The Leadership Circle: Understanding Your Leadership Profile

Discover the Leadership Circle Profile and how it can help you understand the relationship between your inner world and your leadership effectiveness. This article includes an exercise to reflect on your Leadership Circle results and identify areas for growth.

Leadership effectiveness is often viewed through the prism of skills, strategies, and experiences. However, a more profound aspect that influences leadership is the inner world of beliefs, values, and assumptions. The Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) is a comprehensive leadership assessment that integrates this internal aspect, offering leaders a powerful framework to understand and evolve their leadership style. In this article, we will explore the LCP and provide an exercise to help you reflect on your results and identify areas for growth.

What is The Leadership Circle Profile?

The Leadership Circle Profile is an innovative tool for leadership development that provides a 360-degree assessment. It is designed to accelerate leadership effectiveness beyond traditional competency-based approaches. By linking patterns of action with habits of thought, the LCP helps leaders understand the relationship between how they think and how they lead.

The LCP measures two primary leadership domains:

1. Creative Competencies: These are well-researched competencies that contribute to a leader’s effectiveness. They are leadership behaviors that lead to high fulfillment and high achievement in an organization.

2. Reactive Tendencies: These are leadership styles that can limit effectiveness, relationships, and business results. They are often rooted in internal beliefs and assumptions that can undermine a leader’s best intentions.

The LCP framework helps leaders to see how their inner world of thought patterns influences their capabilities to achieve outcomes and impact their teams and organizations.

Understanding Your Leadership Circle Results

When you receive your LCP results, you’ll get a visual representation of your leadership competencies and reactive tendencies. The profile is presented in a circular graph that breaks down your leadership behaviors into specific areas. The Creative Competencies are on the top half, and the Reactive Tendencies are on the bottom half. The goal is to expand your creative competencies while recognizing and reducing your reactive tendencies.

Reflecting on Your Leadership Circle Results

To gain the most from the LCP, it’s crucial to reflect on your results. Here’s an exercise to guide you through this process:

1. Review Your Creative Competencies: Look at the top half of your circle. These are your strengths. Ask yourself:
   

   • Which of these competencies are most pronounced in my leadership style?

   • How do these competencies serve me and my team?

   • Are there competencies that I’m underutilizing or overemphasizing?

1. Examine Your Reactive Tendencies: Now, focus on the bottom half of your circle. These are areas that might be holding you back. Consider:
   

   • Which reactive behaviors do I recognize in myself?

   • In what situations do these tendencies most often show up?

   • How might these behaviors impact my effectiveness and my team’s performance?

1. Identify Patterns: Look for patterns in your profile. How do your reactive tendencies relate to your creative competencies? Are there underlying beliefs that connect them?

2. Seek Feedback: Discuss your results with trusted colleagues or a coach. They can provide additional insights and help you see things you might have missed.

3. Create an Action Plan: Based on your reflections and feedback, identify specific actions you can take to enhance your creative competencies and address your reactive tendencies.

The Leadership Circle Exercise

Set aside some quiet time to work through the following steps, using your LCP results as a guide:

1. Write Down Insights: On a piece of paper, write down the top three insights you gained from reviewing your LCP results. Be honest and specific.

2. Develop Awareness: For each insight, write down a recent situation where this played out. How did it affect your behavior and decision-making?

3. Commit to Change: For each reactive tendency, commit to one change you will make to shift towards a more creative approach. For example, if you score high in “Controlling,” you might commit to delegating more and trusting your team’s expertise.

4. Set Goals: For each creative competency, set a goal that will help you strengthen or better leverage this skill. If “Relating” is a strength, you might set a goal to mentor a team member.

5. Track Progress: Determine how you will track your progress. This could be through journaling, regular check-ins with a coach, or feedback sessions with your team.

The Impact of Understanding Your Leadership Profile

Leaders who deeply understand their LCP results can experience profound changes in their leadership effectiveness. They often report:

• Increased Self-Awareness: Understanding the impact of one’s inner world on leadership behaviors can lead to greater self-awareness and personal growth.

• Improved Relationships: By working on reactive tendencies, leaders can build stronger, more trusting relationships with their teams.

• Enhanced Decision-Making: A clearer understanding of one’s strengths can lead to more confident and effective decision-making.

• Greater Agility: Leaders who are aware of their tendencies can adapt more quickly to changing circumstances.

Challenges and Considerations

Interpreting and acting on your LCP results can be challenging. It requires vulnerability to acknowledge weaknesses and the courage to address them. It’s also a continuous process; developing as a leader doesn’t happen overnight.

Conclusion

The Leadership Circle Profile is a transformative tool that offers deep insights into the complex relationship between a leader’s inner world and their external effectiveness. By engaging with the LCP, leaders can embark on a journey of self-discovery and growth that touches every aspect of their leadership.

As you reflect on your LCP results and plan your developmental journey, remember that the path to effective leadership is as much about understanding and evolving yourself as it is about managing others. The LCP is not just an assessment; it’s a compass that guides you to lead with authenticity, purpose, and agility. Use it to chart your course to becoming the leader you aspire to be—one who leads not just with skill, but with heart and insight.