The LPI

The full-time staff spent the day offsite participating in a leadership development workshop. Each staff member was inventoried by their peers on staff, direct reports (staff and volunteer), their manager and others who have observed them closely (nine to twelve each), using the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI). It's a 360-degree leadership assessment instrument created by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner which has been used to assess the leadership behavior of nearly one million leaders worldwide.

I love that our staff embraces this kind of leadership development. It's tough getting that kind of feedback. But you only get better with excellent feedback. And the process will go on for us for a long time, using action plans and other tools to practice and grow as leaders. We'll check in with each other at a monthly meeting focusing on our action plans for improvement.

Five Oaks member Mike Kirley led the workshop, and he did an outstanding job for us. The Workshop is a very well put together experience, but Mike added a huge amount of value by bringing his experience to bear, sharing great stories and the using movie clips to illustrate several key points.

Here are a few observations on my scores:

• I scored myself pretty accurately compared to others.
• And yet...I have much more to learn than I thought I did. Compared to global averages, I scored lower on strengths and worse on my weaknesses than I thought I would have. That was sobering. But the more I looked at the specific behaviors that go into good leadership, it made perfect sense.
• I know that the process we're using and lots of practice will help me improve. In fact, the LPI process dovetails completely with all I've been learning from the book Talent is Overrated. So I'm hopeful and excited about the next steps.