Self Awareness insights are meant to support your development by providing you with insights into your natural behavior tendencies, based on your assessment data. Being aware of your tendencies and recognizing the behaviors in practice, will help you to change these behaviors when necessary.
The data that is used for the insights, is derived from a personality measure (MAP) and a test for general mental ability (Matrigma). These indicate what kind of behavior is more or less natural, and therefore more or less likely, for a person. What comes naturally for us as individuals, tends to be easier to do but it doesn’t mean that we cannot perform other behaviors. It just means these other behaviors require more attention and effort, or energy.
The Self Awareness insights will indicate what kind of behavior is more likely for you and what behavior is less likely. You should then consider whether this behavior is beneficial or desirable, given your job or position. And if the behavior, or the outcome of the behavior, is considered important, you should give it more attention. By putting effort or energy into certain behavior, it becomes more prevalent for you.
Read the Self Awareness insights to learn about your natural potential and use this to develop your work behavior. The insights provide information not only on leadership competencies, but also on peopleship competencies, or more specialized work behavior. Please note that all available competencies are shown, but that in your job, not all competencies are equally important or even necessary. We encourage you to focus mainly on the competencies that you know are important in your job.
Interpretation
-
At the top of the Self awareness insights tab, in the choose view menu, choose the view Leadership.
Here you see four scores, one for each leadership domain. Each score indicates the match between your potential and leadership behavior in that domain. Scores range from 1 to 100.
Scores of 80 and higher indicate that your leadership behavior within that domain is expected to be 'Just right'. This is because, based on your potential, you are likely to show the behavior to a degree that works well. It can be that your potential is such that you may have a tendency to show more of the behavior than would generally be beneficial; this is called 'Overdoing'. Or your potential is such that the behavior is less likely than what would generally be beneficial, so you are expected to perform too little of the behavior; this is labeled 'Underdoing'. Both 'Underdoing' and 'Overdoing' have a score of lower than 80.
Note that 'Underdoing' and 'Overdoing' do not necessarily reflect your actual behavior, but rather your natural inclination or potential for the behavior. Also, in some cases it might actually be beneficial to have tendency towards overdoing or underdoing; this depends on your specific situation.
-
Click on any of the four leadership domains to receive tips to develop the leadership behavior of this domain, given your potential.
There are always several tips per domain and which tips you see is based on whether your score indicates 'Underdoing', 'Overdoing', or ‘Just right’ in that domain. The goal of the tips is for you to be better able to develop leadership behavior fitting with your potential and your specific position and task as a leader.
-
In the choose view menu at the top, select any of the four domains to see your score on the four peopleship competencies of that domain.
The 16 peopleship competencies are shown and scored in the same way as the four leadership competencies and the general interpretation is the same as well. Note however that whereas all four leadership competencies are necessary to some degree for all leadership positions, not all peopleship competencies are likely to be of importance to your work. In fact, most of the competencies may not relate to your work. But for those that do, the process of developing the related behavior is the same.
-
Click on any of the four peopleship competencies to receive tips to develop the related behavior, given your potential.
The tips are for developing behavior. Remember that not all behavior might be relevant for your job and that not all behavior will be equally easy to develop, given your different competency scores. The behavior is easier to when you score higher on the competency.
-
In the choose view menu at the top, select Extremes to see your score on the five dimensions.
Extremes are scored as 'low risk' or 'high risk'. Everyone has some risk, since extremes are about how you respond to more extreme situations, such as a lot of pressure at work, or severe boredom, when it becomes harder to properly regulate your own behavior.
The extremes are based on the five personality factors of the Big Five model, measured using MAP and recalculated using MAP-X. For each factor there is a 'high' end, which comes with its own risks, and a 'low' and, which also comes with risks. very few people have no risks.
-
Click on any of the five dimensions to receive tips to develop behavior that can counter extreme behaviors.
Use
Use the Self Awareness insights to increase awareness of your own qualities and apply this awareness to become more flexible in the leadership behavior that you display. Instead of showing certain leadership behavior because it is easiest to you, in time you can become able to choose to display leadership behaviors because it is most effective, even if it is somewhat harder for you. That is what is good leadership is, changing your behavior based on what the team, task or situations demands for success.
Before you start using the Self Awareness insights, you should realize that these insights are based on data from your personality and general mental ability and know that these two factors are considered to be relatively stable over time. This means that you are not going to change your personality and general mental ability, these are very likely to stay the same. Instead, you are going to focus on behavior. Behavior is not just dependent on your potential, but also on knowledge, experience, motivation, or attention and effort. Use the Self Awareness Insights to focus your attention and direct your motivation to those behaviors that are useful to you. Then practice these behaviors in your job.
-
At the top of the Self Awareness Insights page, in the choose view menu, choose the view Leadership. Look at the scores of the four leadership domains.
For each domain, see if you understand and agree with your ‘Overdoing’, ‘Underdoing’, or ‘Just right’ scores. Think about your leadership behaviors from the past and try to recognize them per domain.
Remember any feedback you may have received, comments from colleagues or employees regarding your leadership, and any difficulties that you experienced. Can you see that some kind of leadership behaviors are easier for you, and some are more difficult? Do you display all different kinds of leadership behavior equally, or do you seem to have a preference? Is this because of your ability, your potential? Or is this due to knowledge, experience and your motivation, how important you find these behaviors?
-
Given your leadership position, your project or work goals, and your team, determine which of the leadership domains are important. Which domain is most important? And which is second most important?
You will not get an answer to these questions from the Assessio platform, as this information can not be found in the data. Instead, you have to look at your assignment and your resources.
Remember that what is most important for leadership may change over time. When a project starts it may be that driving leadership is most important, but along the way operative leadership could become more important.
-
Based on step 1 and 2, choose one of the Leadership domains that you would like to develop.
You can choose based on current necessity, for instance because you found a leadership domain important in step 2 that you recognized as difficult, or even lacking, in step 1. Here is a clear need for developing the leadership behavior. But you may also choose to develop a leadership domain that is not currently necessary but may be in the future (then you could have skipped step 2).
Developing behavior is easier if you have potential for it. For instance, enabling leadership behaviors are easiest to develop if you scored ‘Just right’ in that domain. So, when you choose behaviors from a domain where you scored ‘Underdoing’, the behavior development will likely be somewhat more difficult. When it is harder to show certain behaviors, it is also harder to develop the behaviors, but it may be even more important.
-
Click on the Leadership domain you have chosen and read all the tips.
Each tip comes with several specific behaviors attached that serve as suggestions for you to try out. You can also use these descriptions to come up with other, similar but different behaviors that may have the same result. The goal is to develop the leadership behavior in that domain.
-
Select approximately three tips to work on.
Some behavior might be easier for you to practice than other. Also some behaviors changes have a higher impact on your overall work. Try to balance difficulty and impact and choose tips that you are actually willing to work on. Behavior changes are never easy.
-
Take some time in the next 30 days to reflect on your behavior and the changes you are making or have noticed since you started your development.
Discuss these tips and your current or new behavior with your superior.
-
Repeat this process for other leadership behaviors.
Note that the demands of your team may change over time, as do your goals.