Do You Need a Leadership Makeover?

When to know you need to make changes, and how to start

Photo by Jay Heike on Unsplash

You’re scanning email before starting your work day. One message catches your eye, triggering a faint twitch of apprehension. The subject line, Your Assessment Results, lets you know that your leadership competencies as evaluated by your employees, peers and boss have been tabulated, and with one click on the link provided, you will be reading a report on what it’s like to work with you.

Lots of organizations use these kinds of multi-rater evaluations (often called ‘360s’ as the feedback comes from the circle of people around the manager), partly to discover who’s ready for a promotion, though mostly to see who might need a bit (or a lot) of development to address gaps in skills, results or behaviours.

I’ve been through this process a couple of times in my career, and I’ve also received feedback through organizational engagement surveys about the working environment I created for those who reported to me. There have been a few shocks and surprises in the anonymous comments — along with a sense of incredulity that I was not good at some things I thought were my strengths — but once digested, the feedback gave me an opportunity to address behaviours that were not all that helpful, and step up to meet the expectations of my role. I’ll start with…