Vital Signs - Measure What Matters!

Most of us know what vital signs are. We picture someone in the hospital or at the doctor's office with monitors and testing going on. The current state of your vital signs brings clarity to your health status. Wouldn't it be great to have vital signs measures for leadership...or teams...or even an entire organization? We do!

Vital Signs assessments

What should we measure if we are looking at the health and vitality of a leader, team, or organization? The indicators would have to be drivers of success. They would need to be measured in a way that allowed us to track progress over time. The measures would need to directly lead to a specific set of outcomes. We would have to balance key areas like strategy and operations, or people and organization. The model would have to be consistent, but the outcomes for a leader, a team, or an organization would need to be different. The leader vital signs assessment would need to capture comments in many forms, while maintaining anonymity. A true 360 look at a leader's impact. Team measures would need to have a good dashboard that brought focus to critical areas. The organizational vital signs would have to be much more than a climate survey. It would need to bring clarity to all aspects of the organization, any specified demographic, and provide insights into organizational health and vitality.

All of these measures would have to be actionable data! Data, information, and insights that clarify strengths, gaps, needs and then identifies key action steps to improve and a clear path forward.

Great News!!

Those assessments exist. They are actually called Vital Signs (Six Seconds). So what differentiates them from other leadership 360's and team assessments and organizational climate surveys?

• They are based in neuroscience.
• They are highly validated.
• They provide insights you simply can't get anywhere else.
• They provide truly actionable data.
• They don't just leave you at assessment data. They bring clarity and direction.
• You can create developmental KPIs from the assessment data and insights.
• They can only be provided by a certified Vital Signs Consultant, who will interpret the data and provide a path forward.
• They are set up for all participants to have their input remain anonymous. This fosters open sharing and more transparency.

The Model

Six Seconds

There are 5 drivers of success for leaders, teams, and organizations. Trust is at the center of the model and touches everything. Then there is Motivation, Teamwork, Execution, and Change (leading well through change). Each of these drivers has pulse points that can be checked on a regular basis. These are the same 5 drivers for leaders, teams, or an entire organization. Think of how well this aligns. We are focused on the same drivers of success at all levels of the organization.

The assessments become even more valuable when we consider that the outcomes for a leader, a team, or an organization are specific to that entity. Outcomes will be explained as a part of each of these assessments later.

Why does this model and set of assessments work so well? Because they are focused on people and the way people work.

"Emotions drive people, people drive performance." Six Seconds

Emotions are neurotransmitters that give us messages. What we do with those messages is critical to our outcomes. Research has proven that EQ (emotional intelligence) measures are the most predictive of success...far more that IQ or personality.

Here is the way this works in a leader:

Six Seconds

Here is the way this works in a team:

Six Seconds

What about performance? Great question! The Vital Signs tools are designed to work alongside performance measures. Notice that performance is the outcome we are looking for in the flow model above. We already know if the performance is where we want it or not. Now we need to gain deeper insights into the leader, team, or organization and identify areas of opportunity to improve. Even the best can get better.

Vital Signs for Leaders

Want to help a leader become a better leader? Then give them the "mirror" they need to see their true self as a leader.

You have probably heard of 360 assessments. You get different groups of people to participate in giving their experience with a person who is a leader. This is done through a survey/assessment format. What makes the Leadership 360 Vital Signs assessment so impactful is the combination of validated and proven questions combined with the ability for each participant to make a comment on every question. Added to this is an open forum area where participants are asked to share with the leader what they would like them to Stop doing, Start doing, and Continue doing. The comments provide rich feedback.

Why do an assessment like this on leaders? So that we can help them to see how they are "showing up" as a leader to different people. It provides insight into different groups and how they see the leadership impact of that leader. Are direct reports experiencing the leader as effective while peers are not? How does the leader's supervisor(s) see their leadership impact. It is like holding up a mirror but this mirror allows the leader to look at their leadership effectiveness and impact, and then look inside themselves to reflect on what they hear.

Here is an example of the measure of the 5 drivers of success:

Here are the 4 outcomes for a leader:

Leadership Vital Signs 360 - Six Seconds

The red diamonds tell the leader that this is an area of concern for the people who participated in their leadership 360 assessment. These reports are designed to bring to light areas of strength, gaps, and developmental opportunities. For leaders who engage with this process, it provides huge benefits in setting KPIs and goals to achieve in their leadership, giving them clarity and direction.

Vital Signs for Teams

Team Vital Signs does for teams what the LVS360 does for leaders. It measures the same 5 drivers of success, but has 4 different outcomes. That makes sense since we are focused on a team instead of a leader. There are other measures that provide even more value. These are included in the TVS Dashboard:

Team Vital Signs - Six Seconds

There are so many great measures to look at in this report. A VSCC (Vital Signs Certified Consultant) can provide deep insight into what each of these measures mean...and each of these are measures that matter! The rest of the report provides a cascade of valuable insights and information. Many of my clients use this report on a regular basis to check on the "vital signs" of their teams.

What could you do with a report like this? Now...think about not knowing this information. What might be missed?

In today's workplace, clarity, deep insight, and direction can be hard to attain. Where does it start? With assessments that measure things that matter and give you actionable data.

There is a term I use, I know it may sound a little over the top, but when you consider what is at stake, I think it is a reasonable statement.

"When you are making decisions about people's lives and livelihood, assess, don't guess."

P.S. I will dive into the Organizational Vital Signs (Six Seconds) assessment in a future blog article. It demands a focus of its own.

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 Copyright © 2023 EQFIT® - Author: Steven Goodner. All rights reserved. No portion of this material may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact: [email protected].