Part 3. So, you have your LCP results. Now what?

Welcome to part 3 of Inspiring Leadership series. In this article, I’ll give you an overview of the assessment and how to make first sense of it. Since it is quite thorough, below is a snapshot of how this article is structured to help you navigate it.

Table of contents for this article:

How to look at your results: important pointers
Understanding the LCP graph:
- 29 dimensions, 8 summary dimensions
- Top half: Creative competencies
- Lower half: Reactive tendencies
- Self-assessment vs 360
- High and low ratings
Who am I being compared to?
Reminder: top and bottom 10% aggregate leader profiles
Reactive-Creative Balance
Relationship-Task Balance
Summary dimensions: combining all elements
Don't flatter yourself - we're all in this together
What’s next: start asking yourself some questions

A sample LCP-360 profile results

By now, you should have one of the following results of your assessed leadership behaviours:

a self-marked blank LCP profile
a completed LCP self-assessment from Leadership Circle’s website (free)
a completed, or a commenced 360 result (a 360 can only be initiated by a trained LCP practitioner, so contact me)

If you have your results - great! If you don’t, I highly recommend either doing a quick drawing on the blank profile linked below or taking 30 minutes to complete the full free assessment on the LC’s website. You will get more out of this series if you do.

Request LCP results debrief

Name

First Name

Last Name

Email

Subject

Message

Of course, you can also read through without completing any version of the LCP at all and if reading alone inspires you to consider how you approach working with others, we are moving in the right direction.

How to look at your LCP results: important pointers

Here are several important reminders to keep in mind as we look at your assessment results:

The results are a snapshot in time. Like a photograph, it could be a close representation of your leadership. Like a photograph, even if very accurate, it is a snapshot and it cannot capture your whole essence as a person, as a leader. Your LCP results may change when one of the following happens:
- a) you work on yourself,
- b) your awareness of yourself changes,
- c) you are assessed after either a peaceful or a turbulent period.
This is not you. These are your behaviours. We can exhibit different behaviours based on our state, our mood, our triggers, how much we've slept and the pressures we are facing. We can show up as respectful in one instance and with thin patience in another.
The results are subjective. If you're really tough on yourself (like I was when I first took this assessment), you may rate yourself much, MUCH, lower than your team. Or the other way - much higher. When looking at a 360 version, keep in mind that you can feel like the toughest critic to one person while another may say you're not being direct enough. Or you may show up as authentic with some, and less authentic with others, for whatever reason. So don't jump to conclusions.
You are being compared to middle-senior leadership players. The results are percentile scores compared to a "global norm base" of mid to senior leaders. More on that in "Who am I being compared to?" below.
Understand definitions of each dimension. They are not dictionary definitions. For example, "Driven" in LCP refers to being in "overdrive" as a limiting leadership tendency. "Belonging" measures the need to conform. Definitions of all 29 dimensions are coming up in one of the next posts.
Don't accept any of this as absolute truth. It isn't. Use LCP and this series as a guide to the following question:“How are my behaviours enabling or limiting my leadership impact and our business performance?” And pay attention to yourself and to the impact your're having on people around you.

Understanding your LCP results: top-level overview

Let's go through the LCP graph.

29 dimensions, 8 summary dimensions

The outer circle displays the results for each of the 29 dimensions measured by the LCP, while the inner circle aggregates these into 8 summary dimensions.

In addition, the circle is divided vertically into two halves: Creative Competencies and Reactive Styles.

Creative Leadership Competencies

The top half of the circle maps Creative Competencies that correlate higher with leaders' effectiveness than Reactive. They measure key leadership behaviours and internal assumptions that lead to high fulfillment and high achievement leadership.

They are comprised of:
**Relating** (summary dimension):
Caring Connection
Fosters Team Play
Collaborator
Mentoring & Developing
Interpersonal Intelligence
**Self-Awareness** (summary dimension):
Selfless Leader
Balance
Composure
Personal Learner
**Authenticity** (summary dimension):
Integrity
Courageous Authenticity
**Systems Awareness** (summary dimension):
Community Concern
Sustainable Productivity
Systems Thinker
**Achieving** (summary dimension):
Strategic Focus
Purposeful & Visionary
Achieves Results
Decisiveness

Reactive Leadership Styles

The lower half of the circle maps self-limiting Reactive Tendencies and leadership behaviours. Although these are our strong muscles that got us to this point in our careers, the Reactive dimensions reflect inner beliefs and assumptions that limit effectiveness, authentic expression, and empowering leadership.

