Scaling Leadership

Chapter 10 Reactive Leadership Strengths Run Reactively Cancel Themselves Out

The Universal Pathway of Development is Up and Across. The first move is vertical (Up) and the second is to augment your core capability with a complimentary competency (Across).

Let’s start with the vertical move first. Counterintuitively, you must go down to go up, so if you want to go higher, you must go deeper. Here’s an example from our lives.

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A few years ago, when I (Bob) received my LCP 360 feedback, what I learned was unexpected and even hurtful. I had high scores on Arrogance and low scores on Collaboration and Teamwork. This pattern in my leadership hamstrung the organization’s ability to develop strategy and translate it into execution on results. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

My first inclination, like many of our clients, was to explain it away. I called Bill over and tried to talk him out of the scores he had given me. The conversation went something like this:

Bob:

Bill, you scored me 4.5 on a 5-point scale on Arrogance.

Bill:

Yes, I did.

Bob:

Well, Bill, the average score on Arrogance in our norm base is 2, maybe slightly less. The standard deviation is about 0.5. So, you scored me 5 standard deviation units above the mean on Arrogance. That would mean you see me as one of the most arrogant persons in the world, if not the most arrogant person you know.”

Bill:

Right.

Bob:

Ouch.

That hurt. I did not want to accept Bill’s feedback, but eventually I did. After receiving similar ...