Measuring Ourselves: Sage Portfolio Group’s Adventures with a Leadership Assessment – Part One
OUR QUESTIONS
As a company that develops leadership and team solutions for other companies, we realize we also need to do the same sort of development for our own leaders and teams. We know that what we do in other organizations works for them, but we wonder about best practices for our own Sage Portfolio Group teams. We have very skilled facilitators and Team Systems workers in-house: can we use them or do we need to bring someone into our organization from outside? There are a myriad of assessments out there: which do we use? Should we do different ones each year? Should we do the one our facilitator prefers? As we reflect on these questions, we realize that they are the same ones every organization considers.
OUR SOLUTIONS
We are in the process of deploying a leadership assessment tool for our team and will be working with an outside facilitator in June. When we decided to do the assessment, we went through the same questions our clients go through when they start working with a team. Who is on the team? Who should we include? We have noticed that some people want to be on the team who aren’t, and some people are less engaged in the process than others. One team member decided she wanted her role to change. All this in advance of the assessment administration!
We have also decided to combine our team development with some constructive, whole-organization work. For example, we will have a two hour session with our whole staff on creating a group contract to establish the ways we will work together, to be followed by a company potluck. The next day, the smaller leadership team will participate in the full day assessment. We will learn about leadership styles and will gain insights into how individuals and the team as a whole functions.
OUR HOPES
We hope the investment in our assessment will be useful. We hope it fosters open dialogue and learning for our staff. We hope we come closer together as a team. We have hopes and dreams for our day of learning, just as our clients do when they bring us into their organizations. We are naïve and vulnerable when it comes to our own organization. We believe we have chosen well and are taking steps forward. Here we go!
Tune in next month for our outcomes and personal reflections.
