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 Leadership Behavours Profile (LBP) - A Tool for Personal Leadership
Development
 Background
This is the second In-Touch article on Leadership. Whereas the first took a broader view of Leadership Training and Development, this one will
specifically look at the Leadership Behaviours Profile: it’s development,
its utility, research and future developments. Also in this article you
will be able to explore norm data by sector, function and gender. Some
results may surprise you!
What is the Leadership Behaviours Profile?
The Leadership Behaviours Profile (LBP) is a powerful and practical 360°
feedback tool, combining the best of modern leadership theory including
emotional intelligence, and presenting it in a user friendly and relevant
way.
 The
power of 360° feedback as a means of raising self-awareness stems
from its believability. Feedback from multiple perspectives, from credible
work associates, is powerful in motivating behavioural change. It overcomes
a reliance on single person appraisals with all of their associated pitfalls.
The Stimulus
During the 80s in a previous life as a University lecturer I had the
fortune to be able to assist MBA managers by teaching the subject of leadership.
I was often faced with some difficult dilemmas such as: the meaning of
Leadership; how to help managers improve their Leadership skills; is there
a best practice process that mangers should subject themselves to in order
to continuously maintain and improve their Leadership behaviour and competence?
However, despite an output of literally thousands of research studies,
books, articles, models and theories few offered practical utility and
remedial action opportunities. As a university we did our best to raise
the right questions about ‘improving leadership’ but fell
a long way short of actually helping participants change their behaviour.
An ongoing leadership literature review was simultaneously maintained
as part of PhD research into the study of senior managers, their context
and coping behaviours.
Then during the 90s, in my role as Managing Director of Team Leadership
Services, I was further challenged by many managers who wanted to
get something - a tool - that was straight forward, a useable full range
leadership model (a kind of ‘executive summary’) which aided
their personal development.
We routinely ran leadership programmes but were only able to provide
very basic feedback for participants without observing their behaviour
in a real work situation. However, information about manager activities
and behaviours gathered from interviews and regular training programs
were used in conjunction with the aforementioned literature research.
Together they formed the catalyst for the Leadership Behaviours Profile
instrument.
These various inputs were reduced to a bank of fundamental questions,
which seemed to be at the very heart of Leadership. So around 1995 early
attempts to produce such a profile were made – at first informally
with key clients. With this early work a model for leadership emerged.
Although Leadership is a composite concept of many elements I was able to
break it down into eight factors. Each element is plotted on the ‘captains’
wheel indicating that the profile was intended for managers of people as
follows:
- Values Champion – Lives and promotes the values.
- Team Linker – Links work, people and processes.
- Strategic Thinker – Develops and progresses
a future vision.
- Change Facilitator - Paces self and team through
change.
- People Motivator – Gives positive encouragement
of team and individual performance.
- Responsibility Giver – Empowers within clear
roles.
- Competent Performer – Matches personal strengths
and effort with what needs doing.
- Situational Decision Maker – Makes effective
decisions contingent on the situation and the people.
The Development of the Leadership Behaviours Profile Questionnaire
The development of the LBP was greatly influenced by the work of Drs.
Charles Margerison and Dick McCann in the late 1980s and their construct
“Linking”. The success of the Linking Skills Profile that
followed demonstrated a need to develop a multi-rater leadership profile
as the best way of providing workshop participants with a full picture
of their overall leadership behaviour.
In utilising the Team Leadership System an opportunity to compliment
Margerison and McCann’s work also aided development of the LBP by
extending the Linking concept to the full-range Leadership model above.
Originally the behaviours of effective leadership were introduced into
management development workshops and participants asked to rate themselves
against the eight elements. However, it was noticed that there was sometimes
a discrepancy between a managers’ own ratings and those of their
team. In many workshops a process was used where the manager rated themself
and was then counselled by one of the facilitators. In the meantime, the
team members were led through an exercise where they collectively rated
their boss on the same eight leadership factors. This was a procedure
developed by Dick McCann for linking skills development. The procedure
was adapted for the development of the leadership behaviours profile.
So whilst the idea of multi-rater feedback was brought into these ‘real’
team workshops a gap still existed where the whole team were not present
such as on a Public leadership Programme, or where feedback needed to
be collected at different times from different people.