Reactive styles are comprised of:

Complying (summary dimension):
- Conservative
- Pleasing
- Belonging
- Passive
Protecting (summary dimension):
- Arrogance
- Critical
- Distance
Controlling (summary dimension):
- Perfect
- Driven (which could potentially be overdriven)
- Ambition (or over-ambition, when in overdrive)
- Autocratic

Self-assessment vs 360

Depending on whether you've completed a self-assessment or a 360, your LCP graph will look like one of these:

A self-assessment graph: dark line matches shaded areas (as you do not have others' input into your profile)

A 360 graph: dark line (self-assessment) and shaded green (assessment by others)

In the self-assessment version, your dark line and the shaded areas will match as you are the only person completing the assessment.

In the 360, the dark line represents how you assessed yourself, while the shaded areas - how others assessed your leadership using the same questionnaire. Some areas on the LCP will match with how you perceive your leadership vs how others experience you. Some will pleasantly surprise you. Some will make you cringe and potentially upset. All of that is a natural part of doing these 360s. Although it is important to remember that these ratings are subjective, they are still a good indicator of how you perceive yourself and how others experience you. Good enough data to work with as you develop yourself.

High and low ratings of the LCP: what do they mean

LCP high and low percentile scores - what do they mean? — Anything above 67th percentile are high scores: meaning you're displaying those behaviours strongly and consistently. Anything below 33rd percentile are low scores. Anything between 33rd and 67th is a mix of strengths and areas of improvement.

In the sample profile below, the person assessed themself as high in the Authenticity dimension (around 75 in the summary dimension), while others have rated them at a low mark of 32. In short, they think they relate to others authentically. Others, on average, think otherwise. Good to know...

A 360 graph: dark line (self-assessment) and shaded green (assessment by others)

At the same time, this leader's self-assessment in the Achieving dimension matches closely with how others experience them: as someone who offers high-achieving leadership.

Usually, this is where people start to get the first impression of their profile and are tempted to make the first, and often, erroneous conclusions. So here are a few more clarifications.

Who am I being compared to?

The phrasing of that question is the first mistake. The assessment doesn't compare or assess you. It assesses your behaviour as experienced by the people you nominated to complete the LCP and compares them as percentile scores to the behaviours of other leaders - see the next point. The distinction between you and your behaviour is important. Changing your behaviour is easier, and often more appropriate, than changing yourself as a person.

Second, the scores are not absolute. They are percentiles of how your results compare to the global norm base of senior leaders. So, a low rating of 20% on self-awareness means that you are rated in the bottom 20% compared to how other senior leaders are rated on self-awareness. If you rate 80%, which is high, it means that you're in the top 80% on self-awareness as compared to the global norm base of senior leaders.

Thirdly, remember that your results are being compared to the norm group of leaders from middle management up to the top-level leaders (more on that in the footnotes). The "compared to" is very important here. Think of soccer players: you may be rated the best player in the junior league by your coach or your teammates, but compared to the premier league - you, with the same skills and experience, can now find yourself in the bottom 10%. The group to which you are compared matters. With the LCP, this group consists of middle to senior leaders around the world, not junior or individual contributors. So these results are a comparison of your skills with those of professionals in leadership roles. High standards. Which is why your results may be lower than you hoped. The good news is that you now have a snapshot that shows where you could work on yourself in order to grow into a person who exhibits behaviours correlated with more effective leadership. This could be your map for your adult and leadership development (yes, a two-for-one deal).

Reminder: top 10% and bottom 10% of leaders and their businesses

Here is a reminder of what to aim towards. Below are two aggregate leader profiles side-by-side. One is of leaders whose businesses were evaluated as the lowest performing (bottom 10%). The other - of leaders with the highest performing businesses (top 10%).

As you can see in the profiles above, the bottom 10% are operating mostly from Reactive Tendencies (the bottom half of the circle), while the top 10% have well-developed Creative Competencies (top-half). Notice how the reactive is still very present in the top 10% profile - these are our "base muscles" that got us to operate successfully enough within our context, so we are unlikely to be able to let go of them completely, nor do we need to. Sometimes we do need to step in and take control ("Controlling" on the Reactive), at other times the person in front of us may not be able to handle us being "Courageously authentic" (a Creative Competency), so the context in which we choose how we respond matters.

