• Having tools that can be used to assist in leadership development efforts at multiple levels in an organization.
• Offering a set of products and services to facilitate a leadership development process.

The Conference Board truly understands what The Leadership Circle has to offer. Many people view us as an one-assessment company, only knowing about our Leadership Circle Profile, but we are much more than that. Our multiple offerings create a powerful leadership development system on two levels.

1. Thought Leadership: The Leadership Circle has taken the best of what has been learned over the last half century and woven it into the first Unified Theory of Leadership Development to arise in the field. Prior to our integration, the field of leadership development was a fragmented collection of theories and practices.
2. Leadership Development as a Process: In the March issue of our Leadership Quarterly, my colleague Jonathan Hulsh explained the importance of approaching leadership development as a process, not an event. The Leadership Circle has all the tools needed to facilitate that process.

Here’s our portfolio:

Assessments

• Leadership Circle Profile
• Leadership Circle Profile Manager Edition
• Leadership Circle Profile Group Reports
• Leadership Culture Survey

Managing the Development Process

• Follow-Through Tool
• Profile Re-takes

Workshops

• Authentic Leader Workshop
• Authentic Leader Train-the-Trainer Certification

The Leadership Circle’s Leadership Development System in Action

The Leadership Circle Profile and Leadership Circle Profile Manager Edition are often used for one-on-one coaching. This usually involves taking the assessment, debriefing it with a Leadership Circle certified coach, defining a development process and working together over time. One-on-one coaching can be powerful, and incorporating one-on-one coaching into a larger developmental initiative magnifies the impact of coaching exponentially. Here are some examples based on some of the ways people are using our portfolio:

Becoming Innovative

An information technology company, who had become a market leader developing exciting new products between 2003-2008, was losing market share because they had not developed anything new in several years. They created a process to get back to being an innovation leader.

Here’s what they did:

1. Used our Leadership Culture Survey to understand how leadership was perceived in their organization. They found that the organization had become “fat and happy,” resting on the laurels of earlier achievement. Leadership was perceived as having lost its vision and as they had grown the organization had become fragmented. Decisions took a long time to make and when they were made they were not effective at creating meaningful results. The Leadership Culture Survey revealed that their leaders needed to revisit the organization’s deeper purpose, chart a new direction based on that purpose, and engage all levels in a deep conversation about what the new direction meant and what it required.
2. Executive leadership team members took the Leadership Circle Profile, allowing each leader to see how his/her own performance compared to that which the organization said was necessary to be successful, as revealed by the Leadership Culture Survey. Each leader was able to identify what they needed to do to move the organization forward, then they worked individually with coaches to make necessary changes.
3. The executive leadership team used a Leadership Circle Profile Group Report, showing an aggregate of the individual reports so that the team could look at their collective Profile and discuss how they could work better as a team at creating the culture that would get them back to their winning ways.
4. Managers and supervisors used the Leadership Circle Profile Manager Edition to see how their performance compared to what was required to become successful. The Leadership Circle Manager Edition enabled middle management and supervisors to have powerful conversations, based on a common language, with senior leaders. Those conversations led to the development of policies, procedures, and commitments creating new ways to make decisions and take action at all levels.

Senior Leadership Team Development

Two banks merged and combined senior leadership teams. Jockeying for position became the predominant activity as leaders fought for their survival. In the meantime, the merged organization grew confused over goals, roles, and responsibilities. The newly merged board of directors intervened to get leadership on track. One bank had an internal organization development team that was engaged to facilitate a process of senior leadership team development.

Here’s what they did:

1. Internal coaches led a three-day Authentic Leader Workshop where leaders learned what is required to perform at the highest levels.
   1. The difference between reacting to problems and creating compelling outcomes.
   2. Becoming aware of how internal beliefs and assumptions give rise to limiting behavior.
   3. How to clarify organizational purpose and vision so that they generate productive engagement.
   4. How to lead the creation of an organizational culture that will bring the purpose and vision to life.
2. Each leader received 360-degree feedback through the Leadership Circle Profile. The Authentic Leader Workshop gave leaders a strong foundation to understand what their feedback meant. Team members shared their Profiles with each other so they could see each other’s strengths and limitations of each other and the implications for the team. The act of sharing Profiles was a powerful moment of trust building.
3. For six months, leaders worked individually and as a group with internal coaches. During this time, several members of the senior leadership team decided to assume roles one step down in the hierarchy in order to bring the organization together.
4. Authentic Leader workshops were conducted at the vice president and director levels, then at the middle manager and supervisor levels. These sessions included Leadership Circle Profile feedback.
5. Middle managers and supervisors participated in year-long cohort groups, sharing progress and challenges with each other on a monthly basis guided by internal coaches. They used The Leadership Circle’s Follow-Through Tool to manage their development efforts and to help hold each other accountable and share what they were learning.

