The 90-Day Leadership Challenge is a powerful solution designed to enhance leadership capabilities within a three-month time frame. It taps into leaders’ potential through well-defined research-backed methodologies that ensure each participant not only meets but surpasses their performance targets.
Join experts Arend Welmers and Karen Jones as they guide you through a series of proven leadership assessment tools and diagnostics used in the 90-Day Leadership Challenge.
Experience the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI), Denison Leadership 360, and Denison Organisational Culture Diagnostics, among others. These tools are meticulously chosen to provide actionable insights and foster a deep understanding of effective leadership behaviours.
Learn more about what to expect from our 90-day leadership programme, how it can benefit your leadership team, significantly improve your organisation’s performance and help you and your organisation achieve remarkable success.
Overview of Leadership Assessment Tools and Diagnostics
This comprehensive overview explores the variety of leadership assessment tools and diagnostics integrated into the 90-Day Leadership Challenge, a program designed to refine leadership capabilities and enhance organisational performance.
Participants in this transformative workshop will become familiar with several key tools, each selected for its ability to provide insightful feedback and actionable data to leaders at all levels.
Here’s what to expect from the leadership assessment tools and diagnostics used in the challenge:
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Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI):
Developed by Kouzes and Posner, this tool is based on over 25 years of research and helps leaders understand how they see themselves and how they are viewed by others. The LPI measures 30 specific leadership behaviours, providing feedback from managers, peers, and direct reports to offer leaders a comprehensive view of their performance. -
Denison Leadership 360:
This diagnostic goes beyond personal assessment to evaluate a leader’s influence on the organisation. It uses a 360-degree feedback model to provide leaders with a clear picture of their effectiveness and impact on the corporate culture. -
Denison Organisational Culture Diagnostics:
Aimed at linking leadership behaviours with tangible organisational performance, this tool assesses cultural traits such as mission, consistency, involvement, and adaptability. It helps leaders understand how alignment with these traits can drive superior financial and market performance. -
Johari Window:
Included in the program to enhance personal understanding and interpersonal relationships, the Johari Window encourages participants to disclose personal motivations and receive feedback, thus reducing blind spots and fostering a deeper level of trust within teams. -
Kouzes and Posner’s Five Practices:
This model emphasises the exemplary behaviours that effective leaders should cultivate. It includes practices like modelling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act, and encouraging the heart. -
The Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team by Lencioni:
This tool complements the leadership diagnostics by focusing on teamwork and collaboration. It helps leaders and their teams understand how trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and results can drive team effectiveness. -
T-Grow Coaching Model:
This model is used within the program to facilitate coaching conversations among peers, ensuring that the leadership lessons are deeply integrated and applied in real-world settings.
Each tool within the 90-Day Leadership Challenge is specifically selected to offer a unique perspective on leadership qualities, allowing for a comprehensive examination and improvement of leadership skills.
Additionally, the challenge and its tools are tailored to meet the unique needs and circumstances of your organisation, ensuring that the insights and strategies developed are directly applicable and impactful.
By participating in the 90-Day Leadership Challenge, leaders not only enhance their self-awareness but also gain actionable insights that enable them to lead more effectively and cultivate a high-performing organisational culture.
In the dynamic arena of global business, how often do leaders pause to refine the very skills that define their success?
The 90-Day Leadership Challenge offers a structured, impactful journey towards transformative leadership.
This program is meticulously designed to enhance leadership behaviours and deliver measurable organisational benefits, using a blend of traditional values and innovative practices.
To find out more about the leadership challenge, read our article.
Transcript of the Leadership Assessment Tools and Diagnostics Video
Leadership Practices, Organisational Culture, and Team Dynamics - 00:00
Hello, and thank you for joining us and taking a look at some of the diagnostics we use on the 90-day challenge. My name is Arend Welmers, and I’m the founder and joint managing partner of Ninety Days. And today, I’ll be joined by Karen Jones. Karen and I have facilitated many 90-day Challenges together. And we have a lot of experience working together with these tools and processes that we’re going to be sharing with you. So please take advantage of our experience today. We’ll have 10 to 15 minutes for questions at the end. So please make a note of anything that you’d like to ask in the Q&A section at the top of the screen. And we’ll pick it up at the end.
So, just quickly to establish the objectives specifically for this webinar is really to introduce you to the tools and the diagnostics that we use and the 90-Day Leadership Challenge.
Specifically, we want to be talking about three tools that we use often, and these are not the only tools that we use, we often work with our clients and integrate the tools that they are already using already familiar with. But specifically, we are particularly fond of these three tools. So, we’re going to be talking about the Leadership Practices Inventory. These are the Kouzes and Posner’s Leadership Challenge tools that were developed more than 25 years ago, the Denison Leadership 360, and the Denison Organisational Culture diagnostics, and Karen is going to walk you through those tools specifically. And then we also want to talk briefly about The Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team tools. And this is the Lencioni model that some of you will no doubt be familiar with.
Now, we plan to also give you a little bit of context for who we are, why we use these tools, and how they fit into the program. This will also give you an idea of what the reports look like. We’ve pulled out some of the pages that we refer to so that you can have a look at them and see where we use them in the workshop itself.
Now, first of all, the three instruments specifically, I’m going to just give you a quick flavour of each of these, and then we’ll do a little deep dive further into the conversation. So Kouzes and Posner really talk about these five leadership practices. And the work was started more than 25 years ago, they’ve had 10s of 1000s of people, people like you and I, that have been, through this process, have conducted these assessments and really is based on a simple question, what is it that we would recognise as exemplary leadership behaviour. And so from the answers that they’ve got from 1000s of people, they’ve distilled these five leadership practices; they talk about leaders modelling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, and enabling others to act in encouraging the heart. Now, I’m particularly fond of this model, because I can tell you, I’ve been using it probably for 15 to 20 years. And I’ve tried desperately to improve this model, unsuccessfully. And I’ve invited many of my clients to do the same and none of us have succeeded. So, in terms of pure leadership behaviours that you’d want to see consistently repeated in your organisation, I think there’s a lot to be said for the Kouzes and Posner five practices. So that’s one of the instruments we’ll be talking about shortly.
