Working with Assessments

Using assessments to better understand ourselves can be like looking at life through a knot hole. Each assessment frames things differently, focusing our attention on different aspects of what it is to be human. As such, they each can offer a unique way of understanding ourselves, as long as we don't lose touch with the fullness of who we are, or of who we're becoming.

Over the years we've helped clients discover what's true for them as they've looked through a range of assessments, including Leadership 360's (such as the Leadership Circle Profile), CliftonStrengths, the ECHO Listening Profile, Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Modes, the Emotional Competence Inventory, the Enneagram, the Hogan Personality Inventory, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, and the Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Assessment.

The two we'll give mention to below are quite different from the rest.   Feel free to contact me if you are interested in working with an assessment!

Leadership Development Profile

The LDP or Leadership MAP is a widely-used, highly validated and reliable developmental assessment, offering a subtle and comprehensive stage model for understanding how people and groups make sense of life depending on the world view (or "action logic") through which they predominantly operate. The STAGES Assessment has built upon the LDP and MAP,  validating three later stages and revealing wave-like patterns that iterate throughout development.

The framework and patterns behind the assessments describe a developmental progression in which what is learned in one stage of life can be built upon as one stretches towards and into the next. Each stage brings its own unique strengths as well as its own challenges, however over time one can gain a deeper and broader worldview and increasing capacity for dealing with life's complexity.

The growing number of organizations who have introduced these assessments into their leadership development programs have done so, I believe, out of appreciation for the increasingly complex challenges that call us to develop beyond where we've been. As a certified coach for the LDP and through training with STAGES, it has been a privilege to help dozens of leaders find relevance in their profiles, appreciating their unique strengths, understanding their challenges and seeing areas of potential for personal growth.
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Stuart Heller
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Beata Kuczera Tracz

Non-Verbal Assessment -
Postural Attitudes and Movement Simulations

These non-verbal assessments (from Dr. Stuart Heller of Walking Your Talk) are built on the understanding that the way you move through space can tell you a lot about the way you move through life.

"Postural Attitudes" represent fundamentally different ways of orienting oneself in life, and can be observed in relation to four foundational directions - Up, Down, Front and Back. By combining these vectors, we gain a multi-directional framework through which to explore how we tend to move through life. The "postural attitude" of Front/Up, for example, expresses very different qualities (i.e., inspirational enthusiasm) than that of Front/Down (i.e., grounded reliability).
Each of the postural attitudes are good for some things, but not for others. Developing comfort with all of them brings access to a larger "range of movement" in life.

Movement simulations are available to explore one's tendencies in relation to Decisiveness and to Making Offers. Each simulation is comprised of a multi-step process that enables observation of personal patterns of thought and action, as well as identification of ways to bring more power to these actions.

With each of these assessments, we can gain a powerful way to understand and learn from what movement reveals, seeing how the way we move shapes our mindset, actions and results. We can also use these assessments to design practices that shift and expand our way of being in life, and allow us to cultivate a fuller felt sense of leadership presence.