As executives, keeping our leadership skills in check is an ongoing effort. If it’s been a while since you took a step back and measured the effectiveness of your leadership, consult Arden Coaching’s self-assessment activity below, adapted from our preferred 360-degree leadership assessment tool, The Leadership Circle Profile™.
Using the Self-Assessment
360-degree assessments are built to survey those in the executive’s sphere (as well as the executive) on an executive’s
performance and abilities. Getting feedback from others is essential, namely because, as people, we often struggle with self-scoring.
Use this list as a guide to get you thinking about your leadership tendencies and feel free to share your answers with your supervisor or colleagues and see if they come to the same conclusions about your strengths and weaknesses in these areas.
The list is broken into two categories that The Leadership Circle Profile™ uses in scoring known as creative leadership and reactive leadership. For this exercise, add points for your individual creative leadership competencies and subtract points when you evaluate your reactive leadership tendencies.
Add Points for Creative Leadership Competencies
Award yourself points on a scale of 1 to 10—10 being the highest acknowledgement or value and 1 being the lowest or disagreement—for these creative leadership traits:
- __How are you as a collaborator?
- __Do you find it easy to form caring relationships at work?
- __How self-aware are you?
- __Do you keep your cool in changing circumstances?
- __Do you maintain a steady balance between work and home?
- __How are you at looking at your company’s sustainability?
- __How are you at achieving desired results?
Subtract Points for Reactive Leadership Tendencies
Subtract points on a scale of 1 to 10—10 being the highest acknowledgement or value and 1 being the lowest or disagreement—for these reactive leadership traits:
- __In team situations, how passive or “go along to get along” are you?
- __Do you consider yourself a perfectionist, driven to achieve flawless results?
- __Do you find it difficult to make time to help others?
- __How controlling are you in a team setting?
- __Have you been told that you’re overly critical of others’ work?
- __Do you believe that you’re competitive in regards to position advancement?
- __Do you tend to have difficulty forming connections with peers?
Evaluating Your Results
If your creative leadership competencies outweigh your reactive ones, you’ll notice a positive score when you add your resulting numbers together.
Have a peer or supervisor take the test for you and see how your results compare. There may be areas where you agree and others where your answers are polar opposites. Use this opportunity to get the conversation going about how you can improve and build on your current leadership style. What can you do to improve the score you gave in the creative segment and minimize the number you chose in the respective reactive areas?
If your results yielded a negative number, leadership coaching could be a great way to address these areas of improvement. Contact Arden Coaching to find out how partnering with an executive coach can help you take your leadership skills to the next level.
