You raise an important point here and this is often a blind spot, not only for individuals but for organisations too. Lock and Wheeler have built on Hershey and Blanchard’s work on Situational Leadership (see: http://formula4leadership.com/f4model.htm ) and have built a tool around this. The Leadership Judgement Indicator (LJI) measures a leader’s ability to accurately judge which decision making style is the most appropriate in a given situation and also shows the leader’s style preferences. A norm group of hundred’s of senior managers globally gives a good measure against peers. A version tailored specifically towards sales leaders is also available and 360 degree versions are in preparation.
Using this tool and coupled with feedback from staff/peers/managers we found that we were able to give leaders better insight in to their abilities, they could really see themselves for the first time. This was particularly helpful for leaders who were struggling with their teams and highlighted possible derailers.

I think your article provides the insight. It is linked directly to honest and sometimes painful (for the recipient) feedback. Seeking feedback, understanding what it relates to and measuring the incidences of ‘when’ a particular behaviour happens is a good way of understanding how you see your behaviour and how others see it. Difficulty is deciding how much to change before you stop being you, and morph into something you may not be comfortable with. Too much feedback can do this. Especially in cultures which require a high level of ‘conformance’. Most inspirational leaders have something about them which is different they are often ‘personalities’. For my part I have paid more attention to team feedback, since you are only as good as the team you work with and who help and support you to achieve your (team) goals. If you invest in their views and ask them how you could improve anything you do, they will respond and often will help you by telling you when you have done certain things without perhaps recognising their impact. With peers and immediate superiors the task takes on a different and in my experience ‘less honest’ aspect. This is especially true if there is rivalry and competition or an aspect of tribalism, which can exist in larger organisations. Acess to the grapevine often provides insight into what is said about you in your absence, and does not in some cases match feedback given to your face. Many times I have been given a negative view from someone, which has not proved accurate. On other occasions I have been given positive views and experieced the opposite. Quite a minefield, especially if you have little choice on who you ‘do business with’.

Hi Earl. Great discussion point. I come across this quite regulary in terms of leaders, managers or simply people who are limited in their perceptual capacity. Meaning they often look at situations from only one perspective which gives them also limited, what I call, behavioural range of movement. My approach to when I work with a client who seems stuck in one perspective or perceptual position to give them an experience of multiple perceptual positions. The aim is to expand their view of the situation, the players involved, the relationships, the implications, etc. Generally, I will walk my clients, with their permission, through 5 perceptual positions. And by walking I mean physcially walking or stepping into these positions. 1.) In the first position, they will experience and observe the situation from their own point of view. They way they see it. The way they feel about it. The way they experience the situation in their body. 2.) In the second position, I get them to step into the position of the other person or persons involved. Here I allow them to experience the situation from someone elses point of view as so as if this other person was looking at the client (self). I get them to observe what it is like to be this person. What they see, how the feel, what they think. 3.) Then I get them step into a third, a neutral position. From here they get to view and experience the situation and the players involved from a strangers or a fly on the wall point of view, one where they have no biased involvement. They get to observe the relationship between the players involved, the dynamic of their communication, etc. 4.) In the fourth position, I step them into the position of the system, the environment that the situation is part of. Here they get to view the situation from the organisational point of view. The way this situation and the relationship of the players is viewed from the system’s perspective. How it is affected. What the implications might be. 5.) And lastly, the client is taken to a universal or global position. Observing the situation as if they were standing on the moon looking down. Once they have been through these 5 stages, I walk them back from the 5th (global) to the 1st (self) position. That is critical in this process. As they step from the 5th back into the 4th position they do so with greater insight and understanding. They then step back into the 3rd postion and yet bring back the new insights and understanding from the previous steps and so on. Until the client arrives back in the 1st postion (self). Having gone through this process, the majority of the clients I have worked with, have had a significant experience. Some actually mimicking and quoting word for word how they were perceived by others. They experience how others feel and what is important to them. They also make distinctions of the perceptual positions others operate from and the language they use. For example, someone who lives predominately through the position of self would talk a lot about themselves. Whereas someone who speaks from the system point of view would talk more about the organisational issues like the bottomlines, the processes, the performance, the productivity, etc. By understanding the different perceptual positions, clients can then adjust their lanuage to that of those that they communicate to. Having said that, they have to want to do that. With the new insights and understandings comes the intention of what the client wants to do with that discovery. However, the leaders and people who have been willing to develop their situational awareness & behavioural range and flexibility of movement are now demonstrating greater influence on their environment and make better informed decisions. Hope this is of value to the readers of this discussion. I am happy to share a worksheet with this process I am using. Feel free to contact me.

Earl, with my self the hardest feedback is from people I respect and feel I have seriously taken the stewardship of their careers to heart. But often it is sobering and painful to see my numerous shortcomings. To look deeper into the data, and feedback from other and to look deeper in my self. I see the struggles I have to become the leader I feel I am but I do not behave that way. Great topic

Dr. Smith a very interesting assessment of a situation I have encountered several times in my profession. I too am a perfectionist, but I learned long ago I can apply those expectations to only one person, myself. Your blog is an excellent example of what I have often seen as a failure by management to understand and that is how to get the best out of their people. It is not through criticism!

In my career I have had the opportunity to turn around three companies operating at a loss. In each case it was achieved with the same staff that was previously at the firm. In every case it did not matter how much I told the people that we could turn the company around. What it took was a commitment to train the staff how to better perform their job function and by constant praise when they were successful in their performance. Instead of criticism the best tool I ever learned was to be willing to take the time to show people a better way to do something when they made a mistake. I have been lucky to have had people who were passionate about their job and wanted to learn better ways to do it and were willing to learn.

The truth of each of my successes in turning around these companies; it was not me but the willingness of the people working for me to learn a better, more efficient way to do their jobs that created the success. They did this because I was willing to give them the tools they needed to show them how. It is a huge commitment of time by management to achieve that. As the leader of these turnarounds my job was to commit to spending the time to teach people what they did not know and to be willing to say “great job” when they were successful. Over time even the most distrustful of my staff learned that I did know a better way and by training them, praising them and sharing information with them they developed a trust in my methods and bought into what I was saying and we were successful in making the companies profitable.

One of my rewards for this is the number of these employees who are still in touch with me and have often told me how much they appreciate what I did for them. To me they are the true success story as several now have their own companies and are passing on these examples and knowledge to their staffs.

Positioning theory may be helpful – that is, the discursive production of self and others.

I have both observed this problem in my bosses and in myself. I have seen it suppressed for long periods of time but not defeated completely. Your process worked well with the client but I wonder if it was a long term fix. Your client is a good example of a manager that instills what I refer to in my book (www.mymangersguide.com) as fear. Fear comes in many forms but it always results in lower effectiveness of an organization. I am wondering if it would help for such a manager as your client to go through the exercise of writing down the behavior they need to suppress and the behavior they need to develop. Perhaps an even more effective approach would be that recommended by Lanny Basham. He suggests writing how you want to be on 3 x 5 cards and putting them around where you see them several times a day for a couple of weeks.