These are just two examples of the powerful ways The Leadership Circle’s Leadership Development System can be used. Join us on May 17th  at 1 p.m. EST for a free webinar featuring practitioners who have successfully used our portfolio to facilitate development initiatives.

June 6-8, 2012
Washington, D.C.
(Gaithersburg, Maryland)

The Authentic Leader Workshop is a three-day leader development intensive experience. Designed for leaders and managers, and for consultants/coaches who work with leaders and lead their own organizations, this workshop has been utilized for years—in leading organizations—for deep leadership and organization development.

Authentic Leader focuses on acknowledging and letting go of the parts of our self that are complying, protecting, and/or controlling. This program consistently produces significant shifts in the effectiveness and impact of leaders and their teams.

Authentic Leader is offered as a public enrollment program only once a year. The International Coach Federation awards 22.20 CEUs for attendance.

“I know that by applying what I have learned here, I will show up as a much more powerful leader in my organization and a more authentic person in every area of my life.”

-Sunny Krom, Sodexo

“This is the course you have been waiting for that will free you to live your authentic self in service to the highest good. Live large and be the change you seek.”

-Amy Skolen

→Register Now for the Authentic Leader Workshop

Workshop Leader

Dan Holden has worked in executive and team development for over 25 years. He serves on the Executive MBA staff at the University of Notre Dame, where in 2006 he was awarded the school’s Inspiring Educator of the Year Award. Dan has worked with the Center for Creative Leadership, and continues his work with Elsie Y. Cross Associates, Inc. on issues of diversity and culture change. He is the author of Lost Between Lives–Finding Your Light When the World Goes Dark (2004). He has authored several articles, including Diversity Unraveled and The Forgotten Self—Executive Development in the 21st Century, which appear in the Industrial Management Journal, 2006. His most recent articles are entitled The Missing Ingredient in Organizational Change-Leadership Transformation and Does Your Team Need an MRI. Dan is a Senior Consultant and Facilitator for The Leadership Circle.

Authentic Leader Train-the-Trainer Certification

October 15-19, 2012
Perrysburg, Ohio

Authentic Leader Train-the-Trainer Certification is a five-day advanced practitioner development program designed for those who want to add the Authentic Leader Workshop to their consulting/training portfolio. It is also open to those who want to deepen and refine their one-on-one and team coaching practice.

Features

• An opportunity to teach and facilitate a set of core workshop modules built around The Leadership Circle framework
• A potent blend of powerful experiential exercises and skill practice sessions
• A rare opportunity to learn and receive feedback from a master and from colleagues on the same journey as you

Benefits and Outcomes

• Add velocity to your personal development
• Enhance the overall quality of your coaching/consulting services
• Grow your business with new, attractive, profitable offerings
• The Leadership Circle helps create opportunities where you can co-train

Past participants say this experience took their consulting and coaching practice to the next level in ways they never imagined possible.

Pre-requisites for Attending Certification

Before taking entering this certification process, you must first complete Leadership Circle Profile Certification. Past participation in the Authentic Leader workshop is helpful but not required.

Pathway to Certification

The path for this certification begins with this five-day program. It ends when, after co-training with one of our Senior Certified Consultants, you both decide that you are ready to fly solo. The number of co-trainings it takes depends on your experience level and the pace at which you take on new material. We also help create opportunities where you can co-train.

“This workshop certification alone is worth its weight in gold. I now bring in the largest contracts of my career.”

-Paula Butterfield, Consultant and Executive Coach

“This is without question one of the most important and meaningful things I have ever done and ever will do.”

