Enhance Your Leadership Skills with a 360 Leadership Principles Survey

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As a leader, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of your own leadership style and how it is perceived by your peers, customers, and managers. This can help you identify your strengths and areas for improvement, and ultimately become a more effective leader.

One way to gain this understanding is through the 360 Leadership Principles survey facilitated by Korn Ferry. The survey covers three key pillars of effective leadership: creating clarity, generating energy, and delivering success. To conduct the survey, Korn Ferry will reach out to collaborators you pick with a survey to rank you on various leadership facets. Once the aggregated responses are collected, a leadership and performance coach will work with you to synthesize the information and identify clear takeaways. This will provide you with a well-rounded understanding of how you are perceived by your collaborators and allow you to reflect if your “self-perceived” and “presented” versions of your brand congregate.

Sponsored by my employer, Microsoft, I personally went through this exercise earlier this year and found it extremely beneficial in gaining insights into my leadership style. I was pleased to learn that my self-reflected strengths, such as being customer obsessed and striving for empathy-based leadership, resonated with my collaborators. However, I also discovered some blind spots that I could work on improving, including delegating better as a leader, and modulating the vision of my product better to the different kinds of collaborators I worked with. With these insights, I could seek out additional training to help me develop my delegation skills. I also sought to better understand the perspectives and needs of my audience better and communicate my vision in a way that was tailored to them.

I highly recommend the 360 Leadership Principles survey or any equivalent offering in your organization for senior and principal level PMs looking to better understand their style of leadership and identify opportunities for growth. It has been a valuable tool for me in gaining insights into my leadership abilities and I believe it can be equally beneficial for others.