This February issue of our e-letter focuses on LEADERSHIP and highlights our latest research and newest tools for using the Denison Leadership Development Survey.

Although we are best known for linking corporate culture with bottom-line performance, we are now becoming more widely known for our Leadership 360.  This survey provides leaders with a comprehensive analysis of their strengths and challenges, and helps them to identify key leverage points to improve their overall effectiveness.  To help you learn more about our approach, this e-letter provides an on-line demo of our exciting new 3Click™ online delivery system for our Leadership 360, a new set of tools to help leaders to move from diagnosis into action and a research update summarizing two recent studies; In addition, we’ll invite you to sign up for one of our future webcasts or to sign up for our next Denison Workshop April 10-12, 2002 in Vail, Colorado.

Lots of leadership development professionals spend WAY too much time having these conversations, rather than focusing on the coaching and planning efforts that really pay off.  To address this problem, we created a system that we call 3Click™.  With the 1st click, you define a set of respondents; with the 2nd click you take the survey yourself; and with the 3rd click you check how many responses have been completed. If you like, you can use this system to download your results.  Reminder letters are automatically sent out by the system.  Over the past few months, we have been doing 3Click™ projects with our own leadership survey and with custom applications.  Here are some of the participants’ comments: “The process overall was terrific!”  “The tools were easy to use and the reports were easy to read and understand.”  “I can’t believe the amount of time this saved me!” 

Click below and try out our 3Click™Demo for yourself!  We have also lowered prices for those who use this on-line version, rather than the paper & pencil version.  Note that many 3Click™ options can be customized for your particular study.  Contact us for more information.

We have also added several tools that help leaders to interpret their results and translate them into action.  These tools are designed to speed up the interpretation process and make it more self-explanatory.  In response to the requests of several of our clients, we’ve also added a new Gap Analysis to our standard report.  This analysis compares the “self”  responses to the “other” responses and separates the twelve indexes into four categories: the areas where the self and the other data converge, thus defining a set of strengths and challenges, and the areas where the self and other data diverge, defining a set of underestimated capabilities and overestimated capabilities.  Click here to view or download a copy of our new sample report:

Sample Leadership Report [PDF 400 KB]

Another tool that we’ve created to help leaders understand their own results is a set of Guidelines for Interpreting Your Leadership 360 Results.  This presentation is broken down into 5 sections:
1) Overview of the model; 2) Getting ready for feedback; 3) Understanding your results; 4) Interpretation tips; 5) Action planning. 

This guide offers a quick summary to help guide a participant through understanding his/her own results. Click below to view this new tool.

If you would like a free copy of the full video version of this presentation that is now available on CD, please contact us!

Leadership Interpretation Guide [PDF 1.6 MB]

Our latest research clearly shows that the Denison Leadership Development Survey helps distinguish between effective and ineffective leaders.  But interestingly enough, our research shows that “others” ratings of a manager’s capabilities are a far better predictor of performance than managers own ratings of their capabilities.  As you can see by clicking on the link below, there are only small differences between effective and ineffective leaders in the way they see their own skills.  But there are BIG differences in the way that effective and ineffective leaders are seen by others.

Click here to view or download these research slides. Denison Leadership Research [PDF 1.0 MB]

Robert Hooijberg and Daniel Denison, both Professors at IMD (www.imd.ch) have recently finished a research paper called, "What Makes Leaders Effective? A Stakeholders Approach To Leadership Effectiveness."  In addition to providing a basic validity test of the Denison Leadership Development Survey, this study also shows that bosses give higher ratings to leaders who have strengths in externally-oriented areas like mission, while direct reports give higher ratings to leaders who have skills in internally focused areas like involvement.  This study also examines three specific criteria of leadership effectiveness: a) Is the leader a role model for the organization? b) What is the leader's potential for the future? and c) How effective is the leader with customers?  Strengths in the involvement area turn out to be strong predictors of the leader as a role model.  Adaptability turns out to be a weak predictor of overall effectiveness and for leaders as role models, but is a very strong predictor of future potential and of effectiveness with customers.  Finally, mission is a strong predictor of overall effectiveness, but is a much weaker predictor of all three more specific criteria of effectiveness.  These results show that the skill set that leaders want to develop should be closely linked to what they are trying to achieve.

Click here to view or download this new paper.  Denison Leadership Paper [PDF 1.3 MB]

We hope that you have enjoyed this update on our latest research and newest tools.  If you would like more information, or have follow up questions, please contact us.

We are now planning several webcasts for those interested in having a dialogue about our products.  Contact us for more information.

Our next Denison Workshop is scheduled for April 10-12, 2002 in Vail, Colorado.  This workshop is designed for those who want to learn to use the Denison tools more effectively and improve their consulting skills.  Click here for more information on this workshop. 
Vail Workshop information [PDF]

 Finally, if you have interesting projects to present to the members of our community, please contact us.  We will be glad to include them in future e-letters.

We are looking forward to hearing from you soon.  Please Contact Us Online or by phone at (734) 302-4002.