The bottom 10% leaders are operating mostly from Reactive Tendencies, while the top 10% have well-developed Creative Competencies

At the same time, the Creative Competencies are like finer muscles that help us make advanced moves navigating the relationship-task balance of working with people. Muscles that allow us to make finer moves and develop more intricate relationships that are not available from the space of Reactive. The invitation, if you want to grow your leadership effectiveness, is to grow your Creative Competencies and start operating from there more than you do from the Reactive.

In other words, reduce your dependence on Reactive Tendencies and grow your Creative Competency muscles. In yet another set of words, don't use a hammer (or a feather) on every job.

Reactive-Creative Balance

Heavy on the Reactive?
This could mean that you are harbouring some fears that are getting in your way of being a more effective leader. You're mostly "playing not to lose", rather than "playing to win". The LCP results should give you an indicator as to which areas might be in overdrive. I will cover what each dimension means, what beliefs may be holding you down and how to work with each in the upcoming posts.

Heavy on Reactive = "Playing not to lose" rather than "Playing to win"

Strong on the Creative?
If this is your result - great, that means you have a well-developed set of creative competencies.
My two questions for you are:

How balanced are you on the Relationships-Task scale (see below)?
If you're balanced on the Relationship-Task scale and you have strong Creative
competencies - what's next for you? You may not be utilising your leadership potential. Perhaps consciously, perhaps not. Are you being challenged enough or are things getting easy for you and complacency is starting to knock on your door? Just some questions for thought...

Relationship-Task Balance

The LCP is also arranged to display how well you balance relationships with people with being able to focus on tasks and achievement. If you are way off-balance and are strong in tasks, but low on relating - your team may be doing ok, even good, but not maximising their potential under your leadership. If you're much stronger in Relationships than in Tasks (and you don't have someone on the team to help focus on tasks) - your team may be paying the costs of underachieving.

Relating (people) dimensions are on the left, while achieving (task) dimensions are on the right.

Summary dimensions: combining all elements

In addition to all the dimensions displayed in the inner and outer circle, the rectangular scales located around the circle are intended to bring everything together. They provide useful ‘bottom-line’ measures as well as measures of key patterns within the data (source: Leadership Circle).

Rectangular summary dimensions on the LCP bring it all together

The 4 summary dimensions are:

Reactive-Creative Scale reflects the degree of balance between the Creative dimensions and the Reactive dimensions. The percentile score here gives the leader a sense of how they compare to other leaders with respect to the amount of energy they put into Reactive versus Creative behaviours.

Relationship-Task Balance measures the degree of balance a leader shows between the Achieving and Relating competencies. It is a measure of the over, under or balanced development of either half of the equation (the people half or the task half) that makes for great leadership.

Leadership Potential Utilization is a bottom-line measure that compares the overall score of the dimensions measured to that of other leaders who have taken this survey. It sorts through all the high and low scores to answer the question, “So, in the end, how am I doing?”

Leadership Effectiveness measures the leader’s perceived level of overall effectiveness as rated by the assessors. Research has shown it to be significantly correlated to business outcomes. It gives the leader an overall measure of how all of the above is translating into perceived effectiveness (source: Leadership Circle).

Don't flatter yourself - we're all in this together

A quick return to the illustration from the second post in this series:

Most of the adult population (80%) is strongly situated in the Egocentric-Reactive territory (or in the "Socialized Mind" from Kegan's theory on adult development - more on that later).
The minority of us (15%) are in the "Self-Authoring Mind": i.e. well developed in the Creative while maintaining a healthy amount of the Reactive.
Even fewer of us (5%) are in the Integral stage ("Self-Transforming Mind").

So don't flatter yourself thinking you're the only person who could do some work on rebalancing your Reactive-Creative or your People-Task scales.

What’s next? Start asking yourself some questions

Once you've digested all of the above information, you may want to start asking yourself these questions:

Where does my self-perception match with that of others?
Where are my biggest gaps in self-perception vs how others assessed my behaviours?
How heavy am I on the Reactive?
How balanced am I on the Relationship-Task scale?
(If you're doing a self-assessment only): how can I confirm or challenge my own ratings of myself?