As Chrissanne’s coach and trusted advisor, it’s been a joy to observe the confidence she has gained in herself from the Leadership Circle Profile 360 feedback. No surprise, the report revealed that she is a purposeful and visionary leader that relates well and demonstrates a high degree of community concern. Most empowering to Chrissanne was the new insight that others perceive her as a more effective, decisive and composed leader than she previously perceived herself to be. Read more about her Mastering Leadership journey in the second of a four-part guest blog series…
How My Leadership Journey Began
In my previous blog post, I mentioned how I recently found myself in the role of a leader of my company, Maximize Digital Media, and an organization that I founded called the Lakeland Business Leaders. You might think when I gave this group a name like LBL, I was thinking about leadership. But the truth is, it was originally a play on words. The Lakeland Business “Lead”ers was so named because it originated from a Leads group at the local Chamber of Commerce. Many of the businesses were focused on getting leads for their business, and I thought this might be a way to help them grow their businesses. It has been interesting to me that the name has led to my own leadership journey, and again, the dots just keep on connecting.
Leadership Circle Profile
Once I decided to embark on my own leadership development journey and I started the Mastering Leadership program with Emily last February. One of the first things we did was a 360 leadership assessment called the Leadership Circle Profile. We were asked to provide a list of evaluators to Emily so that our “direct reports,” “peers,” and “others” as well as our “boss” and “boss’s boss” could provide feedback on our leadership abilities and styles based on their experiences interacting with us. I chose to include colleagues who worked with me, those who only knew me as a friend, other leaders I admire, and my peers in the professional world. I also evaluated myself. The idea was obviously to get a complete picture of how I was showing up as a leader from a 360 perspective.
My Circle
As I was thoughtfully selecting my evaluators, I found myself wondering what kind of results this would yield, and it was more than a little unnerving. When the 21 evaluators had completed the assessment, we were given the summary results, displayed in a circle, and broken down into a variety of different leadership dimensions.
The tool itself measured 29 competencies. These competencies—based on extensive research by the creators of the assessment—have been determined to be the most critical competencies required of effective leaders given the dynamic, complex, and ever more challenging environment we operate in daily.
Self-Discovery + Self Acknowledgment
Everyone is different. We all know this. However, because we can only see the world through our own eyes, it can lead to a lot of different self-perceptions that we have to monitor and regulate in order to overcome the limitations that this singular, myopic view of self can lead to. My biggest hurdle to overcome has been my lack of confidence in my abilities to lead. There – I put it out there! No more secrets! I have lived with doubts all my life… many of them completely based on imagination and too much unhealthy “what–if“ thinking.
Getting the results of the Leadership Circle Profile gave me the ability to see myself for the first time, through the eyes of others. Each of my evaluators play/represent an important part in my life and work, and the fact that I was able to collect this information and assess myself outside of my own thoughts was pure gold.
In the results panel, I was easily able to see how I rated myself versus how others, aggregated together, rated me.
As we reviewed our results, Emily helped us understand each dimension and how our scores could be interpreted to improve our ability to lead in our current and future professional roles. This was very helpful for me for a variety of reasons. Mostly, it affirmed me in ways I would never have been able to affirm myself. By looking at this multi-dimensional view of my leadership qualities, I could begin to see where I can improve as well as the strengths I possess as a leader that I can further leverage.
Since taking this assessment, I have found opportunities to approach situations with my employees, and clients in ways that have served me well. As a matter of fact, I believe the insight that the Leadership Circle Profile tool provided has assisted me in resolving a conflict that resulted in a client contract that may have been lost if not for some of the awareness I gained through this process and through the Mastering Leadership Program.
In Emily’s words, “Great leadership is connected to the deepest part of ourselves. It’s about digging deeper and unearthing our best selves – even if it’s a bit uncomfortable.”
As I’m “digging deeper”, becoming more aware of how I’m showing up as a leader through feedback, and getting more comfortable being “uncomfortable”, I’m growing as a leader and having a greater impact on my business and the Lakeland community.
If you want to know more about the program, follow this blog series, as I share more personal experiences about the Assessment, Workshops, Retreats and how I have brought Emily to my employees at Maximize to help us take our agency to the next level.
About Chrissanne Long
Chrissanne’s passion is helping small and mid-sized businesses thrive. To excel at that, she’s keenly aware of the need to be the highest and best version of herself as she advises her clients and leads her agency team. This past February she started my 2016 Mastering Leadership Program and has authored a 4-part blog series about her journey through the program.