Coach Preparation Tips:

Awareness

Look Within and Around the Profile ask yourself…

What patterns or themes am I becoming aware of?  What reactions, assumptions, or curiosities are surfacing for me?  How might my own perspective influence what I am seeing?

Uncover Strengths

Identify the client’s strengths and areas of demonstrated capability. Pay attention to the following ranges:

Creative Half

• Excellence: 80% or higher
• Emerging Strengths: 66% or higher

Reactive Half

• 33% or lower

Which strengths stand out most? Where does the client show confidence or momentum? What strengths may still be emerging? How might these strengths support the client’s growth and effectiveness?

Explore Gaps

Differences between self-ratings and others’ ratings of 25 percentile points or greater are often meaningful and worth exploring further.

Where are the biggest gaps?  Does the client rate themselves higher or lower than others do?  Could these gaps indicate blind spots or underestimated strengths? What might these differences reveal about self-awareness, impact, or leadership effectiveness?

Gifts in the Reactive

Reactive tendencies can sometimes reflect important strengths when balanced and intentionally managed.

Are any strengths being overused or relied on too heavily?  How might Reactive patterns limit the client’s effectiveness or relationships?  What growth opportunities may be hidden within these tendencies? What strengths or capabilities could emerge through greater awareness and balance?

Growth Opportunities

Explore what may represent the client’s next developmental edge or leadership growth opportunity.

What might be the client’s next step in their leadership development journey?  Is there an opportunity to strengthen an adjacent or opposite capability? What Creative capacities may be ready for fuller expression or integration? Where might greater balance, range, or flexibility support the client’s growth?

Written Comments

Look for Patterns and Context.

What themes consistently appear in the feedback? What additional insights emerge when connecting the numbers with the narrative comments? Are there contradictions, tensions, or reinforcing themes within the feedback? What seems most important to explore during the coaching conversation?

Consider Different Perspectives

Explore how different evaluator groups may experience the client differently.

Are there noticeable differences between evaluator groups? What patterns emerge across perspectives? Where do perceptions appear aligned—or disconnected? What insights or questions could these differing perspectives open-up in the coaching conversation?

Explore Curiosity

Before the debrief, take a moment to reflect on your own curiosity, learning, and coaching presence.

What am I most curious about as I review this profile?  What questions might open up meaningful reflection and insight for the client?  What assumptions do I need to set aside before the conversation? How can I best support the client’s learning, growth, and self-discovery during the debrief?

Let Go of Assumptions

Now, take everything you have noticed, interpreted, or assumed—and let it go.

Pause. Breathe. Enter the coaching debrief with an open mind, a grounded presence, and a willingness to explore alongside the client without attachment to your own conclusions or preconceptions.

Option: Invite client to review areas of the report in preparation for the debrief.

(Sections: Leadership Circle Profile, Written Comments, Graph Results)

The pre-debrief allows the leader time to reflect and get prepared for their debrief.  ​

The purpose of sending the report ahead (should you choose) is to allow the leader time to notice, orient and have space before engaging in the debrief. Many of us are reflective thinkers and allowing this time honors our client’s desire to review the model, read their comments, and even go to their results to make the most of their debrief with a coach.​

If you do not send the report ahead, you may provide the report in session.

Note: We recommend you review the results and comments before sending the report to the leader. If there are concerning comments you may want to wait until the session to share the report.

To prepare:​

Send your client their results via the link the evening before their debrief. Confirm the client has received their personal interactive LCP report and provide some guidance, like: ​

“To prepare for your debrief, it would be a good idea to look over a couple of sections before we meet together, if you have time.

1. Leadership Circle Profile: The orientation to the model, including the videos.
2. Written Comments: Your comments from your evaluators. It can be important to take the time to reflect on how these comments inform your development.
3. Graph Results: Briefly review your results. It’s OK if you do not understand everything right now.

We will go over the rest of the report together when we meet. I am very much looking forward to your debrief session and working with you.”

As a coach, you can also prepare for the debrief by reviewing the report. You may consider focusing on:​

• The Comments. What do you notice?
• Greatness: Creative half, any dimensions above 80%ile, 67%ile and 50%ile. (Emerging)
• Greatness: Reactive half, any dimension less than or equal to 33%ile. ​
• Four Report Summary. How would you explain each? ​
• Gaps: Between self and average respondent scores of 25% or more. Where is the self-assessment higher and where is it lower? ​
• Gaps: Between self and any one of the evaluator groups of 25% or more.​
• Gaps: Are these gaps more common with any single evaluator group? ​
• Consider one Reactive/Creative tension that could be one opportunity to explore.

Build connection, rapport, and confirm confidentiality.