The second one is the Denison Organisational Culture Survey. Now we use Denison, and Karen will talk with you in much more detail about this, but we use Dennison specifically when we want to link leadership behaviour to organisational performance because the Dennison Organisational Culture Survey, which exists at the leadership level and culture, organisational culture level, is really a high performing organisation culture model. And when I talk about high performance, we’re talking about specifically the link between organisational leadership behaviour, organisational culture, and its impact on the financial metrics of an organisation. Specifically, the return on investment, return on sales, return on assets, return on equity, those kinds of things, but also in terms of its ability to drive market share, etc, etc. So, Karen will talk a little bit about that, but it’s a really, really powerful and really interesting model, also the subject of more than 25 years of research.
The third model that we will talk about is the Lencioni Five Behaviours of a cohesive team. Now, those of you who will be familiar with Lencioni and his work will know that he only talks about these as The Five Dysfunctions of Teams. But I think we all prefer the approach which is more talking about The Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team, because it’s so much more positive construct. So, I’ll be walking you through that model a little bit later this morning.
Leadership Development Workshop and Johari Window - 05:11
Now, the leadership challenge really is all about this question: “What’s stopping you from being an extraordinary leader?” We know from experience that there are many examples of leadership being experienced and demonstrated each day in each of the organisations that you’re a part of but what we’re interested in is, actually, how do we take that to another level?
So how do we create the headspace and the time to really reflect on what it is we do as leaders in our organisations, and also time to start thinking about actually what stops us from really being extraordinary? We know that when we ask this question in the workshop, it really starts to get people thinking because I’m absolutely convinced that each of us, and each of you right now, is starting to get an inkling of what that is actually, that there’s something that, pretty much, you’re probably pretty good on a day-to-day basis. But there’s something that’s stopping you from really getting that, taking that extra step forward, and demonstrating that extraordinary leadership that often the organisation will need.
Now, just to give you a flavour of the program, it’s probably fairly obvious to you that I’m South African, South African born and in the part of South Africa that I come from, which is KwaZulu Natal, the home of the Zulu people. In particular, if you are greeted by somebody from the Zulu tribe, they would actually greet you this way: they would say, ‘Sawubona’. It’s a beautiful, lyrical language and full of expression – it’s just beautiful to hear. But ‘Sawubona’ is something really interesting, because ‘Sawubona’, it isn’t Hello, ‘Sawubona’, it actually says it translated literally means ‘I see you’.
So this program really is all about seeing each other. What we try and capture in this process is this idea that actually when you come, to this program to be seen. So, ‘Sawubona’, ‘I see you’. ‘Sikhona’ is the reply. So if somebody said, ‘Sawubona’ to you, you would reply, ‘Sikhona’ and ‘Sikhona’ means ‘I am seen’. I like to just kind of introduce this sort of idea because it’s really fundamentally the ethos of the program, you’re here to be seen and to see others in the context of this leadership development workshop, over the course of the next two, three or four days, depending on how we design it. Now I will talk a little bit more about that.
Now, whilst many of you might not have been familiar with the Zulu greeting idea, pretty much most of you, I think, in the HR part of the organisation will be very, very familiar with the Johari Window. We include this in the discussion this morning just because we want you to understand that this is the journey that the participants go on in the 90-Day Leadership Challenge.
We create an environment where there are hours and hours of peer coaching, so you work with each other, in groups. Typically there are three or four or five, four as the optimal. We create the opportunity in the space for you to explore in a very, very safe and supportive environment this leadership quest that you are on, and of course, the essence of that is being prepared in the first instance to receive feedback. So, we encourage you to ask for feedback so that your blind spots are reduced. Also to encourage you to give each other feedback and for you, therefore, to be disclosing and sharing, giving insights for the people in your peer group, insights to who you are and why you are.
And so, in that way, we kind of look to grow that Johari Window, if you like. And, of course, occasionally, there are also opportunities where the things that are available to you through the feedback that you get, you’ll learn more things about who you are because you will understand now how people understand and perceive the behaviour that you demonstrate, and the impact of that, on those people, so you’ll get that through by asking for more feedback.
You’ll start to be able to explain perhaps the rationale for how you come to work every day, how you turn up and how you think because you’re willing to share with people more about your motivations, your upbringing, your education, your beliefs, your values, and that then has the effect of reducing the facade, that is you. And, of course, there may be, as part of the conversations, also some opportunities to understand more about the kind of impact that you make on people that you perhaps weren’t aware of. And so, that’s your opportunity for growth. So, the Johari Window really describes the process that happens hour by hour in the workshop.
Leadership Practices Inventory Assessment Report Overview - 10:42
Now, let me get straight into the tools because we only have a limited amount of time. So, the very first instrument that we talked about was the LPI, the Leadership Practices Inventory. Here are just two pages, and I will show you about six pages of the report that you will typically get, so if you can conduct this assessment as a participant, you get a pretty comprehensive report that has a look in detail at the responses and the feedback that you’re getting from your managers, some of your direct reports, and others in the organisation, which may include your peers, and in even other people that perhaps know you, because they are suppliers, for example, or people that have worked with you in other divisions.
So, you get a chance to ask, typically between seven and 12 people, for feedback, and that feedback is captured in a table, such as the one that you see in front of you, and the responses you get are broken down by category.
Now, the anonymity of the people is protected because any individual response, other than from your manager, will not be shared as a single score. So the responses are aggregated together in groups of people so that you can’t easily identify who it is that perhaps is giving you a specific set of feedback. Now, interestingly, that’s the way the tools are designed and set up. But personally, we certainly encourage each of the participants to go back to their observers and thank them for the feedback, and really sit down and be willing to explore exactly what it is that was intended through the feedback as part of the conversation, usually, after the program is concluded.
Now, specifically, if I just quickly go through each of the five practices. When Kouzes and Posner talk about ‘Modelling the Way’, they’re really talking about the extent to which you act consistently as a leader, consistently with shared values, that everybody’s agreed is important. So, really, for me, this is really about trust. So, this is, to what extent do you turn up in a way that is consistent each day so that people know what they’re going to get from you as a leader in the organisation?
