Leadership is one of the most important drivers of organizational and business performance. Leaders at the top of organizations have enormous leverage in determining the business, strategies and direction of organizations. Top level leaders put in place the management team at all levels of the organization, raise needed capital and are responsible for making things happen. Leaders at lower levels of organizations are also critical for an organization's success. They are responsible for making many day-to-day decisions and for executing the strategies laid out by senior leaders.

Putting in place effective leaders at all levels of an organization often makes the difference between achieving great bottom line performance and mediocre business performance, or even failure.

Conducting either an employee survey or a leadership survey are highly effective ways to assess leadership effectiveness and to identify ways to significantly increase leadership effectiveness.

Using an Employee Survey / Employee Satisfaction Survey / Employee Engagement Survey to Assess Leadership Effectiveness:

Employee satisfaction surveys / employee engagement surveys are distributed to all employees in an organization. Employee surveys include questions about senior management's leadership effectiveness, gathering information and insight from many employees at all levels of the organization. Employee surveys also include questions about "my manager", for which each employee assesses the leadership and managerial effectiveness of the person they report to. This comprehensive feedback provides information that identifies organization-wide leadership strengths and weaknesses, as well as information and insight for individual department heads about how their leadership effectiveness is perceived. This information enables leaders to focus their attention on changing their leadership approach to become more effective.

The upward feedback that an employee satisfaction survey / employee engagement survey provides to leaders at all levels of the organization goes beyond the type of feedback typically provided by 360 leadership surveys, which assess leadership competencies.

Comprehensive employee satisfaction surveys / employee engagement surveys typically include the following topics:

• Work Environment

• The Work Itself

• Customer Focus & Commitment to Customers

• Quality & Customer Service

• Decision Making

• Entrepreneurship

• Innovation and Change

• Reward & Recognition

• Compensation & Benefits

• My Manager / Supervisor

• Performance Measurement

• Training & Development

• Opportunity

• Teamwork

• Communications

• Employee Engagement

• Senior Management Leadership Effectiveness

• Commitment to Company

• Company Direction

• Suggestions for increasing employee performance and organizational competitiveness

Using a Leadership Survey / 360 Leadership Survey to Assess Leadership Effectiveness:

Leadership surveys provide individual leaders with 360 feedback about their respective leadership competencies. Leadership surveys / 360 surveys also provide organization-wide information about the competencies that need strengthening across the organization, as well as the organization's leadership competency strengths. Each 360 leadership survey is customized to meet the specific needs of our client companies. Leadership training and development initiatives can be planned based on organization-wide findings from the 360 leadership surveys.

360 leadership surveys typically include anywhere from 15 – 30 leadership competencies. A targeted list which usually includes 5 – 12 individuals above, at and below each leader's level are asked to provide feedback to leaders.