-Abby Straus, Unbridled Performance

Certification Leaders

Dan Holden has worked in executive and team development for over 25 years. He serves on the Executive MBA staff at the University of Notre Dame, where in 2006 he was awarded the school’s Inspiring Educator of the Year Award. Dan has worked with the Center for Creative Leadership, and continues his work with Elsie Y. Cross Associates, Inc., on issues of diversity and culture change. He is the author of Lost Between Lives–Finding Your Light When the World Goes Dark (2004). He has authored several articles, including Diversity Unraveled and The Forgotten Self—Executive Development in the 21st Century, which appear in the Industrial Management Journal, 2006. His most recent articles are entitled The Missing Ingredient in Organizational Change-Leadership Transformation and Does Your Team Need an MRI. Dan is a Senior Consultant and Facilitator for The Leadership Circle.

Shahmeen Sadiq is a Leadership and Team Development Professional, who is a graduate of the coach certification program of the Coaches Training Institute as well as the Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching program of the Center for Right Relationship. She is a Senior Facilitator for The Leadership Circle Workshops and The Leadership Circle Profile Certification. In 2009, Shahmeen was honored by the International Coach Federation with a Prism Award for systems coaching work she did with a Not-for-Profit organization. Shahmeen is passionate about the value and importance of building vibrant, aligned workplaces. She has worked with leaders and teams across Canada and the US, guiding them in developing greater effectiveness. Shahmeen had a 15-year career in the public sector where her experience encompassed coaching individuals/teams, managing projects, strategic planning, applying improvement techniques, streamlining operations, and re-engineering processes.

→Read More Testimonials

→Register Now for the Authentic Leader Train-the-Trainer Certification

The Leadership Circle committed to some big initiatives over the last year. These initiatives stretched all aspects of our resources. For example, we chose to invest heavily in sourcing a marketing consultant and also to improving our brand. Additionally, we launched a new website, hired a new business development person, launched all new software for our survey completion and administration, and also launched a new product.

Some of these initiatives were deep in progress when we were faced with the economic downturn, but we consciously made the decision to push forward with all of our changes. Although these decisions were coupled with the fear of the unknown, we were committed. We made budget cuts in other areas and redistributed roles as needed.

During the launch of the new software, we experienced unanticipated hurdles. This is where my journey of transformation began. I looked square into the eyes of my fear of failure during the launch. It looked back at me and talked to me through the voices of some of our customers. I couldn’t hide, I couldn’t remain silent, and I couldn’t let someone else decide what to do. It had to be me. So, this is what I chose to do–much like The Leadership Circle chose to push on with the expensive, resource-heavy initiatives we had already committed to before the economy went sour, I too had to accept the fear of failure and push on.

My decision to push on and develop a plan for moving us, and myself, forward wasn’t an easy one. I remember first working through the “fight or flight” adrenaline that I’ve heard referenced (and yes, the “flight” part sounded appealing). I became aware of the feelings I was experiencing and the ways in which they were representing me in my interactions. I watched myself slouch, speak softly, and not want to answer the phone. None of this felt good to me and I grew increasingly aware that I was not serving anyone in this manner.

I, therefore, chose to move through the fear that was holding me back and engage more fully. I decided that my failure, if perceived as that, didn’t define me and there was still more work to be done. As I engaged in laying out plans for moving forward, if only with small steps initially, I began to see how all of the other plans and initiatives on which The Leadership Circle placed priority, started to come together. I found excitement in the strategic thinking of how the new puzzle pieces could fit together. I actually found myself in situations saying “Yes. I don’t know how, but we’ll figure it out.” This was very different for the engineering side of me that previously felt as if it needed to have all of the details mapped out and in place in my head before I could begin.

In The Leadership Circle, we chose to move forward in very uncertain times with some high costs involved. We are now seeing the benefits of those choices. Our organization feels more fully integrated, more focused on our goals, and more scalable. Both our new website and our branding changes, have received positive feedback. The Manager Edition launch was successful, and it is now finding its place within management levels of many organizations. Many of you have been introduced to and supported by our Business Development Manager. We are in a very different position with the software we launched a year ago.