The second one is ‘Inspiring a Shared Vision’. When we discuss this one with the participants, we will often talk about the story that some of you, again, may be familiar with. You’re walking down the Seine, it’s the 1400s, and you see a whole bunch of people sitting next to the riverbank in Paris, and they all have piles of big rocks sitting next to them. And you walk up to the first person and say, “What are you doing?” And he says, “I’m cutting, taking these rocks. I’m cutting stones in this shape,” and you go to the next person and ask, “What are you doing?” he says, “Well, I’m taking these rocks. I’m cutting stones that are this size”, and you keep going down, and each of them is talking about the stones they’re cutting, and eventually, you get to, maybe, the sixth or seventh or eighth person down the road. And he turns around and looks behind him. And he says, “I’m building that cathedral”.
And so, for me, the question really is, if you ask people in your organisation, what it is that they do here? How many of them will actually describe the rocks that they’re cutting, in other words, the tasks that they’re responsible for, the functional areas that they are in charge of, versus actually this extraordinary organisation that you’re building together?
And so, for us, this idea of ‘Inspiring a Shared Vision’ is this idea. Do you talk about the cathedral we’re building in this particular case? That’s really what the vision is all about, right?
Are you spending most of your time talking about the rocks that your people are cutting? So that’s the concept of inspiring a shared vision and the idea that it’s about what we’re building together, not about this as my vision. Are you on board with it or not?
‘The Challenging the Process’ one is pretty much what you imagine; it’s really about to what extent are you, as a leader, continuously looking to improve the way in which this organisation delivers. Now, we like the concept of challenges in the context of challenge for the program itself, is really a very, very positive construct, often challenged; the word challenge is considered sort of in a negative way. And when we don’t want you to look at it that way, we want the participants to look at it in a way that is all about a very positive idea of challenge. So, we continue challenging, continuously challenging the way in which we deliver.
Now, what I know from experience is that, actually, very, very few people are inspired to get up in the morning and do a little bit more of what they did yesterday. So for us, that concept of challenges really is how do you frame the work that your people do in the way that actually gets them up out of bed early in the morning excited about what we’re trying to achieve here, excited about that bit of responsibility that you gave them, that bit of, that piece of work that you’re expecting from them in a way that they see it as a challenge, it’s inspiring for them, and exciting for them to be part of the journey with you. So, that’s really what we’re trying to understand, through the challenge, the process elements of the five practices.
The fourth one, ‘Enabling Others to Act’, is really to what extent you see your role as the leader in the organisation in developing the people that you’re responsible for. So, this is to what extent you turn up in kind of coach mode, if you like. And for us, the modern manager really is very much more of a coach. They are skilled and actually aid in labelling the people in the organisation to think and to learn, and to grow. Part of that journey is also about being willing to give away authority and power to the people on your team. So that’s what the enabling to act kind of dimensions all about.
And the final one, ‘Encouraging The Heart’, is really all about to what extent do we are we likely to be kind of inclined to catch people doing things right, rather than doing things wrong. So this is really about our mentality, as, as leaders in the business, are we looking to, looking for those small wins, to kind of create an A team ethos, which is all about, which is all positive, which is about making sure that people feel good about themselves, feel good about being part of this team and feel good about what they’re trying to achieve.
Now, this doesn’t mean, of course, and you’ll appreciate this, senior people in your organisation; you’ll appreciate that this is not about ignoring problems, mistakes, poor performance, or poor behaviour, which is quite the opposite. It’s really about creating this positive environment in your organisation. And I think, then, if you look at these five leadership practices in the round, you’ll see that this is a very powerful model.
Leadership Practices and Feedback Analysis - 18:17
Now, in terms of the actual instrument itself, each of the five practices is presented in both a set of numbers so that you can compute, you can look at the trend of the numbers, and you can see if there are any outliers that are dragging the averages down, but you can also see it in the graph version, so that you can see how they compare each of the groups compare more easily with others. The only number that you’ll see that is a single number, as I mentioned earlier before, is your manager; it’s reasonable to assume that your manager should be willing to have that honest, straightforward conversation with you and give you a view of how he or she sees you – and as a consequence, that then of course, provides fuel for perhaps a very important conversation.
If we look at the just one of the practices in this particular case, this is an anonymised, actual report. You’ll see here that, what I said earlier, you’d have this set of scores both in numerical and in bar chart format. And you’ll see that the response scale is also quite an interesting feature of this particular diagnostic.
What I like about this, and what Karen I feel very comfortable working with here, is the fact that this is really all about evidence. So, this doesn’t ask the question, do you think your leader actually could do these things? It actually asks, does your leader actually do these things and more importantly, how often do we see your leader doing these things?
So the response scale is really, as you can see at the bottom of the screen, you have everything from, ‘1 almost never’ to ’10 to almost always’, and so it’s a broad enough scale that you should be able to find a place there that kind of fundamentally reflects your experience, if you’re an observer feeding back to your manager. And what we’re interested in, of course, is not necessarily the absolutes, but we’re interested in the pattern.
So, when we look at these numbers, and when we encourage you to look at the numbers, we’re asking you to look at them and see what themes and patterns emerge rather than being absolutely concerned about that 3 that you saw on the scale. Okay, and get annoyed by why that might be? Why did they rate you at 3. What we’re much more interested in is what’s the overall pattern of feedback rather than the absolute numbers.
What this report also does, which we find very, very useful, is to actually indicate those 30 statements, how they spread out in terms of the ones that people see you performing most often, versus the ones that they see you performing least often.
Now, if you look at this particular set of results, for example, you can see that there’s this particular participant who really is very good at encouraging people. So, most of their scores, that’s certainly a very strong behavioural pattern that would give them some interesting food for thought to say, what is it that I’m doing, that people are recognising that they like, and how do I do more, that might be a conversation to be had within their peer group in their specific leadership coaching session. On the other hand, they might be more interested in having a look and say, well, perhaps, there’s what might need to be doing a little bit different in terms of modelling the way, or it might be, they might be more interested in, in some of the challenging behaviours that they see towards that bottom quarter.
So, there’s a little bit of a mixed message at the bottom in terms of there are quite a few things that still need to be done there. And so, again, we know, we’d encourage you to have a look at this, always in the context of the organisation, always in the context of their team, and the opportunity for them to have that conversation with not only their peers – So, each person would be sitting with a group of at least three peers. Plus, of course, with the additional insight that in this, and that we as the facilitators could bring for them, it becomes a very, very powerful and rich conversation very, very quickly.
