12 Point Assessment of Leadership, Coaching, and CultureA few months ago I delivered a webinar on Essential Building Blocks for Leadership, Coaching, and Culture Development (click on the title if you want to view it now). The 45 minute webinar (plus 15 minutes of Q & A) was divided into three main sections:

  1. Foundational and time tested frameworks used for years in hundreds of keynotes & workshops,
  2. New research and approaches to elevating leadership and coaching strengths (covered in greater depth in my recent webinar on Ground Breaking New Approaches to Leadership and Coaching Development), and
  3. Strengthening people and process with culture and organization development (covered in greater depth in my webinar on Executive Team Building and Culture Development).

Our Essential Building Blocks webinar is a broad overview of my 40 years of study and writing books, delivering keynotes & workshops, and facilitating leadership team retreats condensed into 45 minutes.

We developed a 12 point self-assessment across these three key areas. Many webinar participants completed the survey. Here are a few results and my observations:

  • Building a “leaderful” organization with everyone highly energized and engaged is a big challenge. Just over 10% of participants scored a 5 out of 5 and only an additional 20% rated their organizations a 4.
  • Less than a quarter of participants felt they were doing a good or great job of balancing the discipline of systems/processes, with technology and technical expertise, on a base of people leadership.
  • Few organizations were using an evidence-based methodology to help leaders identify and magnify their strengths rather than focus on their weaknesses.
  • Only 20% had a process for building exceptional leadership and coaching skills. That likely explains why most responded somewhat, not much, or not at all to whether their team/organization was proactively changing so they wouldn’t be changed.
  • 60% felt their culture was blocking rather than boosting change and improvement efforts. The roots of this problem are likely found in similar numbers reporting that their leadership and culture efforts were partial and piecemeal rather than integrated and aligned. And this was further reinforced by a failure to strongly link leadership behaviors to vision, values, and purpose/mission.
  • There are lots of moose-on-the-table in these organizations. Barely a quarter of respondents reported a culture of courageous conversations to raise issues before they stifle performance.

How’s your team or organization doing? Click on Assess Your Leadership, Coaching, and Culture Status to find out.