11-2 Collaborative Leadership Assessment

How does your leadership style reflect the nine leadership behaviors of a leader as an organization designer? This lesson assesses your collaborative leadership style and helps you develop a personal leadership improvement plan. Specifically, you will assess your collaborative leadership style on all nine collaborative leadership behaviors; then you will analyze your results and identify themes. Finally, you will develop a personal, collaborative leadership improvement plan. 

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Leadership Assessment 

Video 0:48

Objective – Assess your collaborative leadership style on ALL nine collaborative leadership behaviors.

We begin with a comprehensive leadership assessment. The Leader as Organization Designer (LAOD) 9×9 self-assessment was originally developed based on research with CEOs who led successful organizational transformations and were recognized as recipients of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The assessment was further developed based on 25-plus years of experience working with transformational leaders. The LAOD 9×9 is an 81-point diagnostic that assesses the 81 intersection points between the nine leadership activities and the nine leadership behaviors or styles.

The assessment is organized based on the nine leadership behaviors. For example, you will begin with the worksheet addressing leader role model behaviors and go through each question. There are nine of these worksheets, each with nine questions for a total of 81 questions. Once you finish the role model worksheet, move on to the next one: respect for people, and so on until you have completed all nine.

Leadership Assessment 9×9 Matrix Analysis 

Video 3:55

Objective – Analyze your results and identify the themes.

Once you have completed all nine assessment worksheets, analyze the results. To analyze the results, use the nine-by-nine matrix (Table 11-21). Once the matrix is populated with data, you can explore the themes related to leadership style (behaviors) and leadership system (activities).

Assessment Results 

Questions 1 through 81 are listed in each cell. Take your first worksheet on role-model behaviors and, working across that row, enter your answers to questions one, two, three, and so forth. To make this a bit easier, download the PowerPoint version of the matrix worksheet in the sidebar. A color-coded matrix makes it easier to analyze and identify the themes.

Assessment Themes 

Starting with the behaviors, look across the rows for the themes, and four themes stand out as scoring relatively low. In other words, a lot of yellow, pink, and some red. In the example, the four behaviors that score low include collaborative, persistent, systems thinking, and personal learning. The four themes are easier to see when we remove the color coding from the scores not included in the four themes.

Once you have analyzed the themes for the behaviors (rows), you can do the same thing for the leadership activities (columns). In this case, four columns again score relatively low. In other words, a lot of yellow, pink, and red. Once again, the themes are even easier to see if we remove the other color coding.

When you combine the two types of themes, four behavior (rows) themes, and four activities (columns) themes, there are eight potential opportunities to work on.

Collaborative Leadership Improvement Plan 

Video 7:57

Objective – Develop a personal, collaborative leadership improvement plan.

1. Strengths to Leverage 

What works well with your Collaborative Leadership Style? What behaviors should you keep and reinforce?

2. Opportunities for Improvement 

What needs to be fixed or added to your Collaborative Leadership Style? What needs to change?

3. Development Activities 

What are some things that you could do to improve the areas identified in Step 2?

Conclusion

The nine behaviors of collaborative leadership combined with the leadership system activities (Labs 2 through 10) make up the core of the leadership approach to organizational [re]design and transformation. On the surface, it seems like a lot to remember. The good news is that the nine leadership activities are systematic approaches made explicit and described in formal documents; you don't need to memorize them. You can learn the nine leadership behaviors until they become habits. Both the leadership system and collaborative style influence organizational culture.