And what you’ll start to see also happening is that the levels of trust that start to develop in that peer group is extraordinary; we’ve been doing this for many, many years, Karen; I’ve been working in this way for probably 20 years, at least. And it’s extraordinary how consistent those responses are. So, we’ll see very, very quickly, a deep level of trust starting to form in each of these syndicate groups, or peer coaching groups of three to four to five people; it is quite extraordinary. And so, the level of conversation moves very, very quickly past the superficial and really becomes very meaningful.
As a consequence, the conversations become useful because they can start to develop some clear ideas of what they can do to improve the impact that they’re making.
Now, the graph on the right, that you see is really quite interesting, too, because that is a percentile ranking graph. It really normalises the responses that you get from your observers, and actually, the index shows you how you compare against 1000s of other managers in this database across the world. People just like you and I, and how your scores and those of your observers and that of your manager, how that ranks compared to all the other people that have conducted this or completed the survey over many, many years now.
So that’s always quite an interesting point. So, you can’t just look at your scores, I’ve got consistently eights or nines or 10s, in this particular area, and think that there’s nothing left to do, actually, compared to the others in the population achieve, the scores might not be quite what they seem. So, it presents some interesting questions.
The last bit of the survey, or assessment to indicate users, we have the ability then to construct up to five questions. So now, in addition to the quantitative feedback that you’ve had, we also have an opportunity to gather qualitative feedback. And what we’ve done here is just indicate the five questions we most often ask, but also, each one of these will have, if you’ve had, eight people giving you feedback, there may be actually, a page or two of responses to each of these questions.
So, there are several pages of qualitative feedback that follow, and that often gives you real insights in terms of what the quantitative feedback is suggesting; it also gives you an opportunity to go back to the people in your organisation and say, ‘Can you or anybody help me to understand this better?’ So, it really is a very, very rich source of development information. So that’s the LPI.
Now, what I just wanted to do is quickly show you some of the tools we use in conjunction with this particular instrument, but we can also use it with some of the others that we will talk about very, very shortly. And then, I’m going to head over to Karen to walk you through the Denison model. But here are just a couple of other things to walk you through first.
Managing Coaching Conversations, the To Grow Coaching Model and Scoreboards - 25:43
Again, most of you will be very, very familiar with the T-Grow Coaching Model. Again, if you happen to use or have used a different coaching model and have taught your managing organisation that one, we’re happy to work within that framework, too. But I think most of us are familiar with the T-Grow Coaching model, which is certainly a very robust model and probably is the father of most of the coaching frameworks that are out there.
The reason why we raised this with you today is that, in each of these peer coaching sessions, we want the participants to actually have a way or a means of managing each of the coaching conversations they have. So that they can manage – because we typically have around two and a half to two hours per individual. As a consequence, they need to be able to manage the beginning, middle, and end of the conversation. And so, we use this coaching model. We teach them how to use this, and we get them to practice it in a very, very first coaching session. And, of course, they then improve on that as each conversation progresses.
So we use that as a model within the frameworks of this. They take this away, and they certainly get to be pretty good at using it. Of course, they are able to transfer that learning into the conversations with their actual teams back at the workplace. The other thing that’s really quite interesting to show you here is that we help them manage the conversation.
So, if they’re using something like the LPI, Denison, or even the Lencioni Five Behaviours model, or we add some flavours through any particular psychometrics that we might want to add to the mix, we use a kind of a poster methodology.
Here’s an example of one that we’ve devised. We devise many, many different types depending on the combination of the tools that we use. But we use this kind of poster technology for each of the participants to capture the essence of their reports in a way that they can then share with their peers in their syndicate groups.
So we get to prepare this. We also use it for them to actually capture their feedback, learning, and actions that they wanted to take away from the workshop. We use that because it creates a lot of visibility, and it’s an easy way. They don’t have to end up with multiple copies of the reports, for example.
One of the tools that we want to show you is we’re very, very keen on what actually happens after the workshop. One of the concluding events in our programs is getting the team to actually decide together. It’s a nice, fun exercise to do. But in addition to that, it really becomes a focal point for what happens after the workshop. We get them to design a scoreboard, a way in which they will actually track the leadership behaviours. And remember that the LPI is based on how often I see you doing these things.
So they get to choose either a particular behaviour that they really want to work on over the next 90 days, or it could be that they want to try and improve all of them. It’s up to the team for them to decide. And they work together. And it’s really, as I said, quite an energising way to conclude the workshop. But they basically build a scoreboard. And they design it as a small, fun, but not necessarily very expensive way to kind of recognise or reward themselves for actually delivering on their leadership challenge.
To give you an example, this is a company called Eduserv. These are senior managers in that organisation. We had four different teams, four different peer groups, syndicate peer groups, and each one designed a scoreboard, and they used that over the next 90 days to track their own leadership behaviours. What we do, and I’ll show you the process towards the end, will be our wrap-up slide. We’ll show you how that all comes together. But these are some of the tools that we use on the Leadership Challenge that really create the kind of meaningful conversation that they need to have.
So we move way, way past the superficial very, very quickly captures the learning the insights of the outcomes and the actions, and then actually make sure that they really focus on the leadership practices way, way beyond the two, three or four-day workshop that we launched. Really, this is a 90-day leadership program. It’s not a two-day leadership program. We know that we’ve used this kind of mechanism for decades, and it works incredibly powerfully. So that’s enough from me on the Leadership Practices Inventory, which is one of the first tools that we would like to use now to hand over to Karen to talk about the Denison suite of tools.
Karen, let me know when we need to move on.
Organisational Culture Diagnostic and Its Impact on Performance - 30:54
Arend showed you the LPI model, first of all, and it’s a structured and systemic way of making culture tangible. And what it really helps you diagnose is – it’s got four traits. So, the mission tray is really sort of saying, Are we all really clear about the difference we’re trying to make in that vision piece? Are we linking that for that purpose? And that difference to clarity on the on the strategic priorities in order to create that vision and make it happen? And is everybody really clear on those short-term goals and objectives?
So, we’re saying, is there a strong results orientation here? How aligned is the workforce to that current vision and the strategies that we have? And what’s our sense of the level of change that will be required in order to align everybody to that common and potentially different kind of future direction?
We connect that, so we have a dynamic tension. It’s great to have a strategy, but are we actually creating a sense of involvement and ownership within the teams and the individuals who are actually going to be responsible for delivering it?
