The Leadership Circle Profile: Seeing Your Leadership Blind Spots
Most physician leaders I work with are genuinely surprised by their 360 feedback. Not because the results are bad, but because there is a gap -- sometimes a wide one -- between how they see themselves and how their teams experience them. The Leadership Circle Profile is one of the most powerful tools I know for making that gap visible, and for physicians in academic medicine, that visibility changes everything.
Why a 360 Leadership Assessment Matters in Medicine
Physicians spend years in training environments where feedback flows in one direction: downward. Attendings evaluate residents, department chairs evaluate faculty, and almost nobody tells the person in charge how their leadership actually lands. By the time a physician steps into a formal leadership role -- division chief, department chair, associate dean -- they may have gone a decade or more without honest, structured feedback from the people around them.
That is not a character flaw. It is a system design problem. And the Leadership Circle Profile is built to address it.
What the Leadership Circle Profile Actually Measures
Unlike simpler personality assessments, the Leadership Circle Profile is a true 360-degree instrument. It collects feedback from your direct reports, peers, supervisors, and yourself, then maps all of it onto a single circular graph. The top half of the circle represents Creative Competencies -- things like relating to others, systems awareness, and achieving results. The bottom half represents Reactive Tendencies -- patterns like controlling, protecting, and complying that often develop as survival strategies early in a career.
What makes it distinctive is that it measures both behavior and the internal assumptions driving that behavior. As Bob Anderson and Bill Adams describe in Mastering Leadership, the profile is designed to reveal not just what leaders do, but why they do it -- the underlying beliefs that shape their default patterns.
The Gap That Matters Most
Here is where it gets interesting for physician leaders. The profile plots your self-assessment alongside everyone else's assessment on the same diagram. When those two circles align closely, it suggests strong self-awareness. When they diverge, it highlights blind spots.
I have seen a department chair rate herself very high on "Mentoring and Developing" while her faculty rated her significantly lower. She was not a bad mentor. She genuinely cared about her people. But her version of mentoring -- quick hallway check-ins, an open-door policy -- did not match what her faculty actually needed, which was protected time for structured career conversations. She could not see the gap until the data made it undeniable.
That is the kind of blind spot that erodes trust slowly, without anyone raising a flag. People do not usually tell their boss, "Your mentoring style isn't working for me." They just disengage.
Why Physicians Respond Well to This Tool
Think of it like reading an imaging study of your own leadership. Physicians are trained to look at data, interpret patterns, and build a plan. The Leadership Circle Profile speaks that language. It does not ask you to accept a vague personality label. It gives you a detailed, evidence-based picture and says, "Here is what the data shows. What do you want to do about it?"
In my experience, that framing matters. Physician leaders who might resist a softer coaching conversation will lean into a data-driven one. The circular graph becomes a shared reference point -- something we can return to over months of coaching to track real change.
What Comes After the Assessment
The profile itself is not the transformation. It is the starting point. The real work happens in the conversations that follow: making sense of the reactive patterns, understanding where they came from, and deliberately practicing the creative competencies that will serve you and your team better going forward.
I typically spend two to three coaching sessions just unpacking the results with a client. We look at which reactive tendencies are strongest, what situations trigger them, and what it would look like to respond from the creative half of the circle instead. It is not about eliminating your protective instincts. It is about choosing when they serve you and when they get in the way.
Closing the Gap
Leadership blind spots are not a sign of failure. They are a sign that you are human, operating in a system that rarely offers honest mirrors. The Leadership Circle Profile provides that mirror. What you do with the reflection is up to you.
If you'd like to learn more, contact us to schedule a time to chat.
