Alignment of Leadership Style to Human Instincts

How aligned to human instincts are the leadership practices of your leaders?

Our Human Instincts Leadership Survey is a diagnostic that allows managers to hear from their direct reports. The results of the survey obviously allow a manager to know:

1. What they are doing well in the way that they lead – that they should continue.
2. Anything that is not working so well that might be a potential blind-spot for the leader – that they can moderate.

The questions are structured around the 9 human instincts and the research that underpins those instincts.

Design of the Survey
The key design principles of the survey are:

1. The survey is completed by direct reports only, as the relationship with a person’s immediate manager is the fundamental relationship driving a person’s engagement, output and retention.
2. To generate a valid report a manager must have at least four people respond. An individual’s responses are confidential.
3. Each leader receives a detailed report (see below). A leader should receive their report in a briefing session facilitated by a person experienced in the human instincts framework.
4. Action-planning is encouraged where each leader considers what they continue and what they change about the way they lead.

Questions are Behavioural
The questions in the survey are overwhelmingly behavioural (rather than personality). It’s at a behavioural level – what a leader does or doesn’t do – that people experience leadership. And it’s at the behavioural level that leaders can make choices about the way they lead.

Figure 1: The Instincts Index is generated by the % Favourable responses to 9 key questions that go to
the fundamentals of each instinct.

Instincts Index
The result for each leader includes an “Instincts Index” (see figure 1). This Index is a single score from 9 key questions covering each of the 9 instincts. The Index score allows the leader to know how they compare to their colleagues who also took the survey, and the Index allows the sponsoring HR Director/CEO to know the leaders who are doing well and those who need help and extra focus.

Questions are Unique
The survey contains questions that you are unlikely to find in any other survey. They go to subjects that reflect the emotion in the relationship between a leader and their direct reports.

For example, through human instincts we know why managers can’t afford to have favourites on their team. If there is any sign of favouritism, team members quickly intuit whether they are part of the “in-group”, and if you are not part of the in-group then people are pushed into an out-group. Favouritism causes cliques in the team and is a serious interference factor for a leader.

So a leadership survey needs to asks questions on this topic. There are many more subjects like this.

Figure 2: A traffic light report giving the overview alignment of a leader’s leadership style to the human instincts.

Report
The resulting report for each leader has a number of elements. The report provides an overview “traffic light” summary (an example is shown in Figure 2). This allows the leader to see at a glance those instincts where their leadership style is well aligned (green), those that are moderately aligned (amber) and any that are poorly aligned (red).

The report then identifies the Instincts Index (see above) for the leader to have comparative information of their result. The report then goes into levels of detail including the answers to each question in the survey.

The survey generates insight for leaders, helps them know what they most need to concentrate on in the way they lead, and aims to lift leadership impact across an organisation.

To enquire further about the survey, process and price please complete the following form.