So, we then really ask people to share their deeply held beliefs and assumptions about whether they believe that the skills they have are valued and invested in. Whether there’s that collaboration, and teams are really encouraged to work across and within their own teams to support each other, and whether employees feel informed, engaged and involved in the decision making before it’s finalised.
Also, on the adaptability point, we’re really saying how well are we listening to our market? If we’re really clear about the difference we’re making, we’re bringing people with us, and we’re being inclusive? And really kind of listening to people’s responses to our strategies before we finalise it. How are we continually improving, as Arend said, how do we establish that continuous improvement mindset and a willingness to change? Because we’re clear about who we’re changing for. We know the strategic priority that links to, and we feel involved in the business planning process that defines that. So, is there a common understanding of the customer? And are we not just reactive, but can we really be proactive to their needs and wants?
And what’s our emphasis on risk and innovation? And how do we really learn from both our successes and failures? If we’re understanding our market, we need systems and processes that are really going to help us deliver the promises we make in that market. So, the consistency part of the model says, are we really clear on our guiding principles? Our core values Arend talked about trust, are we creating trust by knowing what we stand for, and then standing for those beliefs consistently, and holding each other to account when we don’t? If we’re really clear about who we’re trying to deliver and what we’re trying to deliver for them, then we’re motivated to work across those silos and those boundaries in order to make the service seamless, and guaranteed in terms of how we can deliver that for our customers and clients?
And what are we going to do when there’s conflict? So, agreement is really about saying, how do we go back to the kind of Lencioni model, how do we create conflict that’s good, in order for us to really air our truths and opinions in order to drive the commitment to deliver the results.
So, the Denison diagnostic really goes round those four traits. Each trait has three indexes. Each index has four statements that we’re asking them to measure. We present the data in a percentile, so it’s benchmarked against three quarters of a million respondents on the global benchmark. You get the wheel for your overall risk.
Also together with all the details of the line items that we’re not going to go into now. But then we can also segment the data. What’s the difference in the beliefs and assumptions held by the executive team a lot more color on the left on the executive team? How does the management team connect with this as a disk really, in a significant disconnect on the adaptability piece there, the management team are challenging their sense of vision, but somehow they’re creating vision in their employees.
The executives and the managers are believing that there’s a strong internal focus what we’re hearing from the employees that clearly there isn’t. So, it helps us be curious, it helps us go and change the honest conversations that can happen from this diagnostic.
And we can also start to drill down into the departmental subcultures that may be going on. And we have to be really careful here, you can see in that IT would be really easy to conclude that maybe that leaders not doing such a good job. We can’t conclude that at the organisational culture diagnostic because we’ve asked people to respond as to what they believe and assume to be true of this organisation.
Now, where they sit in that organisation, obviously will have an impact. But here’s why we also like to use the 360 of the Denison diagnostic, because until we do a 360 of that leader, we can’t really answer the question of what their individual leadership contribution is to the organisation’s collective culture.
So, I think the next slide Arend, and we’ll go will give us a sense of, what, if a leader decides that they really want to understand how people are viewing them, they can use the same model. And they can go out and ask all their raters, they rate themselves. And we ask their raters to assess them on the same model. But this time, the question is, how well does this leader do those 12 things rather than how well do we think the organisation as a collective does it, and it links beautifully back to the LPI. ‘Inspiring a Shared Vision’ from the LPI sits in the mission. And if we go back to the consistency bit, ‘Modelling the Way’ is really about building that trust in the yellow, ‘Challenging the Process’ fits beautifully into adaptability and ‘Enabling Others to Act’ and ‘Encouraging the Heart’ really comes back to the involvement piece. So, there’s a really nice correlation that we can make between those two tools.
Thanks. Oh, yes. And more importantly, here’s the evidence, that actually culture will drive your performance. And here’s some research that Denison carried out. Study one looks at 130 companies, they were publicly traded so Denison could go into their results. They took all of their culture results from those 121 companies, they divided them up into the 25% strongest scoring on the culture piece and the bottom 25% scoring companies again, and they compared return on assets, sales, growth and market to book ratio. And you can see particularly in that sales growth, the companies that weren’t didn’t have a clear and aligned culture had a 1.8% sales growth, when there’s clarity and alignment, everybody’s pulling in the same direction, it’s up to 23.1.
The second study was Denison partners with private equity. So the private equity obviously had a strong focus on the EBITA growth. And they divided the top 830 companies in terms of their culture scores against the bottom 30. And look at the difference in EBITA. Those organisations that weren’t creating clarity and alignment in their culture, they were actually destroying the value for companies that had that clarity and alignment. You can see it on there 17% of EBITA of growth.
If we look at innovation, and again, this was a study again on 118 publicly traded companies. And they were really beginning to say, what’s the impact of having really healthy, clear and defined cultures on the average growth assumption? And you can see the difference between the 26% and the 65%. Case study, one is the Cadillac company so this is really beginning to try and connect culture to an emphasis on customer satisfaction.
Denison worked with 330 dealerships 12,000 employees overall. This time they split the data into what are each of these dealerships managing to achieve in terms of customer satisfaction. So, the wheel on the right is those companies that had over 80% customer satisfaction. Wheel on the left, they had less than 50% customer satisfaction. And you can see the difference in the clarity and alignment on the culture scores. The people cleaning the cars on the right-hand side absolutely understood that having clean shiny cars as part of the Cadillac experience, the cleaners on the left-hand side, we’ll probably just cleaning carts.
And again, on the retail, we looked at the large organisation that had, we took the top 60 scores and the bottom 60 scores and again, looking at sales growth, and the conversion rate growth.
So there is lots of evidence and Denison would confidently say, I mean, they’ve had 30 years of research and the original research question was, what is it about an organisation’s culture that can be proven to drive measurable performance indicators.
And this next slide is the Dream’s case study. It’s a company that makes beds so they’re manufacture and they’re also a retailer, they then sell them. And Dennison was working with a private equity company, they bought Dreams in year one. And I have to say the HR director wasn’t very happy that she had to work with Denison because she would rather use different diagnostic. But by year two, I think she was pretty delighted that she’d done that. And they came into an incredibly toxic culture.
