Improving Leadership Skills Through Peer Evaluation Coach Sarah

Coach Sarah discusses how the assessment tool Leadership Circle 360 is a tool to help a leader map how they see themselves. It helps them to start thinking in terms of we, and how to take their light side and dark side in stride. It helps leaders to gain insight to how they can start shifting their reactive tendencies or help to minimize them. Tune in today to learn how the assessment tool Leadership Circle 360 could broaden your horizons as a leader.


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Episode Transcript

(00:03):
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(01:07):
Thanks for listening and see you nexttime. Welcome to Coaches You Need a
podcast short designed to demystified coaching andhelp you our audience understand what coaching is
and how it can help you.I'm your host, Jamie, and today
I am delighted to be here withCoach Sarah to discuss the assessment tool Leadership

(01:30):
Circle. Coach Sarah is an InternationalCoaching Federation Master certified coach who has been
coaching for nineteen years, and I'mvery excited because she is the first Master
certified coach I've had the opportunity tointerview on this podcast. She has a
background in health journalism and corporate wellnessand is a lifelong learner, as is
demonstrated by her evolution from just beinga wellness coach into an executive and leadership

(01:55):
coach. Her clients are high performingsenior leaders who want both professional and personal
success. So thank you so much, Coach Sarah for being with us today.
I'm very excited to speak with youabout Leadership Circle. Yes, thank
you Jamie for that gracious introduction.I feel so successful and just hearing that,

(02:20):
and you are you are. Whydon't we just go ahead and get
started since we don't have a lotof time. So can you just give
us a little bit of a sortof overall description of what the leadership circle
assessment is and what is it basedon. So, the leadership circle profile
is a three sixty assessment that hasbeen well researched and validated and it actually

(02:46):
doesn't take too long twenty to thirtyminutes for somebody to complete. It's when
I say three sixty, it's achance for a leader to map how they
see them so else against what theirevaluators do, all anonymously, so their
their boss, their direct reports,their peers, other and this that all

(03:09):
of that data is mapped against.You know, the give percentiles for a
whole research base of leaders that whatwe know to be leadership effectiveness. So
where you fall in the it literallyis a circle, and the top half
are what they call your your creativecompetencies and the bottom half being your reactive

(03:30):
tendencies. And then that's also dividedhow well are you balancing relationship oriented versus
task oriented? And it also givesyou some scales in terms of your leadership
effectiveness, how are you being utilized? And gives many different avenues for transformation.

(03:53):
Really, so I love it asa result of that, it's a
unique goal and yet very complete.Amazing. I'm just that one follow up
question, can you provide us thatyou use the terminologies creative competencies versus reactive
competencies. So can you sort ofgive us maybe some examples of what is

(04:16):
a creative competency versus a reactive competency? Absolutely, so, a creative competency
would be things like, are yougood at mentoring and developing your team?
Are you there's something known as courageousauthenticity or an integrity? Are you a
systems thinker, strategic thinker? Howdo you do achieving results? So it

(04:42):
goes from you know, even inthat gives you up their relational types of
strengths and then also task oriented strengths. Let's think of it as your strengths.
The reactive tendencies are their strengths atone point in time that maybe gave
you limited success. They just don'tnecessarily evolve well, so we want to
start minimizing those. And the bigbuckets there are do you sometimes have some

(05:04):
complying tendencies like you tend to dosome people pleasing or are you on the
other side of that, do youdrive towards perfection and you know, tend
to be controlling, so we're wantingto minimize those because they don't give us
the best results. And what's niceabout this is that it really is based

(05:25):
on so many different theories, butparticularly there's a you know, Keegan's adult
development theory that really shows that wewant to move from. We want to
move from really that reactive tendency,which is all about like how others see

(05:46):
us all the way up the spectrum, to what they call unit integral and
unitive leadership, which is transformational.This is where you start thinking in terms
of like we you know, youreally take your light side in your dark
side in stride. It's all good. And interestingly enough, the leadership circle
profile actually helps you to start creatingthat path for yourself. That's fascinating and

(06:14):
particularly the I didn't realize there wasan adult development theory and this idea really
that I guess the leadership circle issaying that your growth happens as a leader
when you go from being reactive tomaybe going and saying you see a bigger
picture and you bring to you bringto that bigger picture whatever is needed in

(06:40):
that moment. Is that the wayto think about. It's a strength space
model. So you know, wewant to start shifting the reactive tendencies or
minimizing them. But let's focus onIn fact, let me give you an
example or somebody a leader chief administrativeofficer at a small nonprofit that I just
spoke with yesterday that I mean lotsin the creative competency side, and yet

(07:03):
it was interesting there was a disconnectbetween how her peers, you know,
other leaders on the executive leadership teamsaw her, and you know, she
and I've been coaching on communication andhas seen some great impact. And yet
the one sliver, the one piein the creative competencies that it was important
for us to start building on isachieve results. Well, what's interesting is

(07:26):
that, and this is where theorganic nature of coaching helps to layer on
the results of this tool, isthat in our discussion, I had asked
her, well, how are youdoing that with your direct reports? Because
clearly your direct reports see you asachieving results. And that's when she very
quickly pointed to like she rattled offa plan that she typically has, well,
I clarify the goal, I getpeople excited, you know, all
the way down to you know,then I circle back to lessons learned,

(07:50):
very achievement results, success oriented language. That really her takeaway was that she
just needed to start sprinkling in moreof that in her exect leadershi of teams
so that her peers could see thatshe is actually very much achievement oriented.
And again it's this she already hasthis as a strength, but sometimes it's
being missed. How how do wehelp bring that to light? Got it?