Recently, we released a new feature that sends practitioners with an active project an email seven days prior to the completion date. This email notifies them of participant status and even provides shipping address information for confirmation. We continue to make improvements like this, add features, and think creatively about how we can improve and build upon our IT department.

The experience of the software launch forced me to face fears that I didn’t want to face. It also enabled me to appreciate the capacity to which we can change and grow in situations if we continue to push through and be open to the opportunity without allowing fear to get in our way. Thank you to everyone for your continued support over the last year. It has been amazing and it has truly helped The Leadership Circle rise to a new level. We look forward to moving ahead together as The Leadership Circle improves to new heights in the future.

360° Reports Do Not Create Better Leaders

I always ask the event-oriented client the same question: “Do you expect significant results in using a 360° assessment as an one-time event?” Their answer is always the same: “No.” Consider the fact that without professional guidance and time, a blood test report alone can’t possibly help us get healthy. Why then would we assume that an assessment report—a mere piece of paper—has the power to instantly turn you or me into a more effective leader? And yet this illusion persists. While leadership events are common, real change occurs when leadership development initiatives are embedded into a sustainable process.

The Leadership Development Process Requires Support

The Leadership Circle subscribes to the notion that leadership development is a transformation process. It does not happen in a weekend. By raising his/her awareness with the support of a powerful 360° assessment, like The Leadership Circle Profile, managers become more conscious of what they do and why they’re doing it. But for this process to succeed, it needs support and follow through, and there’s research to back this up:

• 8,000 managers from Fortune 100 companies received 360° feedback and leadership training.  Eighteen months later they were evaluated for leadership effectiveness.
• 55% of managers who consistently followed through were rated more effective (+3 on 3 point scale i.e. significant sustained improvement) versus only 6% of those who did no follow-through.
• 34% of those with no follow-through showed no improvement and 20% with no follow-through got worse!

Conclusions

• Real leadership development is a process: Development Goals + Follow-through = Results.
• Almost any follow-up is better than none.
• The biggest challenge for most leaders is practicing their understanding of leadership.
• If managers attend a leadership program and fail to follow-up with their people, they might as well have stayed home.

Goldsmith and Morgan
Best Practices in Organizational Development, 2003

Best Practices that Enable Leadership Development

While every leadership development initiative is unique, there are several practical strategies that are consistent with clients who tell us about how they support transformational change:

• Confidential and objective coaching that is focused on one, maybe two, development priorities that will provide the biggest payoff for the individual and/or their organization. The Leadership Circle Profile was built to enable focused dialogue with leaders about their possibilities, as well as beliefs and assumptions that may be interfering with their success. The coach will facilitate authentic and honest conversations that will go deeper (about the “what” and the “why”) than they might get from their colleagues or peers. The coach is also one to help their client anticipate and prepare for challenges.
• A Leadership Development Plan that clearly documents a clear call to action, with specific goals and action steps. Creating “social accountability” where the participant shares his/her development priorities with others, asks for help from others and creates a forum for regular feedback about progress made (or not made). An emerging best practice we are seeing involves year-long cohorts of peers sharing progress, challenges, and holding one another accountable, meeting on a monthly basis.
• Resources made available—outside speakers, reading, training—or other learning resources that directly align to development priorities. The Leadership Circle’s Authentic Leader Workshop helps provide direction and education to leaders committed to transformation.
• Follow-up with the Leadership Circle Profile re-assessment, after significant efforts have been made, to measure progress.
• Use of a leadership development process tracking system to manage the development effort. The Leadership Circle offers an excellent resource, our Follow-Through Tool.

Leadership development takes practice, and practice requires support and follow-thorough with the help of an executive coach and goal/action plan. If you’re a coach or consultant, the next time your client asks you to help them with a one-off 360° leadership event, it is important to manage expectations. Consider this is a call for your advocacy. It’s your opportunity to educate your client around a more effective process and outcome.

I don’t know about you, but when I orient my life toward bold purpose, I come quickly to understand that this is inherently risky. I have long wished for a safe way to go about this but I haven’t found one. The natural inherent tension in clarifying and focusing on purpose is that it immediately raises the possibility of risk. I’m an entrepreneur with a growing global business, so I understand that pursuing purpose puts me at risk all the time.

