ACUMEN® Leadership WorkStyles™
Research and development by The Acumen Development Team on the basis of research by Peter D. Gratzinger, Ph.D. and Robert A. Cooke, Ph.D.
The ACUMEN Leadership WorkStyles (LWS) assessment is a 360-degree feedback and development tool that helps your key people strengthen their at-work leadership styles. Leaders are provided with text-based feedback on the thinking and behavioral styles that are promoting their effectiveness as well as the styles that are preventing them from realizing their potential.
Building on the Life Styles Inventory™ (LSI), LWS focuses on combinations of the 12 Circumplex styles and the way they interact to generate leadership feedback on strengths and counterproductive tendencies. The ACUMEN assessments provide those in charge with a highly personalized narrative report on the implications of their styles for task accomplishment and teamwork, as well as suggestions for improving communication and project leadership.
What is our Leadership WorkStyles Assessment?
The Leadership WorkStyles Assessment is a validated survey used to evaluate and analyze the leadership styles, mindsets, and behaviors of managers in organizational and professional settings. It is designed to provide insights into a manager’s preferred ways of working, decision-making, collaborating, and influencing others as a leader.
Like other 360-degree instruments, this assessment involves self-reflection and feedback from others, including colleagues, subordinates, or supervisors. It may be used on its own or along with other surveys or interviews designed to assess different aspects of leadership work styles–including communication style, decision-making approach, conflict resolution methods, adaptability, and vision setting.
The Benefits of the ACUMEN® Leadership WorkStyles Assessment
LWS is designed for executives, managers, and emerging leaders who would like to develop and grow to realize their full potential. It’s particularly useful for:
-
providing insights into Constructive and Defensive leadership styles at work
-
showing how combination of those styles shape their leadership performance
-
developing leaders’ capacity to monitor and modify their behavior
-
offering honest feedback to leaders to help them grow and move into positions of greater responsibility
-
improve their teamwork and leadership abilities to enhance organizational effectiveness
The ACUMEN Leadership WorkStyles assessment can be facilitated by coaches or trainers accredited in its use, or a Human Synergistics consultant can work with you to build a custom development program for your organization or the organizations you support. Contact us to talk to an expert.
How it works
The Leadership WorkStyles assessment gathers data for feedback to the leader via two forms of the inventory:
-
The LWS Self-Description Inventory is completed by each participant and measures the extent to which he or she thinks that the twelve (12) different Circumplex styles are descriptive of him or her.
-
The LWS Description-by-Others Inventory is completed by individuals with whom the leader works to provide insight into how others view the leader’s styles and effectiveness.
Results are presented in a detailed narrative report which draws from and is based on a large database of leaders’ behavior and performance. The report describes the focal leader’s own behavioral patterns and how they promote or detract from effectiveness. The work styles assessment report includes visual profiles to graphically illustrate the leader’s behavior (as described by self and others) along such Circumplex styles as Self-Actualizing, Approval, and Competitive.
The LWS surveys are available online as well as in hard copy format.
Complementary tools
LWS can be combined with the Coach — Co-Achieving team exercise to teach leaders how to apply Achievement-oriented thinking to effectively lead others and improve performance.
The assessment also can be used in conjunction with our Survival and Business simulations. These exercises provide leaders with a team experience that enables them to observe their own (and each others’) styles. They also provide a forum for discussing the effectiveness of their respective styles, the quality of their communication and collaboration during the exercise, their individual and team performance on the exercise, and styles that could be increased or decreased to improve effectiveness next time around..
Make LWS part of your drive for change
LWS is best administered and debriefed by people who’ve been trained to use it. We offer two options:
-
A trained and experienced Human Synergistics consultant can help you use LWS and develop truly effective and influential leaders. Simply contact us to find a consultant who’s right for you.
-
You can ‘do it yourself’ by arranging LWS accreditation for one or more of your training and development team members. This will ensure they have the skills to administer LWS and implement meaningful leadership development strategies. To get started, register for an upcoming Styles Accreditation Workshop.
If you would like to know more about the ACUMEN Leadership WorkStyles assessment, or any of our wide range of offerings, get in touch and we will be happy to assist you.