Expanding leadership horizons using the Life Styles Inventory
The meat of the Homeward Bound (HB) leadership programming has come in the form of regular workshops and discussion sessions. These comprise a mix of faculty presentations, individual reflection time, and—my favourite—breakout rooms to engage with teammates in smaller, more intimate groups.
On top of this, something I eagerly anticipated was the Life Styles Inventory (LSI) and one-on-one LSI coaching sessions. The LSI is a diagnostic tool that delivers insights into the thinking and behavioural styles that influence one’s professional performance and leadership. In Part 1 of this blog series, I introduced my 2022 keyword, ‘Horizon’, and touched on exploring self-perception vs. perception of others. The LSI allows us to do this comprehensively through a detailed self-assessment (LSI1) and assessments completed by colleagues (LSI2). These consist of a series of statements such as ‘shares responsibility well’, ‘upset by conflict’, ‘critical of others’, and ‘tries to prove self’. With each statement, the respondent indicates how much they agree or disagree—a format that may sound familiar if you’ve used tools like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Big Five Personality Test, or Strong Interest Inventory (SII).
Image description: A fictional survey question. Text says Page 2/12 - Stephanie Fernandez. Statement 22: Eager to travel to Antarctica. Five options in radio button format are labelled Strongly Disagree, Diagree, Neutral, Agree, and Strongly Agree. The Strongly Agree option is selected and highlighted in green. Above this, a teary-eyed grey penguin wears a fuchsia HB6 bowler hat. Distorted greyscale images of the penguin are layered behind it.
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In my case, LSI2 surveys were administered to 7 people in my professional circle, including supervisors, peers, and supervisees. Ultimately, the LSI1 and LSI2 data sets are each organised into a circumplex of 12 different styles falling under one of three clusters:
Constructive: includes Achievement, Self-Actualising, Humanistic-Encouraging, and Affiliative.
Passive/Defensive: includes Approval, Conventional, Dependent, and Avoidance.
Aggressive/Defensive: includes Oppositional, Power, Competitive, and Perfectionistic.
You can read more about the Human Synergistics® Circumplex here.
While it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that some of these 12 styles are ‘good’ and others are ‘bad’, this is not quite accurate. For example, some behaviours that fall under the Power style may be important for executing tasks. The Approval style might play a useful role in fostering camaraderie among your peers. The Dependent style could kick in to take care of your security needs. What’s more important is understanding how far you lean into each style and reflecting on the ways this may be beneficial or counterproductive in your life. That being said, we are urged to nurture our Constructive styles, as these reflect higher satisfaction achieved through individual, group, and community development. On the other hand, Aggressive/Defensive styles tend to be detrimental to our performance, while Passive/Defensive styles are more of a mixed bag.
The LSI1 (“Self”) reflects the thoughts and attitudes motivating your behaviour, while the LSI2 (“Others”) reflects how your behaviour is interpreted by others. Team HB6 was encouraged to spend a considerable amount of time reflecting on our results before jumping into action, i.e., transitioning slowly from Awareness to Acceptance to Action. In fact, our LSI coaching sessions occurred over a period of ~6 months, with most (if not all) of that time dedicated to Awareness and Acceptance.
Depending on how well you already know yourself, the results could be quite surprising. For example, HB faculty and LSI coaches have noted that men tend to self-describe as being strong in Constructive styles, while their LSI2 results indicate lower scores reported by Others. Conversely, women tend to self-describe with lower Constructive scores, while Others will rank them more highly.
In other words, many men who take the LSI are confronted with blind spots regarding their Constructive styles, while many women are confronted with unrecognised strengths.
Based on what I’ve heard so far from my HB6 teammates, our group is no exception.
There’s no better illustration than to show you the difference between my own LSI1 and LSI2 circumplexes. These plot percentile scores relative to over 14 000 other LSI respondents across the world. My self-assessment indicates that Defensive styles occupy 1st and 2nd place: Oppositional (Aggressive/Defensive) and Avoidance (Passive/Defensive).
Image description: A side-by-side comparison of two circumplexes. Each circumplex is divided into 12 pie slices representing 12 styles of thinking and behaviour. Coloured wedges illustrate the percentile scores for each style: Constructive styles in blue, Passive/Defensive styles in green, and Aggressive/Defensive styles in red. Additional labels indicate satisfaction needs (Constructive styles) vs. security needs (Defensive styles) and task orientation (Aggressive/Defensive styles) vs. people orientation (Constructive and Passive/Defensive styles). The lefthand circumplex represents Description by Self and its strongest extensions are in the Oppositional and Avoidance Styles. The righthand circumplex represents Description by Others and its strongest extensions are in the Humanistic-Encouraging and Achievement styles.
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Scoring myself 12 points out of 40 for the Oppositional style put me way up in the 88th percentile. Interestingly, the only item I strongly agreed with was ‘stubborn’. My reasoning was that I’m stubborn about my values and the things that are important to me. At times, this may be frustrating or even detrimental to my leadership if I feel too strongly that others should share my values and priorities. If this stress is not managed wisely, it could translate to moments of self-righteousness and cynicism rather than understanding. As an example, I frequently experienced this type of frustration when I worked on equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) initiatives at an institutional level and struggled against social inertia—an experience I’m sure any EDI leader can relate to. (For more on social inertia, here are a couple of interesting articles in the context of climate change and diversity in the technology sector.) Apart from the ‘stubborn’ item, I gave myself a bunch of partial points for things like ‘complaining’, ‘hard to impress’, and ‘doesn’t talk about things directly’. When in doubt, I tended to rate items with partial points (meaning “like you quite often”) rather than zero points (meaning “essentially unlike you”), which may have caused me to overestimate some styles.