(08:13):
Got it? Oh, that's that'svery interesting, just thinking about what
are what are the best use casesfor the leadership circle is it? Is
it mainly for executive leaders or canyou use it in a better broader team
based setting or for an individual?I used it for all so, uh,

(08:33):
just last week it was a leaderwho does not have any direct reports.
I've taken it myself and I'm notin a classic leadership profile, but
it's so it helps you to exposehow you see yourself versus how others see
you and start coming into better alignmentas well as growth. Certainly, I
will say that it's it has gotten, you know, does scale a little

(08:56):
bit more towards the senior leaders.I use it for the start of a
corporate engagement. I use it whensomebody feels like they're stuck or they're going
to be transitioning to another role.It definitely can be used. We can
run different group reports, so theone on one individual, but then let's
look at as a team, whereare the alignment and where are the gaps?
And so it can be great fodderfor a team conversation and team training

(09:20):
and coachings. So it's it canscale up, it can scale down.
It's it's really a beautiful tool.And the and the team evaluation are you
looking at does the team skew oneway or the other in terms of their
sort of creative competencies and reactive tendenciesor is that sort of how it's every

(09:41):
team is different, So really it'sa compile. The group report in particular
is a compilation. There's another morenuanced assessment that can be taken. You
know, usually you don't want tohave assessment fatigue, so you would do
it like several months later after you'vehad several of these one on one conversations.
But that that's where it can reallymap how how do others see you

(10:03):
according to the culture that you're wantingto build and don't ask me what the
algorithms are and whatnot. But itgives you a more nuanced picture of where
the gaps are as a team inculture building doing Yeah, okay, okay,
and what do you think or someof it? I mean, there's
so many assessments out there, socompared to some other assessments are there.

(10:26):
Do you think there's disadvantages to usingleadership Circle or what are sort of the
maybe the yeah or you wouldn't useit? Yeah. The only disadvantage I
think of Jamie is if sometimes Idon't really see this, but that because
there are there's a chance to havewritten comments. Sometimes the feedback can be

(10:48):
sensitive, right, so this growthyou get a chance to evaluate somebody in
terms of you know, evaluate theyou know, there's the twenty minutes,
but then there's five or ten minutIt's where you can write in what does
this leader do well? Where arethey challenged that you would see as their
growth edge, and what else thatwe haven't pasked? And those comments can
be are usually very affirming. Theycan be challenging, but give you an

(11:13):
eye to what it is you needto work on. And as long as
they're sensitively delivered, then they're great, but there's always that option of like
somebody might you know a reactive tendencystarts flaring as a result of hearing something.
You know. Yeah, yeah,but that's the only thing that you
know. As a coach and coache team, we need to figure out
how to navigate that well so thatyou can really see what the growth edge

(11:35):
is and kind of calm any reactingto it. Got it, got it?
And you know, again, withall these assessments out there, and
I know you you're a Master's certifiedcoach, you must be familiar with many
of them. So tell me whywhat was it about leadership Circle that really
spoke to you? You said,this is the one that I want to

(11:56):
delve into and become an expert inthat question. Thank you. It's because
it's so aligned with my brand.My brand is the idea is to help
you call the truth and stop citingyourself. I think so often with leadership
development programming, we get right intobuilding on skills and strengths and we missed
the chance to actually look at whatare the hidden deficits and how can we

(12:18):
anchor into what we know to betrue about ourselves. I liken it to
a tennis coach you know, doesn'tgo after the you know, excelling coints.
You first have to look at thefoibles of the player and you have
to help them to remember you know, their potential and really anchor into know
that about themselves. So at thecenter of this profile is identity. This

(12:41):
is an identity conversation. So it'sa chance to really do all of that.
You know, just in that examplethat I gave you, is that
we were able to in focusing onachieving results for the chief administrative officer,
I'll color predy by doing that,that would naturally calm any of the completing
that she tends to do because justcut you know, some more authoritative stance

(13:03):
that she's taking. So we're doingboth. We're both like reaffirming and helping
somebody come back to what they feelis true for them, while also helping
to expose and course correct the hiddendeficits. So it just speaks to the
you know, there's a quote thatwe grow neither better nor worse as we
age, but more like ourselves.So a chance to really like just beautifully

(13:28):
help somebody to become more of themselves. I love that. I'm on board.
Yeah, yeah. Well, onthat note, h Coach Sarah,
I want to thank you today foryour time and for enlightening us about the
Leadership Circle Assessment tool, and toour audience, thank you for joining us.
If you would like to work withCoach Sarah or one of our other
qualified coaches, please visit us attheidemics dot com. Thank you so much

(13:54):
for listening today. Thank you,thanks for listening. Please subscribe wherever you
live and leave us a review.Find your ideal coach at www dot VIIDMX
dot com. Special thanks to ourproducer Martin Maluski and singer songwriter Doug Allen.