Out of Step
Level 3. Scores 26 to 50. A real gap on more than one dimension. It stings and works.
There is a real gap between how you see yourself and how the people you asked see you, across more than one dimension. This is the result that stings, and the one that most reliably changes something, provided you do the next part properly.
First, the direction, shown on your results screen. Read the next paragraph before anything else, because a gap where you rate yourself higher and a gap where you rate yourself lower are different problems with different fixes. Second, the raters. If you asked three people who all work with you in the same way, the gap may be about that relationship, not about you in general. If you asked a mix and the gap is there across them, it is about you.
If you rate yourself well above your raters on most dimensions, you are probably not deluded; you are describing your intentions and they are describing your behaviour. The gap is the distance between the two, and the only way to see it is to ask what they see.
If your raters rate you well above where you rate yourself, that is less common and it is not modesty; it is a leader carrying a story about themselves that the people around them do not share. Ask them what they see, and believe it. If there are large gaps in both directions, your raters see a different leader from the one you see, and not consistently; if the spread notes show they also disagree with each other, you are leading three different ways.
A VP I worked with, recently promoted, got a result like this. He rated himself well above his team on Clarity and on Follow-through. His first instinct was the one most leaders have: work out which rater had marked him down, and why they were wrong. He did not act on it. In the first week he did two things.
He wrote down what he had meant by every low item, then put that page away, because his intentions were not what the team was rating. Then he went to each person he had asked, one at a time, said thank you, and asked for one example. He did not explain himself once. The scores were not the useful part. The examples were. You will never win that argument in your own head. You can only go and ask.
What to do this week: nothing public. Do not announce that you got feedback and are changing. Take the two largest gap dimensions and, over the next month, do one visible thing on each. On Clarity, end every meeting by stating the decision. On Listening, let people finish and count to three. On Follow-through, send a Friday note of what you closed. On Growth, give one piece of feedback a week that is not in a review.
Then run this again in three months with the same kind of raters.
Next step: an Out of Step 360 is the most common reason leaders start coaching. What that involves is on the executive coaching cost index.
Next step
The other results
- In StepThey see you as you see yourself. Now ask a harder room.
- CloseYou mostly agree, with one gap specific enough to close.
- Different RoomsYou and your raters are describing two different leaders.
About this result
This is one of 4 results from the Blind Spot 360 Lite, a free tool that shows the score without an email. Aggregate figures are at the statistics page once 30 completions have been reached. More free tools are at the tools shelf.