How does this tie into the Leadership Circle Profile? When you receive the results of your Leadership Circle Profile, you get data that is actually organized around this core tension. In other words, the extent to which you orient your leadership toward purpose or safety will show up in your Leadership Circle Profile. For example, if you are oriented toward purpose, vision, and contribution, you are likely to see stronger scores in the top half of the circle but, if you are oriented more toward safety, then you’re going to receive stronger scores in the bottom half of the circle.

When we orient our life and our leadership toward creating what matters most, and that is the primary driver, we are in what I call, Creative Structure or Creative Structure of Mind. When our primary focus is oriented toward staying safe, then we are more likely to live and lead out of a Reactive Structure of Mind—running the behavioral strategies that you run when you get threatened.

Although The Leadership Circle Profile can be used as a thorough competency assessment, it also provides an indication of how much of your life energy and orientation is in either the Creative or Reactive Structure. If you are more focused on safety, you will be acting in a way Larry Wilson called, “Playing-Not-To-Lose”, and you will be more likely to operate in a Reactive Structure. These behaviors are the Reactive Tendencies which will show up in the bottom half of the circle in your Leadership Circle Profile.

You can also use the assessment to get a clearer sense of how you’re performing as a leader. Contrarily, the top half of the circle indicates the extent to which your leadership is oriented toward forming your purpose into a vision that is both strategic and lofty–strategic because it sets a direction in which the organization will thrive, and lofty because it captures your imagination and that of others.

To view a video presentation of Bob Anderson presenting the information in this article, click here.

Download the entire White Paper here.

Focus on Achievement

The Leadership Circle’s research suggests that leadership effectiveness is highly correlated with competency in Achievement behaviors—most highly when purpose and vision are clearly understood, articulated, and modeled. Here are some questions to consider:

• Do I have a clear sense of the higher purpose my work serves?
• Can I describe, vividly, what the world around me will look like if I live my purpose to its fullest?
• Do I feel inspired when I speak about my purpose and vision?
• How can I behave, right now and throughout my days, in ways that demonstrate that my purpose and vision are already true?

Create or Modify Structures

At The Leadership Circle, we believe structure determines performance. For example, if we want to improve our fitness, we need to schedule workouts and identify the exercises for those workouts; research also suggests that working out with a buddy enhances the likelihood that we will actually work out regularly. These are just a few examples of structures that enhance your ability to achieve fitness goals. Here are a few questions to consider in relation to achieving your vision and goals:

• What relationship structures do I need to create or modify?
• What daily scheduling structures do I need to create or modify?
• What project management structures do I need to create or modify?

Harvest the Gifts of Your Shadow

It is important to remember that Reactive tendencies are not bad. These are the behaviors we have adopted that have served us—to a point. But ultimately, we face limitations when we rely too heavily on our Reactive strategies. To become better leaders, we can shift to a Creative approach and the seeds for making that shift can be found in our Reactive tendencies. Here are some questions to begin to make the shift from over-reliance on Reactive Strategies:

• What are the strengths and gifts to be found in my Reactive tendencies?
• What are some balancing behaviors that would elevate these strengths to a more Creative level?

In The Leadership Circle’s Authentic Leader Workshop, we have a session that’s all about harvesting the gifts of your Reactive tendencies. I recommend it highly.

We hope you’ll take time as the new year begins to apply to yourself what you help others do all year long. We wish you a healthy, peaceful, and prosperous 2012.

The paper covers four primary topics:

• Why most organizational change efforts fail
• A model that enables truly effective management of change
• The most powerful leverage point for leaders in creating real and sustainable change
• An accessible approach to leadership development that can produce significant, sustainable, breakthrough results

We invite you to download The Spirit of Leadership (alternatively, you can view all of our White Papers by choosing the “Resources” tab at the top right side of the page, then “White Papers”). This document is a foundational summary of our approach. If you’ve read it before we recommend you read it again. If you want to become familiar with our thinking this paper is essential.

In a recent Leadership Quarterly article I stated, “In a world of escalating global complexity, many leaders find themselves ‘in over their heads.’ This phenomenon results when the leader’s ‘Operating System’ is not complex enough to match the complexity of the challenges facing the leader. In this case, the leader needs more than skill development. The leader needs to develop greater complexity of mind.” (See the April 2011 Leadership Quarterly for a more in-depth discussion about why a competency-only based approached to leadership development is inadequate.)