And you can see the EBITA score was minus 3.6 million. And it was a turnaround leadership team. They didn’t just invest in culture, they invested in brand, they updated the logo, they updated the stores, they bought new a fleet of delivery vehicles. But what this turnaround leadership team did wonderfully is that they manage that dynamic tension between mission and involvement. And they went out and they asked people to be as honest as they could, about how their experience of the culture, people were anxious in the first year, but by the time they got to the second year, they understood that this change was real people were listening to what they believed and assumed to be true.
And the leadership team were very courageous, they did ask several toxic senior leaders to leave. And they did that in an authentic and a respectful way. But they made it absolutely clear that there was a cultural disconnect. And that would no longer be good for the company, or indeed for those senior leaders. And as you can see, look at the EBITA scores.
When people say that culture takes too long, that’s not true and the leadership team are committed and absolutely ready to model the way and to create honest conversations throughout the business. And that’s why there’s a wonderful link to the 90-day program.
Building Trust and Accountability in Leadership Teams with the Lencioni Model – 42:54
That’s great. Thanks, Karen. I’m just conscious of time. So, I’m going to move on quickly to talk a little bit about the Lencioni model. And just to say to that, as you probably some of you will know, this talks about five key behaviours for any particular group of people. So, you can look at this as an intact group, or you can look at it as a group of leaders, and you can assess both, and get a view on both in terms of these particular behaviours.
I think the mistake often made with Lencioni is that we look at these areas separately, whereas I think—and it pains to say that really—it all starts with trust. And these are all dependent. So, the concept is that without trust, if we don’t implicitly trust each other, we’re not able to have the difficult conversations.
Now, Lencioni talks about conflict, the ability to engage in conflict. I prefer to talk about a disagreement of ideas. Because for me, that’s really much more realistic. It’s sometimes it feels like it’s conflict. But actually, it’s really much more about disagreement of ideas. That’s my experience of what actually happens in organisations. And when we think about if we just simply change the language to you start to see a different way of feeling and thinking about this conversation that we’re having. Because we want to encourage in an organisation, we want to encourage disagreement of ideas, we don’t want to really encourage conflict, because conflict somehow becomes really, really personal.
So, the idea here is that the first step on the ladder is building trust. And what we found is in our process in this program, the 90-Day Leadership Challenge that trust, as I alluded to earlier, is achieved remarkably quickly and it’s extraordinarily powerful.
Some of these groups that we work with, and we continue working together for years after the program, it is quite something extraordinary. So, it depends on how many people come and go in organisations. So that’s not true of all groups. But we have had many, many cases where the level of trust that was formed even in the initial couple of hours of the program, actually, somehow is extended well beyond the program, and well beyond the 90 days. So, trust is the basis of the Lencioni model. And if we can establish that, through the honest kind of conversations that we’re talking about, where, in Johari Window terms, I’m willing to be vulnerable, I’m willing to share who I am and explore that with you. And I’m willing to accept feedback – on the other hand, through that process, which is very much at the heart of the 90-Day Leadership Challenge, we establish trust rather quickly.
That enables us to actually disagree with each other in a way that means that I still feel respected and heard, and all the good stuff that comes from that. And as a consequence, I’m able to then commit to strategies or actions that I actually fundamentally don’t believe in, because I’ve been heard. And that’s really the important bit when I’m heard as an individual. I’m able then to commit and say, Great, I don’t agree, but I’m committed to this course of action because somebody has to decide; we have to go in a particular angle, take a particular angle or a particular direction – so I’m committing to that.
As a consequence of that, I’m willing to hold myself accountable. And I’m willing that the group holds me accountable, or the individuals in the group hold me accountable. And as a consequence of that, I’m now actually committed to the results, that is our collective results, rather than actually going while I’m doing okay, my team is doing okay. It doesn’t matter to me that, in fact, I’m rather pleased that you’re not doing great because I knew I was right.
So that’s the sort of the idea that this is a cause-and-effect kind of diagram or set of behaviours; these are not the individual behaviours, you cannot look at them separately, you need to see this as a continuum of thinking, conversation and action as a consequence.
Now, this particular set of results, we just got a couple of pages to show you what’s available to you in the Lencioni or in the Lencioni report. But this is an actual HR BP team that the results were an actual team that we worked with. And you can see, by and large, their view of themselves is actually that things were going pretty well, except for the accountability piece.
But what’s really good about this report or the set of tools, is that it kind of gives you a lot of suggestions for what actually what you might do about it. So again, the results are displayed in a particular way, we just focus on the set of results around the trust element here. This is a pretty comprehensive report, it talks a little bit about some of the specifics around that particular dimension of the report. And what it also does, and this is an option, you don’t have to include this, but we like to, it also enables you to pair up the Lencioni assessment with a DISC assessment as well. Because it enables us to then have a conversation with each of the participants to say, actually, what is it about your style that means that you’ve contributed in a particular way? And so, you can start to actually have a look and see how the team themselves map up.
So, this particular team, you can see 8 people, eight or nine people here, and you can start to see, how each of them kind of turn up, if you like, from a disc perspective. And then, there’s a really interesting and very, very rich conversation to explore – how do I turn up that’s different from you? And what does it actually mean? We find that it’s a really interesting tool to use when we’re looking specifically at the leadership team or a leadership group. Again, there’s quite a lot of material that this report gives you, some real discussion points and some actions that you can look at. So, it’s a very, very useful resource.
It also has a team conflict map, which we find really quite interesting when we talk about, the conflict element of the program rather than the trust model. And it starts to give you an indication as to why you might find yourself conflicting with your colleagues and also what to do about that.
So that takes us pretty much to the end of the tools. It’s been a very, very quick walkthrough, which we appreciate, but perhaps just to end then with is what the 90-Day Leadership Challenge process is.
Specific 90-Day Leadership Challenge Process Tailored to Your Needs - 50:00
So, those three instruments that we talked about, obviously, are all part of stage one. So, we can use either one, two, or all three of those. And depending on what we what we’re trying to accomplish, we would change the design of the program.
So, typically, these would be two, three or four-day leadership programs, and they don’t necessarily need to all be consecutive days. Typically, we would do at least two days; we might then separate two days plus one day or two days plus two days. So again, the design options available to us are dependent on the realities of your organisation and the situation you’re in, what you’re trying to accomplish together, and the design considerations that we will design as a consequence. So, this is very much co-created with you, reflecting the reality of your organisation and what you’re trying to accomplish through it.
