When I first saw Adam Grant’s New York Times article entitled “Kids, Would You Please Start Fighting?”, I assumed that reading it might help me in my parenting role but not my professional one.  But I was wrong. The focus of the article is on the benefits of allowing siblings to hash out their conflicts.  It suggests that instead of insisting on artificial harmony, we should help children learn the skills of having a good argument without making it personal.

We have yet to find an organization with a leadership competency model, existing leadership development course, or change initiative that cannot be clearly aligned to The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® and the 30 behaviors identified in the LPI®:Leadership Practices Inventory® . In fact, one of the most rewarding things about working with The Leadership Challenge is how well it acts as an “umbrella” for an organization’s full complement of leadership, team, and organizational effectiveness programs. For example, many of the other high-quality leadership programs available today focus on one or two of The Five Practices. So when we introduce The Leadership Challenge to a client, it typically feels familiar and reinforcing, while also expanding their understanding of a bigger picture view of leadership. 

In the February issue of this newsletter, we shared some of our experiences putting the power of The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® to work with The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive TeamTM .  In that first article, we demonstrated a variety of ways to leverage the synergies between these two models. One synergy we cited is the shared fundamental belief that to improve performance leaders and teams need feedback. This article expands on that theme, and focuses on how to pair the LPI®: Leadership Practices Inventory® with Everything DiSC®, a key component of The Five Behaviors program. Everything DiSC is a personality assessment tool that measures behavioral preferences and tendencies. When used together, DiSC and LPI can produce a powerful set of insights, actions, and results for your coaching clients.