Leadership Behavours Profile (LBP) - Version 3

The previous article (In Touch 5) reviews the Leadership Behaviours Profile as a tool for leadership development. This article updates you on:

• The recently launched Version 3 Leadership Behaviours Profile, and,
• The highlights from Version 3 of the associated Research Article (the last research article suggested that women on average were perceived as better leaders than their male counterparts – will this still be the case?).

Background

The beginning of 2006 saw a project started by the Team Management Services development team to modernise the look of the Leadership Behaviours Profile. Over the profiles previous 10 years, minor improvements had taken place, but it was now decided that it was time to strip it back and rebuild it. While this was occurring, it was also decided to conduct an overhaul of the Emotional Intelligence component of the profile.

Six months and a lot of hard work later Version 3 of the Leadership Behaviours Profile was launched. Here are the highlights of the changes:

Captain's Wheel Model: The Captain's Wheel model showing eight factors of leadership now has Emotional Intelligence (EI) at its centre. This is to show the increasing impact that Emotional Intelligence has on leadership capability. The other 8 factors of the model have stood the test of time and remain an excellent summary of modern leadership theory.

Emotional Intelligence: This derived factor has been expanded and more comprehensively reported in the profile. It now utilises an enhanced version of Goleman’s model by providing results on the following 5 factors:

Self Awareness – the ability to understand yourself and see yourself as others see you.

Self Management – Mastering ones actions, emotions, strengths and weaknesses. When a person has self understanding, they are then in a position to manage themselves.

Social Awareness – the ability to understand and see the world from another persons perspective.

Social Skill – Combining the concepts above, our social skill comes from the ability to use self and social awareness to manage interpersonal relationships. Critical to leadership competence social skill allows a leader to influence, cooperate with differing work styles, build a team, give appropriate feedback, problem solve etc.

Communication Effectiveness – As an add-on to Golemans four factors of Emotional Intelligence a measure of communication has been included. Communication can be described as the flow of information between individuals and groups.

When you add all of the above together, the Leadership Behaviours Profile becomes a very comprehensive measure of overall leadership ability. Good leaders need to demonstrate behaviours in line with the eight factors of the model, ensure that they understand themselves, colleagues, customers, manage all of those differing relationships, and communicate effectively, by not only getting across what is in their head, but also actively listening to what others are saying. A number of leaders have commented to me “I have to do all that, and do my job as well!”

New Graphics
For a typical 360 assessment there are 6-8 raters all providing answers to 64 questions, and contributing comments to highlight areas of strengths, and suggestions for improvement. The result is a lot of data that needs to be represented in a user friendly manner. To assist this, the graphs and tables of the report have been upgraded. Users are able to easily see how they scored themselves, how the other raters scored them, averages, standard deviations, and how they have scored compared to the norm data. This information at an overall level, factor level, and emotional intelligence level, allows the user to quickly identify what their areas of strength and weakness are, and what it is about those areas, that make them strengths or weaknesses.

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New Development Guide

One of the results of doing renovations at home is that the area next to the shiny new paintwork or new appliances stands out as needing work also. This was the case with the shiny new profile. With this completed, the existing development guide required some attention also. To do this justice the workbook received a complete re-write, with the same quality of detail going into the graphics.

The workbook provides a step by step approach to conduct analysis of the profile. It is purpose designed to break a multitude of information into workable chunks. The result of working through the development guide is clarity about what a persons leadership development needs are, and also what their leadership strengths are.

Team Member 360 Profile

What do I do if I don’t have a formal leadership position? Many people want to go through a 360 feedback process, but don’t have a team that reports to them eg, product managers, account managers, process leaders etc. To cater for these people the Leadership Behaviours Profile is available in a Team Member version.

The Team Member 360 uses a derivative of the same model, has all the same good looks, and includes an Emotional Intelligence quotient. The two profiles can be used side by side. It is an ideal tool for team members to provide each other with feedback and then formulating development plans.

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So are Women better leaders?