When organizations are struggling with a lack of flexibility, agility, and innovation, more often than not they are trying to lead the way through complexity from a Reactive mindset. The Reactive mind is simply not complex enough to have the flexibility, agility, and creative innovativeness that is required. Furthermore, research strongly suggests that full-blown vision and strategic capability do not emerge until leaders are functioning at the Creative level of mind and Systems Thinking does not emerge until leaders mature into the Creative mind and beyond.

The real answer to the dilemma of escalating complexity and the demand it makes on leaders and organizations to be flexible, agile, and innovative, is not achieved by merely adding a couple of additional competencies to an assessment. The answer lies in expanding the leader’s complexity of mind. That is, creating a fundamental shift of mind from the Reactive “Operating System” to a Creative one. This is a far more complex task than can be accomplished by simply adding a dimension called Agility or Innovation to a competency assessment.

This is the third and final part of a three-part series on how the Leadership Circle can be used to create a more innovative, flexible, and agile leadership culture in an organization. Part One gave an overview into Flexibility, Agility, and Innovation, and explained how these three qualities are essential in a leader, despite not appearing explicitly on The Leadership Circle Profile. Part Two presented a case study example of how The Leadership Culture Survey describes precisely what is needed for a specific organization to be more agile, flexible, and innovative.

About The Leadership Circle

The Leadership Circle represents an advancement in state-of-the-art of leadership development. This advancement springs from a more thorough and integrated approach to leadership—one that encompasses the best of what we know about competency development with the best of what we know about the development of the leader’s complexity of mind. It is a complete system of leadership development that integrates into one approach how Creative Competencies can be developed, Reactive leadership styles reduced, and the complexity of the leader’s mind expanded to be more flexible, agile, innovative, and creative; that is, capable of effectively leading in the midst of complex and fast changing business realities.

A Case Study in Brief

I was recently asked to consult with the senior team of a large global company with revenues in excess of $10 billion. I was introduced to this team by one of the consulting organizations that uses The Leadership Circle assessments. They had just conducted our Leadership Culture Survey with the top three levels of this organization. They asked me to sit in on the survey feedback and interpret the results with the senior management team. I knew very little about the organization and so I confined my comments to what I saw in the numbers outlined in brief below.

The Leadership Culture Survey Organizational Report Graphic for the top 80 managers in this organization is displayed in Figure 1. A complete description of the Leadership Culture Survey is beyond the scope of this article; however, a brief introduction will aid in understanding how the results in this case served to initiate a very powerful discussion about the organization’s ability to agilely and flexibly innovate.

Figure 1: Leadership Culture Survey Organizational Summary Report Graphic

The Leadership Culture survey measures 31 dimensions of an organization’s leadership culture. These 31 dimensions are grouped into eight Summary Dimensions and are displayed in Figure 1. The survey measures both the current culture (the culture you have) and the envisioned culture (the one you want) on each of these dimensions. With a brief look at the results displayed in Figure 1, it becomes obvious that the current depiction of the Leadership Culture (in green) is very different from the desired/optimal Culture (the Red Line).  The current leadership culture is slightly more Reactive than Creative (a 45 percentile culture overall, just below the norm for leadership cultures measured with this assessment), while the optimal culture is described as very Creative (a nearly top 10 percentile, high performing culture). Clearly this senior management team is saying that in order for their business to thrive, they need to make a significant shift in they way they are leading the business—from Reactive to Creative.

To understand the story of how these results relate to innovation, flexibility and agility, we need to look deeper into the data—at highest and lowest sub-dimensions measured in the survey. In the Leadership Culture Survey report, the 31 sub-dimensions are sorted from highest percentile score to lowest. I have selected out the top and bottom of these lists to elucidate the key patterns in the results. A simple look at the data tells a very clear and compelling story that has everything to do with this organization’s flexibility, agility and innovativeness. These results are listed in Table 1 and Table 2.