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Design of the Instrument
The LBP Questionnaire Index was therefore designed to allow ratings from
team members, supervisors, peers, and any other significant work colleagues.
The researched bank of questions, developed from the literature and qualitative
process earlier described, culminated in various sets of behaviour-based
statements, which were cast on a likert scale. A higher value represented
greater use of a leadership behaviour:
This early form of the LBP underwent rigorous testing with 32 University
Post Graduate Students, experts in the field, and successive administrations
of the questionnaire with more than 1800 managers and their subordinates.
Emotional Intelligence (EI) & Effective Communicator Quotient
‘These are the qualities that mark people who excel; whose
relationships flourish; who are stars in the workplace’ - Emotional
Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, 1996
Analysis of data from respondents and additional discussions with respondents
resulted in further modification of the instrument. The most notable being
the inclusion of two derived factors “Effective Communicator”
and “Emotionally Intelligent”. An emotional intelligence quotient
is now part of every Leadership Behaviours Profile. This quotient is derived
using Golemans four sub-factors of emotional intelligence – Self
Awareness, Self Management, Social Skill, and Social Awareness. This,
along with a further derived factor of Effective Communicator, gives recipients
of the LBP two profiles in one.
Leadership Behaviours Profiles and their Interpretation
The focus on the instrument is on constructive feedback to help people
improve their Leadership and subsequently their performance as managers.
The instrument is not intended to be used as an assessment tool.
This feature of the profile has led to its acceptability, and face validity.
The subject receives clarification on where their strengths lie, as well
as easy to follow guidelines and action plans to improve any weaker areas.
A key feature of the LBP is that all raters remain anonymous (apart from
the self scores and those of their direct supervisor). This improves the
likelihood of receiving quality responses that are believable.
Sampling methodology is also very important. If the sampling is left
to the person being rated there could be a tendency to select those colleagues
or ‘friends’ that will supply a good rating and to reject
those with whom they have difficulties. Our accredited facilitators aim
to ensure that a representative sample is negotiated otherwise the profile
may suffer from bias.
Accreditation workshops for training LBP facilitators deal with selecting
assessors, how to handle the defensive respondent and various administrative
challenges that can occur when dealing with 360° type assessments.
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Latest Research – Females Score Higher in all Leadership Factors
With the increased use of the profile over time, a study was conducted
with a view to understand norm data both for individuals, gender and different
functional groups. Some very interesting results have appeared.
It is still relatively early in the life cycle of Version 2 of the LBP.
In the above data I have included some of my own interpretation of these
results. For interest, and to assist accredited consultants to more effectively
facilitate 360° assignments, I share further thoughts on my interpretation
during the process of accreditation.
Of course alternative perspectives are equally as valid and should help
keep alive this fascinating leadership debate.
New Developments
In a new June 2003, Version 3 of the Leadership Behaviours Profile, the
Emotional Intelligence (‘EI’) sub-factor will be derived from
a greater number of questions than previously. ‘EI” will now
represent 24 of the 64 item questionnaire allowing greater coverage of
Goleman’s four capabilities: Self Management, Self Awareness, Social
Awareness and Social Skill.
Subjects will receive an Emotional Intelligence Quotient ‘EQ’
out of a maximum of 10 (based on historical norms), with advice sheets
tailored in greater depth to individual results. These advice sheets offer
practical guidance to improve performance in this area. Recipients of
the LBP, therefore, will receive a profile within a profile.
Conclusion
As you can see the development of the Leadership Behaviours Profile has
been a journey of continual change.
Having facilitated hundreds of managers with this leadership tool accredited
consultants and we have found that not only does it effectively measure
leadership behaviour; it really helps managers clearly identify their
strengths and areas for improvement. Then it helps them chart the route
for further personal development.
If you think the LBP is an instrument that you or your organisation could
use there are two ways you can access it: gain accreditation to use it, or have one of our accredited consultants facilitate the process
for you.
To explore further how you can use the Leadership Behaviours Profile,
please contact TLS at paul@tls360.com or Ph +64 9 836 5317 to speak to one of our team.
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Dr Paul Robinson
Managing Director
Team Leadership Services
© 2003 Team Leadership Services
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