The launch of Version 3 of the Leadership Behaviours Profile provided an opportune time
to reflect on the norm data and see what trends were emerging. Heres what we found out:

• Hardest Factors – Strategic Thinker and Values Champion
• Highest Scoring Factor – Competent Performer
• Biggest difference between Self Scores compared to Other Scores – Values Champion and Strategic Thinker
• Emotional Intelligence – Most Self Scores lower than Other Scores
• Gender Differences – Women score higher across all factors

Hardest Factors – Strategic Thinker and Values Champion

Of the eight factors the norm data shows that Strategic Thinker and Values Champion consistently score lower than the other factors. So collectively, leaders in New Zealand find these factors harder to master, or harder to demonstrate to their colleagues. Strategic Thinking is concerned with developing and agreeing a future picture of the organisation. Competent Strategic Thinkers spend time in long term planning, and ask “Where are we going?”, and “How will we get there?”.

When a future picture or vision is developed, they are then good at communicating the future to team members and colleagues, and showing them their place in the future. This result stacks up against anecdotal evidence that I have heard from many leaders. For many, urgent operational matters take precedence at a day to day level. Putting aside time to plan for the future requires disciplined effort.

A Values Champion is someone who is able to demonstrate that they ‘live’ the company values – the company way of doing things. It is often said that values are caught not taught. Leaders who get this right hold the values as an important consideration in actions and the decision making process.

Highest Scoring Factor – Competent Performer
The factor that scored consistently well is that of Competent Performer. Competent performers demonstrate that they have hands on expertise in their area. It could be described as a technical, or task focused area of the Leadership Behaviours Model. A conclusion, as to why this may be the case, is that many people get promoted in to a leadership role on the strength of their ability in their technical area. It can be argued that in order to be in a leadership role this competence is a given. Ironically, many leaders report that one of their biggest challenges is the fear of losing touch with their area of technical competence as they are required to delegate these tasks to other people in the organisation.

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Biggest difference between Self Scores compared to Other Scores – Values Champion and Strategic Thinker
When looking at the difference between self scores and other scores two areas were of note.

Firstly, there is a difference between self and other scores for the factors Values Champion, and Strategic Thinker. For these three factors the self scores were significantly lower than the others scores. This suggests that in the area of vision values, and competence, leaders are often less confident in their effectiveness and impact on others.

Secondly, for the factor Responsibility Giver most self scores are higher than that of other scores. This suggests that in the area of giving other responsibility leaders often believe they have empowered and delegated appropriately when in fact they are seen as having held on to authority and tasks that they enjoy. They underestimate the tendency to retain rather than give.

Emotional Intelligence – Most Self Scores lower than Other Scores
In the EI component, most scored themselves lower than others in the overall EI, Self Awareness, Self Management, and Effective Communication. This suggests that leaders feel that they understand and are better at managing others than they are at managing themselves. This is an interesting finding.

One explanation is that from the ‘outside looking in’ LBP subjects may give the appearance of being more self aware than they themselves feel on the ‘inside looking out’. In some way, other raters give each other the benefit of the doubt and assume that their colleagues are more self aware than they are. Experience using this sub factor may throw more light on this finding.

Gender Differences – Women score higher across all factors
Well for the second time running, the males have let themselves down. The data once again shows that overall females score higher in all factors than their male counterparts. There are a number of interesting speculations as to why this may be.

Top of the list is that management / leadership is still a male dominated area in the business world. Because of this, women are required to be more than equal to their male counterparts in order to secure leadership positions.

This finding is especially so when we look at the gender differences in the ‘others’ scores for the People Motivator factor. It is in this score that we find the greatest gender difference.

The above findings are the highlights from the norm data as I see them. There are further findings which may be of interest including the differences between public and private sector and between industry groups.

Conclusion

Over the past 10 years Versions 1 & 2 of the Leadership Behaviours Profile have provided organisations and individuals with a tool to gain insight into their leadership strengths and weaknesses. The captured norm data throughout this time has also shed some light on what factors leaders consistently do well in, what factors we collectively could improve on, and differences across genders.

It is now the turn of Version 3 to carry this legacy forward, and the turn of male leaders to prepare themselves for the next research article.

Would you like to become accredited to use the TMS profiles?
Would you like to investigate having TMS profiles facilitated for you and your team?
Would you like to learn more abour leadership?

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Peter Robinson
Chief Executive Officer
Team Management Services Ltd.

P.O. Box 21-194, Henderson, Waitakere 0650, New Zealand
Tel: 64-9-836-5317 Fax 64-9-836-5318
email: peter@tms.co.nz
Website: www.tms.co.nz

© 2006 Team Management Services