Andy Johnson, one of our core team members, attended certification training in Boston and was recently certified as a practitioner of The Leadership Circle ®. The Leadership Circle is a framework that organizes 360-degree data for a leadership coaching client into a comprehensive report and practically applicable leadership circle graph. It is a unique way to gather, report, and understand current levels of leadership development that increase effectiveness and/or reactive patterns that detract from leadership effectiveness simultaneously.

Each of us tends to have reactive patterns that we have first learned in our families of origin and have practiced across our life span that have continued to serve us into the present. They helped us get to where we are as leaders. Although there are some identifiable strengths in the reactive tendencies, organized in three main strategies called moving toward, moving away from, or moving against others, on the whole, these patterns tend to get us stuck in repetitive patterns that lessen our leadership effectiveness (the negative correlation between the two is -.68). Identifying our unique patterns is the first step in working to lessen these less effective strategies by moving forward in our personal development as leaders. On the other hand, our creative leadership competencies directly connect to our leadership effectiveness (the correlation between the two is .93). Moving from reactive to creative over time is directly increasing our leadership effectiveness. The Leadership Circle helps us understand both at the same time. It is built on a broad base of theory and research that integrates many of the best ideas on leadership into one composite paradigm.

To better understand our reactive and creative patterns, we need to analyze ourselves and look to others around us for necessary feedback to help us see things in our blind spot. The Leadership Circle framework is derived from data provided by the leader client as well as a circle of evaluators, chosen by them, from five different categories: boss’s boss, boss, peer, direct report, or other. By getting 360 degree feedback related to these specific creative and reactive leadership levels, the client is able to identify the most important developmental goals related to reducing reactive tendencies while increasing corresponding creative ones. This helps clients identify the one big thing to work on in coaching.

The Leadership Circle framework is a nice complement to the suite of assessments we use from TTI Success Insights. It provides one additional layer to better help describe the developmental complexities of a leader coaching client. By making the reactive patterns clear and seeing the level of development of the corresponding creative competencies, leaders are able to move in a new way toward becoming the best versions of themselves for the sake of their followers.

At our recent Price Associates retreat, the rest of the Price team was able to notice the changes in Andy directly related to his use and application of the Leadership Circle framework. If you’d like to talk to us about taking the assessment or about a new coaching relationship including it, please let us know. For more information on The Leadership Circle, please visit, www.theleadershipcircle.com.