I’d taken a number of different leadership assessments before I found one that changed my leadership and my life. I know that sounds like a big claim but I’m talking transformational stuff here and as a result, I am now a huge fan of using leadership 360° assessments to get feedback for leaders.

I used them when I was a leader to learn and grow and I now I use them with my clients. However, not all assessments (or feedback) are created equal. Having said that the first couple I took made me feel boxed and labelled as something without a pathway to change or growth.

And so I thought I’d share my take on the good, the bad and the ugly to help you figure out the why and the what of getting feedback that fuels growth.

Why Leadership Is Measured by Perception, Not Intention

Unfortunately, leadership isn’t measured by your intention, it’s measured by others perception. It’s not about how hard you work or how much you care, if other people don’t feel it and experience it you won’t reach your potential and be able to wholly own your ambition. If you believe you’re showing up as strategic, empowering, and inspiring, and your team experiences you as controlling, unclear, or disengaged, then your leadership isn’t landing the way you think it is and you’re not going to reach the career goals you crave.

This is the fundamental reason why high-performing women need a leadership assessment that goes beyond personality tests and drives growth. Self-reflection alone is not enough. You need real feedback from the people you lead and work with—the people who experience your leadership firsthand. Of course, I also need to put an asterisk here that says unbiased and development focused feedback and that’s where this can get challenging and why I advocate for assessment tools.

The Vulnerability of Feedback

However, before I go through my thoughts on different tools, let’s explore the hard part of feedback, tools or not. And that’s how vulnerable it can feel to have our areas of improvement exposed. For some, the idea of facing that kind of feedback can feel like walking into a room lined with mirrors under unflattering fluorescent lights—the kind that make even the most confident among us question every life choice we’ve ever made.

The most impactful time I went through a 360-degree leadership assessment it was deeply confronting. Seeing my leadership reflected through the eyes of my team, my peers, my boss and my stakeholders made me realise that some of the qualities I took the most pride in were also the very things holding me back. To say I was devastated is an understatement and I’d love to say I navigated it with grace…However, there were tears and my first instinct was to reject the feedback as bias or bull. However, I knew that wasn’t going to move my career forward and my confidence wouldn’t survive this knock if I didn’t get this sorted. So I dug in to figure out what was going on.

It turned out, one of my greatest strengths—my drive for results—was making me appear unapproachable. I thought I was leading with confidence and clarity; my team felt I was too focused on execution and not creating enough space for them to contribute. That moment of clarity was uncomfortable, but it also gave me the insight I needed to grow into a more effective and impactful leader.

Vulnerable. Uncomfortable. A little terrifying. But also, the most powerful thing you can do for your growth.

Even more importantly, what this experience achieved was forcing me to step into this discomfort to learn from my team and others what was holding me back. And we had a solid base to start from. I could ask directed questions that helped me unpack the meaning. My team could see me wanting to learn and were able to deepen their feedback and at the end of the process not only did I understand myself better, my team understand me better as well. And that’s how the right tools can create so much impact.

Using Growth Mindset for Transformation

Dr. Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset reveals a fundamental truth: leadership is not about fixed traits—it’s about continuous development. High-performing women in leadership face constant scrutiny, and the expectation is often that they must have all the answers. But true leadership isn’t about always being right; it’s about being committed to learning, evolving, and adapting.

A growth mindset allows leaders to view challenges as opportunities for development rather than as threats to their competence. Leaders who embrace a growth mindset don’t see feedback as a verdict on their abilities; they see it as fuel for improvement. This shift in perspective is critical when evaluating leadership assessments.

Too often, feedback focuses on labelling traits rather than guiding growth, leaving leaders with an interesting label but no real way forward. I once worked with a client who was told she was ‘too direct’—but with no insight into what that actually meant or how she could adjust without losing her confidence.

When feedback is framed in this way, it can feel like a personality critique rather than a development tool. A more effective approach would have been to highlight specific behaviours—such as how she responded in high-pressure meetings—and offer ways to refine her communication while maintaining her presence. Sadly, too many leaders just aren’t skilled at providing meaningful insights and feedback that fuels a growth mindset.