Your desire to have your client feel open and safe as they discuss their personal thoughts and feelings will be enhanced by building a relationship with them. The stronger your relationship is, the deeper you will be able to explore their story and report together. ​

It is a good idea to tell them a little bit about yourself. Your personal life and your work – this builds safety and trust. You will be asking them to talk about themselves a lot. This only takes 2 minutes.​

Verbalize that this debrief, as with any coaching session, is confidential and will not be shared with anyone.

Explain the flow of the debrief.

If you, as the coach, are new to delivering LCP 360 debriefs, it is useful to use these phrases until you are comfortable with the overall process. Soon you will naturally find your own style and words. ​
​
Explain the flow of the debrief so they are comfortable with what will be covered in the 90 minutes scheduled: ​
“The flow for the debrief starts with a little background and context so I understand a bit about your current environment and how the LCP might be useful. We will then explore a bit of your leadership journey and overall development choices from 3 timeframes. This will help us be able to identify how events are influencing your report, if they are. Then we will move into your report, starting with some orientation, your comments and graphs, and the rest of the report. I will pause for any questions or areas you want to focus on, so we will be led by you. We will discuss your questions, insights, and impact along the way.​
​
Reminder: Sometimes a debrief can feel intense and perhaps even overwhelming. Please let me know if at any point you feel that you need a break or a moment to think and reflect. ​

Ask for a brief overview of their business context for the LCP.

If you, as the coach, are new to delivering LCP 360 debriefs, it is useful to use these phrases until you are comfortable with the overall process. Soon you will naturally find your own style and words.

To help me be most effective, I would love to have some context from you on 360 tools you have taken before, your current role context, and the evaluators you chose. ​

• For my personal benefit, can I just ask what exposure or previous experience you have had of this tool or of other similar tools? If they have done one or more before, ask: “What benefits or insights did you get from the previous occasions?” ​
• Tell me about how you identify as a leader or a person. What might be helpful to me to know?​
• How long have you been in this role and/or company? What is it like to be a leader here?​ Current challenge/goal?
• Tell me about your evaluator circle. How/why did you choose them?​ I notice from the report that there were a total of # evaluators: ​
  • Bosses​
  • Peers​
  • Direct Reports
  • Others ​
• Is there anything important I should know about any of your evaluators? If they have anyone in the “Other category”, check and understand who and on what basis or rationale they were selected. ​

Thank you. This is so helpful and leads us right to talking about our 3 timeframes.

Consider:

• Recent years up to now: Key moments/events, people, lessons.

• Career building: Leaders, people, pivotal/shaping experiences, lessons.

• Formative years: Early influences, people, defining events, cultural influences.

It is very important that the Leadership Journey be done in a debrief and connects patterns and key moments that can be critical. The Leadership Journey is a snapshot of some pivotal experiences, events and significant people that have shaped the leader’s patterns and habits of thinking, from three specific and different timeframes in their life. This is not designed to be a ‘deep personal dive’ but rather a plot of three major influential times to gain insight into patterns and influences. ​

Some Language To Use: ​

Moving into your leadership journey, key moments will help me understand a little about what is important to you and your leadership. In this portion, I will ask you about three different timeframes from your life, particularly what may have been a shaping or defining event or circumstance. You may not have thought much about this for a while, so it is good for us to spend some time and thought highlighting a few important things.

One way to think about your Leadership Journey is the way you might think about your wardrobe. As you build a wardrobe, you may first look to what your parent or guardian chose for you, then you may add a style that is not them at all, and before long, your closet is simply the things you wear, like the blouse/shirt you chose today. You chose what you wore today from the wardrobe in your closet. Leadership is no different. You choose your leadership style from a wardrobe of experiences. ​

Language to use might be:

“I’d like for you to consider three time periods. Your recent years up to now, career-building years, and formative years. For each time period, I will ask you to think about a key moment, event, or person that had a role in shaping your leadership. We won’t be going over your whole story, just using a few examples that come to your mind now. Where would you like to start? You can choose to start at the present moment or the formative years”. ​

Hold the space for them to tell their story, lessons and beliefs, and pivot points. For each segment, you might ask one of the questions below, or you may have someone who only needs one prompt.​

Current period: ​

• What people, key moments, or events seem to be shaping your thinking, values, choices, and leadership currently? ​
• Have there been any pivotal situations, circumstances, or people in recent years that have shaped your leadership views, your values, or your perspectives recently? ​

Workforce entrance: ​

• When you first entered the workplace, what story, person, or pivot points ended up being significant to who you are or how you felt about leadership? Why was it important?​

Foundational years: ​

• What was growing up like? What example, person, or circumstances come to mind that shaped some of your choices about what was important?
• You may need to give a prompt: For example, growing up in a military family taught you the value of discipline, or moving countries regularly left you self-sufficient, leaving friends. Alternatively, growing up in a family who held scientific honors might influence your desire to be the smartest, analytical, and to not get emotionally involved. ​

As the individual discusses and explores these questions, we are looking out for: ​

• What Reactive patterns and evolutions are you noticing? ​
• What threads do you notice go across timeframes?​
• What perspective-taking are they doing as they share? ​
• Is there anything that they are avoiding or running away from? ​

Utilize the interactive report description pages to walk through the LCP model construct.

