One of the greatest things you can do for yourself – and the people you lead – is to increase self-awareness. The better you and your team understand yourselves, the greater your impact will be (personally and organizationally).
I’ve discovered that self-awareness provides critical information to make improvements and increase focus. Five areas benefit the most:
- Clarity of Life Mission
- Improved Role Alignment
- Greater Employee Engagement
- Better Team Communication
- Healthier Team Relationships
I think all of us could use some improvement in at least one of these areas. To help you take a step in that direction, let me recommend seven assessments that I have found immensely helpful:
1. Strengthsfinder – This proven tool from the Gallup organization identifies 34 talent themes and helps you pinpoint your top five strengths. It’s a great resource to determine how individuals can experience increased engagement by leveraging their strengths.
2. Leading From Your Strengths – This assessment helps you understand your natural strengths, adapted strengths, the value you add to the team, your ideal work environment, the impact your current environment has on your strengths, how others perceive you, and the do’s and don’ts of communicating with you. It’s a great tool to use in a team environment to better understand one another.
3. Myers Briggs – This time-tested personality inventory helps you understand your four mental functions, and which one you prefer to use first. The inventory identifies which type, of the 16 different personality types, you possess.
4. My Passion Profile – This unique assessment exposes you to a wide variety of interest-based and issue-based passions to help you identify what makes you come alive. The profile reveals the depth of your three greatest passions and ranks them in order of greatest importance to you.
5. Leadership Practices Inventory – This 360 degree assessment tool is based on the The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership model developed from extensive research by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. Their research is most commonly referred to in their book, The Leadership Challenge.
6. Uniquely You – This site offers a combined personality and spiritual gifts profile. It uses the DISC personality tool and a variety of spiritual gift assessments to choose from.
7. EQ-i – Emotional intelligence is recognized as an essential leadership competency in today’s world. This scientific assessment tool measures emotional intelligence and offers insights for improvement. EQ-i has to be administered by a certified coach.
