In the last edition of the newsletter, we discussed individual leadership gaps and how they can impact your success as a leader. It’s important to identify and either fix or compensate for them. These gaps can either be small and fix with some ‘leadership caulk’ or large which may require some ‘leadership patch.’ Either way, it’s important for leaders at all levels to regularly evaluate and correct their leadership gaps.
In this edition, we are going to discuss team leadership gaps. These are gaps in a leader’s team’s perception of their leadership. Typically, if your team perceives you as a good leader, they will follow you almost anywhere. Conversely, if they perceive you as a poor leader, they will do the bare minimum on their job and nothing more. We’ve all worked for leaders in both categories. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have an easily implemented, objective tool for to help them improve.
For the team leadership assessment, we take the individual assessment and ask their team similar questions focused on the leader. The team typically includes their direct reports (next level down), their peers (same level) and their supervisor (next level up).
The assessments are combined to obtain a total picture of how the people around the leader perceive their leadership behaviors. If the group is large enough, separate charts can be created to drill down into results even further. The results fall into one of four perception categories: similar, overstated, understated or mixed, as seen in the following ‘Total Team’ charts.
This is very similar to the typical 360 review with several important differences:
- Focus: leadership behavior versus a broad performance
- Implementation: turnkey versus complicated
- Feedback: quantifiable and actionable versus text-based with limited action in many cases
- Follow Up: coaching to help implement results versus limited or none
Once the results are compiled, the leader is worked with to help them fill the gaps by changing behaviors in their daily leadership practice.
If you have further questions, please contact us.
“With Leadership, Anything is Possible!”
WEEKEND READS
The End of Workplace Loyalty, Business Insider, January 22, 2024. Americans relationship to work is changing, and there’s one theme that’s come up over and over again: loyalty. Whether it’s quiet quitting, or job-hopping, or leveraging a job offer from a competitor to force your boss to give you a raise, readers seem to divide into two groups. On one side are the bosses and tenured employees, the boomers and Gen Xers. On the other side are the younger rank-and-file employees, the millennials and Gen Zers.
How to Lead Humans, not Workers, Korn Ferry, January 2024. With organizations evolving faster than ever before, success is dependent on our ability to influence change—helping people to believe, think and act differently. So, it’s no surprise that 61% of CEOs value genuine leadership where leaders are more empathetic, caring and interested in people.
Podcast: How Should You Present Yourself at Work?, Kellogg Insight, January 17, 2024. Be yourself! No, not like that. On this episode of The Insightful Leader, we help you navigate the competing advice about how much to share and hold back.
