The leadership assessment -Leadership Circle Profile (LCP)- has helped more than half a million executives and managers around the world to shed light on their hidden skills and shine as authentic leaders with integrity. In this post you will discover that you are a complete and wonderfully complex person with enormous potential and the power to be better than you already are.
…If after reading this article you want to know more, don’t miss this post about the book “Mastering Leadership” by Bob Anderson that describes the model behind the Leadership Circle Profile in all its details.
The Leadership Circle Profile is a 360 assessment that evaluates both thinking patterns and leadership skills. It reveals how the two areas enhance or limit the leadership of a person. It’s a crucial difference, because it’s the sum of both these leadership qualities that leads to a high levels of performance and effective leadership.
Two levels of leadership assessment
The Leadership Circle Profile is created from several elements: the evaluation of oneself – that is, how we see ourselves – and the evaluation by other people such as our direct manager, peers, direct reports – that is, how others see us.
The LCP leadership assessment is based on several scientific models from fields such as psychology, leadership development and adult development.
The tool analyses two key areas that determine leadership. Both levels provide valuable information about the leadership and personality of the evaluated person:
- Leadership competencies (the leadership skills)
- Internal assumptions (or habits of thinking)
By combining both, the Leadership Circle Profile sheds light on reactive personality tendencies that more often than not are blindspots, and on frequently untapped creative leadership competencies.
Most of the ways in which we were taught to think, to reason, to understand simply do not give us the means to make wise decisions. We do not know how to be wise in the face of the dilemmas and challenges that confront us on a daily basis. We were not taught how to make sense of a chaotic world, nor of an interconnected network of activities and relationships throughout the world.Meg Wheatley
To create relevant information about the person’s leadership, this 360 leadership assessment shows the leadership profile in a circular graph where all dimensions (internal and external) integrate with each other, and the impact they have on leadership.
This way, the LCP helps leaders comprehend unconscious behaviours and their impact, create awareness about leadership keys and identify high impact growth opportunities.
The Leadership Circle Profile builds on 2 key axes:
- Creative competencies (genius zone) vs. reactive tendencies (beliefs and habits of thought)
- Relationship-oriented competencies vs. task-oriented competencies
Creative leadership competencies and reactive tendencies in the LCP 360 leadership assessment
Leadership: Creative vs Reactive
In the main axis, the Leadership Circle contrasts the so-called creative leadership competencies with reactive tendencies. Both contribute to high quality leadership and effective leadership skills, although creative leadership considerably increases leadership efficiency.
According to a series of Zenger/Folkman studies, the 18 competencies included in the LCP are the critical drivers of effective leadership.
5 dimensions of creative leadership
During the leadership test, these 5 creative leadership dimensions are evaluated, shedding light on the 18 key competencies of an efficient leader:
- Relationship dimension. It measures your ability to relate to others so that you get the best out of people, groups and organizations.
- Self-consciousness dimension. It measures your orientation towards continuous professional and personal development, as well as the degree to which your self-awareness is expressed through high integrity leadership.
- Authenticity dimension. It measures your ability to relate to others in an authentic, courageous and high integrity way.
- System consciousness dimension. It measures the degree to which you focus on the whole system, that is, on the long-term well-being of the community and the interests of the organization.
- Achievement dimension. It measures the degree to which you offer visionary, authentic and high performance achievements.
3 dimensions of reactive leadership tendencies shown in the LCP
The so-called reactive leadership tendencies are about internal assumptions, that is, about the habits of thought and beliefs that can determine behaviors and impact the efficiency of the person’s leadership.
The intention of the Leadership Circle Profile is to shed light on those reactive trends that are based on internal beliefs that limit effectiveness, authentic expression and powerful leadership. In our experience working with executives and managers, overloaded competencies and underestimated skills can generally be attributed to self-limiting thoughts.
This section of the leadership profile is divided into 3 dimensions broken down into 11 reactive behaviors that can impact the way leaders lead people:
- The Control dimension. It measures the extent to which a person establishes their sense of personal value based on the tasks they yield, the performance and personal achievements.
- The Protection dimension. It measures the belief that one can protect oneself and establish a sense of value through retreat, remaining distant, hidden, cynical, superior and/or rational.
- The Compliance dimension. It measures the degree of self-esteem and security obtained by complying with the expectations of others rather than acting according to one’s own desires and intentions.
Relate competencies vs. Achieve objectives skills
Skills: Relations and Tasks
Creative competencies and reactive trends are in turn organized by their impact on people and tasks/goals. As two fundamental focuses of executive leadership, the Leadership Circle Profile reveals whether our competencies are balanced and equally developed.
As key scales, the 360 leadership assessment summarizes the essence of the profile into four key indicators:
- Reactive-creative scale: suggests the degree to which self-concept and internal motivation come from within or are determined by expectations, rules, or external conditions. It also reflects the degree to which leadership, relationships, and goal-oriented behaviors are coming through a creative or reactive orientation.
- Relationship-Tasks scale: measures the degree of balance a person shows between goal achievement skills and relationships.
- Leadership Potential Utilization: combines all dimensions and compares the value with the scores of reference leaders – examples of efficient leadership.
- Leadership Effectiveness: measures your level of overall effectiveness as a leader. It’s a summary measure that answers the question, “Overall, how am I doing?”
Leadership Circle Profile as an in-depth leadership X-ray
The Leadership Circle is dedicated to prepare leaders capable of navigating the delicate balance between external competencies and personality and behaviours, that is, to expand our measurement of greatness.