The two three or four-day Leadership Challenge workshop or workout, as we often refer to it as, is really the launch event. Once that’s set the scene, and we’ve now established the group, we’ve brought them together, we’ve started to get them to think differently, we’re then very, very keen to see that excitement, the energy, that drive, the commitments to each other that have emerged from the workshop itself, doesn’t suddenly dissipate when, they get back into the office and the reality of operational business sort of takes over.
So, in order to do that, and we’ve tried lots of different things over many years, and this is the process that we now use consistently because we know it works is we very much set an expectation that the team will meet every week. In some cases, it might be 10 days or two weeks. But generally speaking, we’re looking to encourage them to meet every week, for the next 90 days, for a minimum of 30 to 45 minutes.
We’ve done this, by the way, with groups, management teams, of people dispersed across the world, from the West Coast of the US to Australia and South Africa, and Europe, and so forth, and so on. So, it presents some difficulties. Obviously, we take those considerations when we stop when we pull the two groups together, we take that into consideration. But we find that overall, they are making an extraordinary effort to actually meet with each other, such is the commitment that they have to each other as a consequence of the initial launch event. It’s quite humbling, in many respects, to see that.
We get to meet every day and they meet each week rather than when they meet around their scoreboard. So not only do they meet, but they are actually encouraged and supported to continue the conversation. So, the two-day three, three-day four, four-day workshop really is the beginning of the conversation; they know how to have the conversation. So, this isn’t just a light-level check-in there really are challenging each other, making sure that there’s genuine progress being made. And as a consequence, they then update their scoreboards. And that just serves as kind of a visual reminder, if you’d like of the progress on the development conversations. And they really seem to like that methodology; it goes down very, very well.
We’ve done this for many, many years with lots of groups, some of them very, very senior, some of them kind of more mid-level managers. It’s pretty consistent; the response we get is very, very consistently positive.
Now, what actually then happens is that 45 days typically, and again, this can be we can do this in different ways. Depending on the needs that we’ve identified with you. But typically, we do a 45-day check-in. And that’s usually about a 90-minute online call.
Now, we’ve done it previously face-to-face with organisations as well, where we’ve added other things to the agenda. So, again, that’s a design option. But typically, we get everybody online on a team’s call. And we spend about an hour and a half, sometimes a little bit more, depending on the group size, checking in with each other.
So, we get each group, each syndicate group, to present their feedback on how the scoreboards are developing. They talk about what they’ve actually done, and you can appreciate if it’s carried on a call, it’s very much a coaching conversation where we’re looking to really make sure we understand what they’re doing. We’re pushing them pretty hard on that. We’re coaching in between and we’re really trying to make sure that they are making progress as planned.
Now, when each participant joins this program, they also know that this is a 90-day program and that at some point just before the 90 days is up, usually a couple of weeks before the end of the 90-day period. They will be reassessed against the same set of instruments that they were assessed within the first instance. So, if it’s the LPI, for example, or if it’s the LPI plus the Denison suite, then we will be reassessing them using the same set of instruments.
So, they know that we’re going to be able to produce a before report and an after report. We’re going to be doing that with the full visibility of everyone in that participant group. So, we reassess them after the 45 days; check-in is usually about two to three weeks from the end of the 90 days; they’re going to be reassessed the exact same way.
They typically invite the same people to reassess them, and then we produce that report. We bring that with us to the 90-day progress review work workshop, and that’s typically a little bit longer, usually two to three hours; it just again depends on how we set it up and there are some ancillary questions that we want to discuss with them as well. But we then send them that report, and we ask them to actually invite the whole group that they’re in, because they’ve had very much part of the each other’s journeys, yet, we asked them to talk about the progress that they’ve made.
So, there’s a real accountability for an expectation that we will see progress. And what we also do, which is worth mentioning, is that we are very, very keen on measuring the progress that they’re making. So we’ve done this with every group we’ve worked with, and we know consistently, there’s an uplift in performance between session one and session two, which is really very, very good if you think about it, because the minute you assess somebody, or you ask people to give feedback on a particular individual, you’ve not only just asked him for feedback now, but you’ve actually raised expectations. And that’s a really interesting thing.
So, when you raise expectations, you increase awareness of a particular set of behaviours now that you’re asking me about it, and so the expectations are really much higher. So, if people are actually, then reporting that progress has actually been made. This is really, really a very powerful thing. So, you were pretty confident that there’s been a change in behaviour as a consequence. Of course, that’s really what this 90-Day Leadership Challenge is really all about.
Just perhaps one of the things to say is we can combine, for example, the Denison Organisational Culture survey, we’re also able to use those kinds of tools or that particular tool to combine the leadership behavioural challenge, which is what this leadership challenge is about with leadership, business challenges. So we also have tools and processes, which are really about driving measurable value from this leadership group to the business as well. We’ve achieved remarkable success with that where we’ve put millions and millions of pounds on the bottom line of the client organisation as a consequence of combining a leadership challenge with a 90-day business challenge. Sometimes they have 90, sometimes 180-day business challenges, again, depending on the circumstances. So that’s something that we can talk with you more about, should that be of interest
Closing Comments - 58:34
So that’s pretty much where we want to leave this now. We’re coming up for very close to the hour. Perhaps just to say to you that if this has been of interest, we are running a leadership challenge 90 Day Leadership Challenge workshop on the 29th and 30th of January 2024.
If you would like to participate in this free-ish workshop, we won’t charge you for the time on the workshop and the services, and the attention that Karen and I will give you – but we will ask you to pay for, at cost, for the surveys that we use.
We’re going to use the Leadership Practices Inventory on this particular one. We’re also going to combine that with the Denison Leadership 360 and will offer those to you at cost. It’s a couple of 100 pounds for each. Obviously we will expect you to pay for your own accommodation and travel and food, your indirect cost. Other than that the workshop is free from our perspective. So, if you would like to come and experience the full 90-Day Leadership Challenge workshop, then we’d be delighted if you would join us.
So that’s pretty much all that we have lined up for you. Please get in touch with Molly. If you would like to join us for that and certainly if you’ve got any thoughts about it, please just contact us, and we’ll be happy to discuss it with you.
Other than that, we’ve got a little bit of time maybe left for some questions, but all that remains is for us to say thank you very, very much from Karen I and we hope that you have found that very interesting.