The strongest influences in the current leadership culture of this organization (top left of Table 1) suggest an overly conservative, cautious, bureaucratic, and even passive culture. The driving energy is to go along to get along (Belonging) and not rock the boat. This cautious culture may be driven by a top-down, aggressive, if not arrogant, influence on this leadership team. What is most missing from the leadership culture of this organization (bottom left of Table 1) is a clear and bold vision of its future, and vision that is being translated into a customer focused strategy. In addition, this organization lacks well-refined systems for executing on those strategies. In short, the senior members of this organization are saying that they are too cautious and conservative to be sustainable.

Table 1: Current and Optimal Leadership Culture

In the column on the right of Table 1 is the envisioned culture. This column describes quite precisely what the senior leaders in this organization know they need to move toward (upper right of column) in order to establish and sustain high performance. They need what is at the bottom of the list on the left. In other words, they know they need to take the weakest elements in their leadership culture and turn them into strengths. They need to become a bold (not conservative) purpose and vision driven organization. They need to get good at working as a team to develop strategy. They need to design or refine their systems for executing on the strategy expeditiously. They need to develop the capability to be courageous, honest, and direct with each other in order to make the tough decisions that will move those strategies forward. In order to do all this, they need to significantly reduce the conservative, bureaucratic thinking that is currently driving the organization. They also need to reduce the arrogant and critical way that they engage one another in order to have the kinds of conversation that will allow them to work together effectively (notice that these elements move from the top of their current culture list on the left to the bottom of the optimal culture list on the right).

Table 2 summarizes the biggest gaps for this organization between their current leadership culture and their optimal leadership culture. If they can close these gaps, they will be well on their way toward being a flexible, agile, and innovative organization.

Table 2: Biggest Gaps Between the Current and Optimal Leadership Culture

The simple, yet powerful views displayed above (which come out a more extensive Leadership Culture Survey report) provided windows into the secret conversation that this leadership team was having with itself—the conversation that had not yet made it to the meeting rooms. As the top management team explored together the implications of these results, they naturally moved into a conversation about their business that they had been wanting to have, but, for one reason or another, could not. They were able to acknowledge that the patterns in the data accurately described the unsustainable way they were leading and that they needed to become much more creative, innovative, bold, strategic, and agile. After the meeting they commented that it was one of the best meetings they had ever had as a senior management team and the CEO took me aside and thanked my saying, “I have been trying to tee this conversation up for some time. Now we are in it.”

This example shows how the rich assortment of well-researched Creative Leadership Competencies and Reactive Leadership Styles combine in the Leadership Circle assessments to establish a very clear picture of how this (or any) leadership team can create a culture that, by any measure, would be characterized as flexible, agile and innovative.

This is the second of a three-part series on how the Leadership Circle can be used to create a more innovative, flexible, and agile leadership culture in an organization. The previous Leadership Quarterly included Part One on this topic – an introduction into Flexibility, Agility, and Innovation, and how these three qualities are essential in a leader, despite not appearing explicitly on The Leadership Circle Profile. The next Leadership Quarterly will contain Part Three, which explores how The Leadership Circle assessments are designed to embed this higher-order capability into the consciousness of the Leadership system of the organization—to enhance the complexity-of-mind of the leader, and the organization’s leadership system, to be well matched to the complexity of business challenges.

Bob Anderson, Founder and CEO of The Leadership Circle, unveiled his Leadership Imperative in May 2011 at a leadership conference in Sydney, Australia. “As the effects of globalization set in, leadership development must keep pace with the rate of change.” According to conference organizers, this call is making demands of us that are unprecedented in history. Bob’s keynote addressed the following question: “Are we evolving our conscious practice of leadership at a pace which meets the escalating complexity of our times?”

A full version of his speech is available here.

Sections of his speech (by topic) can be viewed in our YouTube channel by selecting from the links below:

1. The Leadership Dilemma of Adaptive Challenge
2. The Importance of Developing Leadership Complexity
3. How Leadership Relates to Stages of Development
4. How to Manage Your Sense of Self as a Leader
5. Complexity Requires Creative Leadership
6. Unified Theory and the Complete System for Leadership
7. How Patterns Bring Meaning to Assessment
8. Interpreting the Leadership Circle Profile 360
9. The Optimal Path for Leadership Development
10. New Research on Leadership Effectiveness
11. Evolving Higher Levels of Leadership