These tools provide valuable insights into your strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement, enabling you to take actionable steps toward becoming a more effective leader. Among the various options available, self-assessment, 180-degree feedback, and 360-degree feedback are three commonly used diagnostic tools, each offering unique perspectives on your leadership style and effectiveness.

Self-Assessment: The Starting Point for Personal Reflection

Self-assessment is the most straightforward diagnostic tool, often serving as the foundation for leadership development. It involves introspection and self-evaluation, allowing you to assess your own leadership capabilities, values, and behaviours. Self-assessment tools typically include questionnaires or reflective exercises that prompt you to consider your leadership qualities, such as emotional intelligence, decision-making, communication skills, and conflict resolution.

The primary advantage of self-assessment is its simplicity and ease of access. You can complete a self-assessment at any time, without the need for external input. This tool encourages you to take ownership of your development by identifying areas where you feel confident and those where you may need improvement.

However, self-assessment has its limitations. It relies solely on your perception, which can be influenced by biases, blind spots, and a lack of objectivity. While it is an essential starting point, self-assessment should be supplemented with other diagnostic tools that provide external perspectives.

180-Degree Feedback: Gaining Insight from Your Immediate Circle

180-degree feedback is a more comprehensive tool that involves gathering feedback from those who work closely with you, such as your direct peers, and supervisors. This tool offers a balanced view of your leadership effectiveness by comparing your self-assessment with the perceptions of others in your immediate work environment.

The key benefit of 180-degree feedback is its ability to provide a more objective assessment of your leadership style. It highlights discrepancies between how you see yourself and how others perceive you, offering valuable insights into areas where your self-perception may differ from reality. For example, you might rate yourself highly in communication skills, but your team members may provide feedback indicating that your communication could be clearer or more consistent.

One limitation of 180-degree feedback is that it may not capture the full spectrum of your leadership impact, as it focuses primarily on your immediate circle. While it provides valuable insights, it might miss feedback from stakeholders who are not directly involved in your day-to-day work but are still affected by your leadership decisions.

360-Degree Feedback: A Holistic View of Your Leadership Impact

360-degree feedback is one of the most comprehensive diagnostic tools available for leadership development. It involves collecting feedback from a wide range of stakeholders, including direct reports, peers, supervisors, customers, and even external partners. This tool offers a holistic view of your leadership effectiveness by capturing perspectives from various levels and functions within and outside your organization.

The strength of 360-degree feedback lies in its breadth and depth. It provides a well-rounded picture of your leadership impact, highlighting both strengths and areas for improvement across different contexts. This comprehensive approach allows you to identify patterns and trends in the feedback, helping you to focus on specific areas for development.

However, 360-degree feedback can be more time-consuming and complex to implement than other diagnostic tools. It requires careful planning and coordination to ensure that feedback is collected from a diverse group of stakeholders. Additionally, the feedback can sometimes be overwhelming, particularly if it includes conflicting opinions or if it reveals significant areas for improvement.

Choosing the Right Tool for Your Leadership Growth

Selecting the right diagnostic tool for your leadership growth depends on your goals, the level of insight you seek, and the resources available to you. Self-assessment is an excellent starting point for personal reflection, while 180-degree feedback provides valuable external perspectives from your immediate circle. If you’re looking for a comprehensive and well-rounded assessment, 360-degree feedback is the ideal choice.

Ultimately, the best approach to leadership development is to combine these tools, using self-assessment as a foundation, 180-degree feedback for immediate insights, and 360-degree feedback for a holistic view. By leveraging these diagnostic tools, you can gain a deeper understanding of your leadership style, identify areas for improvement, and take targeted actions to enhance your effectiveness as a leader.

ASPL Group takes pride in its team of highly qualified and specialised coaches who are experts in providing debrief sessions on a wide range of assessments. Each of our coaches holds extensive experience in leadership development, emotional intelligence, and behavioural assessments. They are certified in administering and interpreting various tools such as the Genos Emotional Intelligence assessments, Hogan Assessments, and Human Synergistics tools, including the Life Styles Inventory™ (LSI) and Leadership/Impact® (L/I).

Our coaches are skilled at guiding individuals and teams through the debrief process, ensuring a deep understanding of the assessment results and their practical implications. This expertise allows us to recommend and administer the most appropriate tools for self-assessment, 180-degree assessments, and 360-degree assessments, tailored to the specific needs of our clients.

Below are the assessments we recommend:

Self-Assessments

• Genos Emotional Intelligence Self-Assessment: Evaluates emotional intelligence from the individual’s perspective.
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Self-Assessment: Assesses personality preferences.
• CliftonStrengths (StrengthsFinder) Self-Assessment: Identifies an individual’s top strengths.
• Human Synergistics Life Styles Inventory™ (LSI 1): Focuses on self-assessment of thinking styles, behaviours, and effectiveness, providing insight into how an individual’s thinking patterns impact their performance and relationships.

180-Degree Assessments

• Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) 180: Combines self-assessment with feedback from a supervisor to measure leadership behaviours.
• Hogan Assessments (HPI + Manager Feedback): Self-assessment of personality traits with additional feedback from a supervisor.
• Genos Emotional Intelligence 180: Combines self-assessment with manager feedback to evaluate emotional intelligence competencies.
• DiSC 180 Assessment: Personal behaviour is assessed by both the individual and their direct manager.
• Human Synergistics Life Styles Inventory™ (LSI 2): Allows for a 180-degree assessment, comparing an individual’s self-assessment (LSI 1) with feedback from their manager or another relevant observer, highlighting gaps between self-perception and how others see them.

360-Degree Assessments

• Human Synergistics Leadership/Impact® (L/I): A 360-degree assessment tool that provides leaders with feedback from peers, direct reports, and managers, measuring the impact of their leadership style on the culture of their team or organisation.
• Human Synergistics Life Styles Inventory™ (LSI 360): Combines self-assessment (LSI 1) with feedback from multiple sources (LSI 2), providing a comprehensive view of an individual’s thinking styles, behaviours, and effectiveness.
• Hogan 360: Provides a comprehensive view of personality and leadership potential with feedback from various sources.
• Genos Emotional Intelligence 360: Evaluates emotional intelligence by gathering feedback from peers, subordinates, supervisors, and the individual themselves.
• Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) 360: Measures leadership behaviours with input from the individual’s team members, peers, and direct reports.
• Bar-On EQ-i 360: Gathers a broad perspective on an individual’s emotional intelligence by involving feedback from multiple sources.