KJ: Yeah, we had one question, Arend; I’m really asking how the LPI and the Dennison culture diagnostic kind of interact and why this is important for the workshop. And I think you touched on it with the last piece you made about the business challenge. We’ve already noticed that the LPI maps really beautifully onto the Dennison Organizational Culture Diagnostic, and it really aligns clearly with the business challenge. When we talk about culture, we know we have to connect that to strategy. Culture is your reason for implementing your strategy. So those two things dovetail really powerfully together.
AW: Good. Thank you, Karen. If there are no other questions, I think we’ll call it a day there. But thank you very much again for joining Karen and I. We hope that you found this very helpful. You have my contact details on the screen. So please do reach out directly. I will be very, very happy to spend a bit more time discussing what the leadership 90-Day Leadership Challenge might look like in your business. Thank you very much. Thank you
Concluding Thoughts
The 90-Day Leadership Challenge employs a variety of assessment tools and diagnostics, specifically designed to develop both new and seasoned leaders. These tools are carefully selected to boost self-awareness, offer constructive feedback, and deepen understanding of how leadership behaviours affect team dynamics and organisational effectiveness.
Incorporating established methodologies such as the Leadership Practices Inventory, Denison Leadership 360, and the Johari Window ensures participants can clearly see the connection between their personal development and tangible organisational outcomes.
By participating in the 90-Day Leadership Challenge, you’ll gain invaluable insights into your personal leadership style and the dynamics of your organisation’s culture. Under the guidance of the experienced professionals at Ninety Days and using tools such as the Leadership Practices Inventory and Denison Organisational Culture Diagnostics, you are set to make a profound impact within your organisation.
Whether your goal is to motivate your team, enhance performance indicators, or establish a culture of inclusivity and trust, this program equips you with the necessary skills and knowledge to attain substantial success.
Transform how you lead in just 90 days and observe the profound effect it has on your organisation, propelling your team to unmatched achievements.
Contact us if you would like to:
- Find out more about our 90-Day Leadership Challenge.
- Learn how we can help you transform your leadership team in 90 days.
- Find out how we can help your leadership team gain insights into their personal leadership.
- Learn more about the assessment tools and diagnotics we use.
- Ask us any questions that relate to specific challenges you or your organisation may have.
Please reach out to us by
Leadership Practices, Organisational Culture, and Team Dynamics
- Arend Welmers and Karen Jones introduce tools used in the 90-Day Leadership Challenge, including the Leadership Practices Inventory, Denison Leadership 360, and Denison Organisational Culture Diagnostics.
- Kouzes and Posner’s Leadership Challenge tools focus on five leadership practices, while Lencioni’s Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team model provides context for teamwork and collaboration.
- Introduction to the five leadership practices based on 25-year research, including modelling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act and encouraging the heart.
- The Denison Organisational Culture survey links leadership behaviour to organisational performance, focusing on high-performing organisational cultures and their impact on financial metrics.
90 Day Leadership Development Workshop and Johari Window
- The 90-Day Leadership Challenge emphasises the importance of self-reflection and seeing each other and is about creating space for individuals to be seen and heard.
- The Johari Window concept is introduced and describes participants’ journey in the 90-day Leadership Challenge.
- During the programme, participants work in groups to receive feedback, disclose insights, and reduce blind spots.
Leadership Practices Inventory Assessment Report Overview
- Presents a sample report used in the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) assessment as one of the tools used in the 90-Day Leadership Challenge programme.
- The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) instrument is an essential tool to help leaders gain perspective into how they see themselves as a leader, how others view them, and what actions they can take to improve their effectiveness.
- The LPI provides a comprehensive report on a participant’s feedback from managers, direct reports, peers, and others.
- Input for the assessment is collected from 7 to 12 people and aggregated to protect anonymity.
- The LPI measures the frequency of 30 specific leadership behaviours on a 10-point scale, with six behavioural statements for each of The Five Practices and rated how frequently the participant engages in each of these behaviours associated with The Five Practices.
- The diagnostic instrument provides scores in numerical and graph format, with a response scale from rarely to 10, allowing for honest feedback.
Leadership Practices and Feedback Analysis
- Each leadership practice is presented in a data summary format and a bar graph format for easy comparison to other groups.
- When looking at data and bar graphs, it is important to look at feedback patterns rather than absolute numbers.
- Participants are asked to identify behaviours that their peers consistently reinforce when completing the assessments.
- The insights extracted from the assessment create a deep level of trust among participating peer groups, encouraging meaningful conversations on how each individual can improve and contribute to their impact as a leader.
- Survey results provide quantitative feedback and qualitative insights from observers, offering rich development information.
Managing Coaching Conversations, the T- Grow Coaching Model and Scoreboards
- The T-Grow Coaching Model is introduced as a tool for managing coaching conversations among peers within the participating group.
- Participants practice using a form of poster methodology to capture the essence of their reports for sharing with peers.
- Teams design scoreboards to track their leadership behaviours over the 90-day programme and to recognise and reward themselves for delivering on leadership challenges.
Organisational Culture Diagnostic and Its Impact on Performance
- Denison diagnostic assesses culture alignment through four traits: mission, consistency, involvement, and adaptability.
- The diagnostic helps establish a continuous improvement mindset and proactive approach to customer needs.
- The executive and management teams have different beliefs and assumptions about the organisation’s culture.
- The 360-degree diagnostic can help leaders understand their individual leadership contribution to the organisation’s collective culture.
- There is a strong between culture and performance.
Building Trust and Accountability in Leadership Teams with the Lencioni Model
- The foundation and basis of the Lencioni Model is trust – which enables individuals to commit to actions they don’t fully believe in for the sake of the collective results.
- Trust lies at the heart of a functioning, cohesive team.
- Vulnerability, feedback, and accountability are key to establishing trust and committing to actions that lead to collective success.
- The Lencioni assessment provides a comprehensive report on a team’s trust element, including suggestions for improvement.
- The report pairs the Lencioni assessment with a DISC assessment to help identify individual styles and their impact on team dynamics.
Specific 90-Day Leadership Challenge Workshop Tailored to Your Needs
- An overview of the 90-day Leadership Challenge workshop and how we can tailor it to your organisation’s business challenges.
- Explanation of how the various tools are integrated and used in the leadership challenge workshop.
- Discussion on how the leadership workshop is highly successful in uplifting leadership performance within a 3-month time frame.