The Best Feedback is Objective and Measurable!

If you’re serious about becoming the most effective, influential, and high-impact leader you can be, you need the right mirror. Not a surface-level personality test, but a leadership assessment that shows you what’s working, what’s holding you back, and how to shift it. This means finding the right tool, that will give you meaningful data about leadership.

I recently worked with a senior executive—let’s call her Sarah. She was brilliant, driven, and had a track record of delivering results. But she couldn’t figure out why she kept getting passed over for promotions. When she took her 360 with me, the feedback was confronting: her bosses saw her as highly competent, but also too focused on execution over strategy—she was so immersed in delivering immediate results that she wasn’t stepping back to think and act strategically.

Until now, she’d been dismissing her failure to progress as a sign of gender bias and being the only female in her leadership team. While bias may have played a role, the assessment helped her see that her leadership approach was also a contributing factor, giving her a clear pathway for growth. Her wholehearted belief was that driving efficiency and hitting targets would prove her leadership value and get her promoted.

But her bosses wanted a leader who could set vision, influence across teams, and elevate the business beyond the day-to-day. And sadly, those same bosses didn’t have the right language or skills to help her understand the disconnect.

That assessment was the wake-up call she needed. Within months of working on her leadership presence, strategic thinking, and communication style, she not only improved team engagement but finally got the promotion she had been chasing for years.

This is why choosing the right leadership assessment matters. Some tools skim the surface, giving you a glimpse of your strengths without helping you understand your blind spots. Others go deeper, showing you where you’re holding yourself back and giving you a clear, actionable roadmap for transformation.

What Makes a Leadership Assessment Useful?

The best leadership assessments don’t just label traits; they guide growth by making feedback actionable and empowering. Personality-based assessments may tell you who you are, but they don’t show you how to evolve. True leadership feedback needs to do more than categorise—it must provide a roadmap for progress. High-performing women don’t just want to know their tendencies; they want to understand how to refine their leadership, strengthen their impact, and step into higher levels of influence.

There are dozens of leadership assessments out there, but not all of them will help you grow. Many focus on personality or working style, which can be interesting, but knowing your tendencies isn’t the same as developing your leadership.

A truly useful leadership assessment will:

✅ Provide insights beyond personality – Leadership isn’t just about who you are; it’s about how you show up for others.

✅ Uncover your blind spots – You need more than validation. You need to understand where your strengths are being overused and when your behaviours are getting in your way.

✅ Give you an action plan – Self-awareness is meaningless unless you know what to do with it. A good assessment doesn’t just tell you who you are—it shows you how to grow.

5 Leadership Assessments and What They Actually Tell You

1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

What it does: Categorises you into one of 16 personality types based on how you process information, make decisions, and interact with the world.

The value: MBTI is great for understanding communication and collaboration preferences. It can help teams work more effectively together by recognising different styles.

The gap: MBTI does not measure leadership effectiveness. It gives you a personality label, but it doesn’t show you how to evolve or improve as a leader.

I worked with a leader who took MBTI and discovered she was an INTJ—logical, strategic, and highly independent. And she proudly owned this title and spoke about this. But the assessment didn’t tell her that her independent problem-solving style was making her team feel excluded. It lacked the depth of insight to help her fully understand both the gifts and the challenges of this style. Without additional feedback, she wouldn’t have recognised that her natural preference was unintentionally shutting people out.

2. DiSC Profile

What it does: Categorises behaviour into four styles—Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness—helping leaders understand their natural tendencies.

The value: DiSC is useful for recognising how you interact with others and where conflict might arise in team dynamics.

The gap: DiSC is surface-level. It tells you what you do but not why—and it doesn’t show you how to change unhelpful patterns.

Understanding you have a certain trait, doesn’t help you understand why you have it and how to change it, you’re just left knowing there’s an issue you need to fix. You need a pathway to help you improve and DiSC lacks this.

3. CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder)

What it does: Identifies your top strengths out of 34 talent themes, helping leaders focus on what they naturally do well.

The value: Strengths-based leadership is a great approach—this tool helps leaders build confidence in their natural abilities.

The gap: I love leaders knowing what they do well. It’s super important and again unfortunately this assessment does not show you when your strengths become overused—which is often the biggest issue for high-performing women.

Real-world example: I once worked with a CFO whose top strength was Responsibility. She took ownership of everything, but it was exhausting her. CliftonStrengths validated that she was dependable—but it didn’t show her that she needed to delegate more to avoid burnout or her team feeling left behind and disengaged.

4. Hogan Leadership Forecast Series

What it does: Assesses leadership potential, identifies derailers under stress, and core values.

The value: Provides insight into how you lead under pressure—something many assessments miss. This is a great profile to understand how you respond when the chips are down.

The gap: Hogan is strong in identifying risks and is my second favourite tool, but it doesn’t provide a structured development plan for leaders who want to grow. It again lacks the depth of commentary and process wrapped around it to inspire growth and change.

5. The Leadership Circle Profile^TM (LCP)– The Most Transformative 360 Assessment Available

What it does: LCP is a 360-degree leadership assessment that measures both your effectiveness and the mindset behind your behaviours through the lens of everyone who works with you. It clearly shows you the gap between your perception and others and provides a road map of what levers to pull to improve your blinds pots and turn them into strengths.

The value: Unlike any other tool, LCP doesn’t just show you what you do—it reveals why you do it and, more importantly, how to evolve. It’s mapped so that your blind spots can be overcome by your strengths and provides clear guidance on strengths you’re over using and underutilising to grow and lead.

This is the tool that I used that transformed my leadership, my relationships and my career. Yes, it does need a good coach to debrief it but they have a rigorous process and training methodology which means that those doing debriefs have a deep understanding of the tool and its uses.

All of these things add up to make this hands down my favourite tool and the one I recommend. You can take their free self assessment to get a better understanding of the tool here if you’re interested.

Taking Action: How to Use Your Leadership Assessment for Real Growth

However you’re getting your leadership feedback, it’s what you do with it that counts and understanding your leadership strengths and blind spots is only the beginning. The real transformation happens when you take action on your insights. Whichever tool you use, here’s some ideas to make the most of your assessment results:

1. Reflect on Your Results with a Growth Mindset – Instead of viewing feedback as a judgment of your leadership, see it as a roadmap for improvement. Ask yourself: What’s the one shift I could make that would have the biggest impact?

2. Seek Additional Perspectives – Your assessment provides structured feedback, but conversations with trusted mentors, peers, and coaches can deepen your understanding of the themes that emerge.

3. Prioritise One or Two Key Areas – Trying to change everything at once leads to frustration. Focus on a small number of leadership behaviours that will deliver the greatest shift in your impact.

4. Create an Action Plan – Set specific goals for improvement. What new leadership habit will you develop? How will you track progress? Who can hold you accountable?

5. Commit to Continuous Feedback – Leadership isn’t a one-time assessment. The best leaders build ongoing feedback loops, ensuring they’re always evolving.

If You’re Serious About Growth, Choose the Right Mirror

Leadership isn’t about perfection—it’s about a deep and wholehearted desire to improve and step into your power. If you’re a high-performing woman who wants to lead at the next level, you need more than validation. You need insight, challenge, and a clear path forward.

The Leadership Circle Profile gives you all of that. It’s the tool I use with my executive clients because it drives real, lasting transformation. When I first took the LCP myself, I expected validation of my strengths. Instead, I got a confronting but invaluable insight: my drive for results was holding me back from stepping into a more strategic, empowering leadership style. It revealed where I was overusing my strengths, where my mindset was limiting my impact, and exactly what I needed to focus on to evolve. That experience reshaped how I lead—and it’s why I continue to use LCP with my clients today.

If you’re ready to see yourself clearly and lead with more confidence, clarity, and impact, let’s talk. Drop me a message or book a call—I’d love to help you step into the leader you’re meant to be.