360 reviews are a dicey topic. I don’t often hear leaders ask for them with much energy, excitement or fervor. But I’ll tell you – they’re a necessity if you want to grow.
I love Brené Brown’s definition of leadership:
“A leader is anyone who sees the potential in people, processes and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential.”
That takes skill, learning, courage and self-awareness. Self-awareness = from my experience, one of the most mis-understood words in leadership today. Harvard Business Review defines self-awareness as two types:
“Internal self-awareness, represents how clearly we see our own values, passions, aspirations, fit with our environment, reactions (including thoughts, feelings, behaviors, strengths, and weaknesses), and impact on others.”
And…
“External self-awareness, means understanding how other people view us, in terms of those same factors listed above. Our research shows that people who know how others see them are more skilled at showing empathy and taking others’ perspectives. For leaders who see themselves as their employees do, their employees tend to have a better relationship with them, feel more satisfied with them, and see them as more effective in general.”
But there inlies the problem – if there’s an incongruence or blind-spot, especially when it comes to how others see us – we could be causing catastrophic damage to our teams and companies and we’re unaware. Unaware to the wake we’re causing as leaders.
Over the course of my career, I’ve taken a number of 360s – yep, they’ve all been humbling experiences. None of us are perfect (and if the day comes when you think you are – DANGER – please, PLEASE leave your leadership post).
In each 360 review, I was given tangible areas of coaching in both my blindspots, and strengths to better leverage my team and to improve how I was leading. Clear is kind and giving my team, my peers and my boss’ an outlet to give honest feedback has always been helpful.
Last year I came across the Leadership Circle Profile – It blew me away. First, we all know that great leadership is a complex mix of competency and inner states of being. LCP is the first competency tool to measure both the inner and outer aspects of leadership. Second, your report is much more than just a list of behavioral competencies. It is organized into a very powerful system for understanding human behavior and development, as well as for making sense of the interrelationships between the many dimensions of your self that are being evaluated.
Exceptional leaders SCALE healthy organizations.
The Leadership Circle Profile measures eighteen Leadership Competencies. These competencies have been well researched and shown to be the most critical behaviors and skill sets for leaders. You will be receiving feedback on how you assess yourself on these competencies and your scores will be compared with how other managers evaluate themselves on these same competencies.
The second layer of analysis measures internal assumptions. How we think, especially our habit of thought determines a great deal of our behavior. Behavioral habits, both effective and ineffective, are run by habits of thought. This Profile measures eleven Internal Assumptions that limit effectiveness. It is our experience in working with hundreds of managers, that over-extended and underutilized competencies, can usually be traced to self-limiting assumptions. As with the competency feedback, your self-assessment will be compared with how other managers evaluate their own thinking.
If you’re interested in using the LCP 360 as a tool for your development and growth – reach out, I’d love to talk through it with you…
