Leadership development has long relied on assessment of personality, cognitive, or behavioral traits. But there have been two very observable factors hiding in plain sight all along: thought time and action time. Now there’s a new tool to explore them.
The right balance of thought time and action time for individual leaders at all levels is key at each successive tier of organizational leadership.
Entry level roles call for different types of thoughts and actions – generally shorter term and less complex. At the most experienced level, transformational leadership relies much longer-term action and much more complex thought…e.g., things that transform your industry.
Now there’s a way to measure and visually plot this.
It’s called The Leadership Nexus, a product of Jamesson Solutions developed by Beverly Bradstock and Tom Desch. It’s a self-reporting 20-minute online survey rolled out at ATD24, in New Orleans. It gives training professionals precise coordinates of each emerging leader’s current position and how they need to shift their thought time and action time to advance.
Here’s a snapshot at this current period in time, and it reveals things you can dial up or dial back to recalibrate what you’re giving your attention.
An actionable alternative to personality assessments
Steve Beck is a seasoned leadership consultant and coach who’s found The Leadership Nexus to match the way he works clients.
“In the conflict resolution and workplace culture space where I work, I’m not a heavy assessments guy, because I have found the personality-oriented assessments to be not as useful,” said Beck. “Everyone loves those – Enneagram, MBTI, etc. – I just don’t know how actionable they become after the initial awareness, in terms of changing the way they perceive people’s communications, or how they interpret each other, and that type of thing.”
Beck appreciates how actionable “thoughts and actions” feedback can be: “The Leadership Nexus says, here’s a snapshot at this current period in time, and it reveals things you can dial up or dial back to recalibrate what you’re giving your attention.”
The Leadership Nexus presents instant, actionable “do-more, do-less” feedback in coaching and development. Also, it’s easier to understand for learners.
How it’s new and different
To calibrate their assessment to common leadership roles, Bradstock and Desch identified five levels that work across most industries. From entry level up, they are transactional, managerial, tactical, strategic, and transformational. For each level there is a corresponding optimum balance of thought time and action time.
A graphical color-coded report plots a leader’s position, based on their survey responses as it relates to where they should be in their current role.
In some ways it’s a simpler report than personality assessments, but not without a great deal of depth to help leaders adjust and optimize their thought time and action time to improve in their current roles and begin to advance in organizational succession.
The Leadership Nexus feedback and its certified coaching brings clarity of how thought time and action time determine leadership level.
Benefits include:
• A fresh way to reinvigorate an organization’s leadership development program
• A new objective basis for merit-based promotions
• Better engaged, more effective leaders at every level
The assessment is unique and, possibility first of its kind, although Beck says “thoughts and actions” have always been a part his coaching practice. But now he’s got a powerful tool to validate the metrics and guide coaching conversations.
Steve Beck, leadership consultant and coach, gives feedback based on thought time and action time using The Leadership Nexus.
An assessment to start conversations
“One of my mantras is, we live our lives in stories, the stuff that’s going on in our heads, how we’re interpreting things like that drive so much the meaning we ascribe to what’s going on and the actions we choose to take,” said Beck.
“It’s what I do all the time. I’m getting people think about, what they’re thinking and doing. And wow! Here’s an assessment that that has people assess this.”
Beck suggests that coaches can see The Leadership Nexus as a clearly marked path into that type of conversation.
“As a coach, I’m always looking for another tool in my belt.”