships. Or like the graph below, which may mean that you've got a lot to work on:
You can complete the free Leadership Circle Profile® Self-Assessment here.
A note on the self-assessment version: the result will be only as accurate as your self-awareness. I've seen people who are very harsh on themselves rate themselves much lower than their colleagues. And vice versa - if you have high arrogance tendencies and low self-awareness, you may rate yourself as a more effective leader than others who experience you differently. More on this below.
3. Ready to face some truth and work on it (full involvement)
For those wanting to dive deeper and work on your leadership effectiveness, you can take the 360° Leadership Assessment. It involves doing the self-assessment like above, but you will also invite your peers, your boss and people in your team to complete the same assessment OF YOU, so that you get a more comprehensive, and more realistic, view of your behaviours and leadership effectiveness. The 360 takes a couple of weeks to complete and can only be taken through a certified practitioner (like me or any other on TLC's website) because you will need a proper debrief to make accurate sense of it. If interested, you can contact me.
A 360 report will look like this, where the dark line is your own self-assessment, and the shaded green is how you are experienced by others who work with you.
In the sample profile above, the person thought that their leadership effectiveness was much higher than experienced by others. Ouch. But now they know that to work on. The 360 is useful for those ready take an honest look at themselves through their own eys and the experience of others around them.
Why is this important? Top 10% and bottom 10% of leaders and their businesses.
Below are two aggregate leader profiles side-by-side. One is of leaders whose businesses were evaluated as lowest perfoming (bottom 10%). The other - of leaders with highest performing businesses (top 10%).
The bottom 10% are operating mostly from Reactive Tendencies (the bottom half of the circle), while the top 10% have well-developed Creative Competencies (top-half). I will say more on Reactive and Creative in the next article.
This makes it pretty clear what you can do to grow your leadership effectivness - reduce your dependence on the Reactive Tendences and grow your Creative Competencies
My intention is that by the time you finish this series, you will have an increased awareness as to which of your behaviours may get in the way of effective leadership (e.g. trying to please, or being too distant, or overcontrolling) and which correlate with better results (e.g. interpersonal intelligence, decisiveness, integrity).
Why not only for conventional leadership developmet
Remember how I wrote that this series is not only for those traditional leadership roles? LCP is aligned with theories on adult development and helps us reflect not only on how we can grow as leaders, but, preceeding that, as humans.
From my experience, expanding our mindset to that of a higher developed adult can help us be better partners, better parents, better colleagues, better friends.
More on adult development is coming up as it will help us make sense and better use of the LCP in this series, but here is a quick snippet below.
What's next
Decide which version of involvement suits you and do any of the below:
Curious: download the blank LCP profile to mark it yourself
More effort: complete the free LCP Self-Assessment
Full involvement: get in touch to inquire about a 360 + debrief
Lastly, buckle up and get ready to go on a journey of increasing your self-awareness (one of the Creative Comtepencies in the profile).
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Footnotes
About Anton
A professional coach with a master’s in psychology, I specialise in working with leaders and creatives wanting to do better for themselves and their world.
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