It is interesting to note that even a relatively low raw score may correspond to a high percentile score. In my case, Avoidance is represented with a raw score of 7/40, falling into the 68th percentile. Here, I strongly agreed with ‘reserved’ and ‘not aggressive’ and doled out a few partial points for items such as ‘has difficulty being accepted’ and ‘evasive’. Generally, I think these reflect my strong introversion and tendency to trust slowly when getting to know people. In fact, I anticipated scoring highly on Avoidance because I grew up with an avoidant attachment style that made me highly protective of myself. Though I have since transformed many unconstructive habits, I still have some tendency to keep others at a distance and struggle with belonging.
In the workplace, this translates to a strong boundary between my professional and personal life. While it’s not a bad thing to have this kind of separation, my journey with HB6 has challenged me to practise being strategically vulnerable to strengthen my leadership narrative and human connections.
This is a skill demonstrated by successful TED speakers, for instance, who weave their stories with moments of emotion and imperfection, making them more relatable to a broad audience.
Moving on to my LSI2 circumplex, the results favour roughly the opposite direction compared with my LSI1 results. Others report that my strongest extensions fall under the Constructive cluster, with my primary style being Humanistic-Encouraging (34.29/40, 90th percentile) and my secondary style being Achievement (33.14/40, 81st percentile). In fact, the 7 respondents agreed most closely on my Constructive styles, as indicated by a ‘narrow’ or ‘very narrow’ spread. The widest spread of responses fell under the Aggressive/Defensive styles, especially Power and Perfectionistic.
Image description: A circumplex representing Description by Others with number of respondents N = 7. The circumplex is divided into 12 pie slices representing 12 styles of thinking and behaviour. Additional labels indicate satisfaction needs (Constructive styles) vs. security needs (Defensive styles) and task orientation (Aggressive/Defensive styles) vs. people orientation (Constructive and Passive/Defensive styles). Coloured wedges illustrate the percentile scores for each style: Constructive styles in blue, Passive/Defensive styles in green, and Aggressive/Defensive styles in red. According to the spread of the responses by Others, these colours are lighter or darker in shade. A darker shade indicates a narrower spread and a lighter shade indicates a wider spread. The narrowest spreads are observed for the Affiliative, Self-Actualising, and Humanistic-Encouraging styles (all Constructive). The widest spreads are observed for Power and Perfectionistic (both Aggressive/Defensive). All other styles have an average spread.
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What’s interesting is that I thought I had scored myself quite highly on Constructive styles during the LSI1. However, relative to the general LSI population (those 14 000+ people), I only landed in the 46th percentile for Humanistic-Encouraging and the 22nd percentile for Achievement! That's quite a large gulf away from my LSI2 scores of 90th and 81st percentiles, respectively.
Breaking down the specific items helped me understand what I was missing. Looking at Humanistic-Encouraging, it seems that while I recognise my supportive and empathetic nature, I underestimate my role in influencing others and shaping their development. For example, Others see me as someone who ‘knows people’s needs’, ‘develops others’, and ‘makes others think for themselves’. This suggests I take a more passive view of my social engagement and fail to appreciate my impact as an active people developer. It’s rather odd that I do so, given that my professional history is chock-full of training, mentoring, and community building activities—people developing is very much in my wheelhouse.
With respect to Achievement, while I recognise my skills, maturity, and concrete accomplishments, I vastly underestimate my strengths related to planning and strategy. I’ve never considered myself strong at planning for the future—rather, I see myself as present-oriented and someone who leaves things unstructured. However, Others regard me as an ‘enthusiastic’ and thorough planner who ‘usually thinks ahead’, ‘explores most alternatives before acting’, and just generally gets things done. So, clearly, I need to spend some reflection time reconciling these perspectives!
To tie things off, a couple of other points of interest are my blind spots and unrecognised strengths. Others moderately disagree that my Approval and Dependent styles (both Passive/Defensive) are as weak as self-reported. Amusingly, the biggest difference is that Others think I’m much more friendly than I do! In addition to Humanistic-Encouraging and Achievement within the Constructive cluster, Others scored me more highly on the Affiliative style. In particular, I may underestimate my interpersonal skills, as Others indicate I am more diplomatic, tactful, and at ease with people than I see myself. Self and Others moderately agree with the assessment of the remaining styles.
This reflection piece is more data-oriented than what I usually post, so hopefully it was helpful for those of you interested in more rigorous ways to evaluate your leadership. Now that I've identified the major takeaways from my LSI, the next step is to consider how to advance further into the Acceptance and Action stages of the process.
In Horizon (Part 3), I’ll reel it all in to put the LSI in motion and reflect on my leadership evolution over the past year with Homeward Bound. Some questions to consider:
How do my thinking and behaviour impact my leadership?
How can my LSI results impact my narrative and the way I present myself?
What specific actions can I set to address my areas for improvement?
How do I continue to nurture my Constructive styles?
What influence might this have on my future professional directions?
I'd love to hear your thoughts or questions about the LSI! Sign in to leave a comment (Wix sign-up is free!) or contact me. See you next time!