(Section: Description of the profile)

The Interactive LCP provides a great description and orientation of the Leadership Circle model. More explanation of the model will come later as you orient them to their own results. Two videos are included in the orientation. ​​

Ensure your client understands:​

• That the LCP is a model and a pathway for leadership and development. The LCP is a strengths-based tool and has been validated to be highly correlated with leadership effectiveness and business performance. ​
• Since it is a strengths-based model, it is important to remember that there is nothing here that you should think of as “having to fix”. ​
• It is also important to recognize that no 360-degree tool can ever assess or describe all of who you are as a leader. It provides a snapshot in time, within the current context, and can enable insight into your leadership and how your leadership is impacting others.​​

Top half/Bottom half: Creative – Top half / Reactive – Bottom half

• Creative Competencies are leadership competencies, well researched and validated, and highly correlated to leadership effectiveness and business performance. They tend to be sustainable over time, scalable, engaging, inspiring, and unleashing of energy in the system.
• Reactive Tendencies tend to be things that got us to where we are now, worked for us in the past, and can be things that we automatically may default to, especially when activated. Reactive Tendencies can get results in the short-term, but usually with a cost to self or others. In this way, they tend to put a limit on what we may desire and on higher levels of effectiveness.
• 18 Leadership Competencies (Creative) are contained in the top half.
• 11 Leadership Tendencies (Reactive) in the bottom half.

Left side/Right side: Relationship Left side/ Task right side

Together, the model is complete with these 4 quadrants: Creative Relationship / Reactive Relationship / Creative Task / Reactive Task.

Scoring/Percentile preview: Review the score scale and percentiles definition that is part of this section.

Let’s now go to your comments and then to your graph results.

This section moves them into their results.  ​

(Section: Written Comments)

Begin by asking the client what they observed in their comments if the report was given in advance. Or go to the comment section, read the comments together, and pause to allow reflection.

Invite reflection on:

• What is confirming?
• What, if anything, was surprising?
• What do you notice as you sit with these comments?

As a coach, you may want to:

• Notice how raters perceive different strengths/costs.
• Notice what perspective they can access.
• Notice how some of the comments may intertwine with the leadership journey shared​.

Graphs and Report Summary: This section combines some orientation as they view their own results, with coaching along the way. Make sure to pause and make room for their exploration. You may spend the bulk of your time in the graph without going to other areas of the report.

(Sections: Graph Results, Report Summary)

The report displays first their inner circle and then their full circle.​

Inner Circle: Explain the Inner circle dimensions: The Inner circle displays the summary dimensions – 5 dimensions in Creative and 3 dimensions in Reactive.

• Identify: There is a self-score; it is a solid line. The evaluator score is the shaded area. ​
• Ask the leader what they notice about their Inner circle results, just at the high level. ​
• You may want them to describe in literal terms what they are noticing and seeing. (“The green shading is at the 55th percentile here and at the 34th percentile there, which is different to my own rating.”)​

The Full Circle Graph (includes the inner and the outer circle): Explain that their results are shown now in both Inner and Outer circle form, in the full circle.

• The Outer Circle names each Creative Leadership Competency and Reactive Tendency. As they see their results, you will want to walk them through the Creative Competencies and Reactive Tendencies in the circle.
• Percentiles and Scores. Now, with their scores in front of them, you may want to use an example, now that they see their results, for this description (even though you went over it a bit before in the initial orientation). A Percentile Example: My son had a big head – it looked perfect to me. His head was in the 98th%. That meant that only 2% had heads bigger than him. He was still perfect,  but it helped to understand proportion, and to size up those baseball caps! (Use your example)​

At this stage, every debrief is unique, and there is no one way of continuing. But typically, you will want to be present with what they want to explore and understand.​

Consider what might benefit them most. You might not get to all of the report pages in the initial debrief. Do not feel the need to push through; instead, allow for a deep unfolding of what is important to them in this first debrief session. ​ The report is only the report, and all the parts may or may not be important in one debrief.​

In addition to the graph, explore sections that the leaders will benefit from most. Areas could include:​

• Assessment questions that link to an area they are curious about.​
• Leadership brand. (self/others)​​
• Interactive manual ​
• Breakout graphs with Leadership effectiveness scales.​​
• Sort tables.​​

Utilize:​

• Your perspective and trust intuition.
• Powerful questions
• Coaching Skills

Remember, you are a co-explorer with them, not an expert in them. (Sections: Full report, Data and Graphs by category, Sorts)​

Throughout the debrief continue to utilize the skills of inquiry, listening, exploration, and sharing.​

Before the session finishes, check how they felt about the debrief session and for their understanding. If this is a two-part debrief, confirm the next date.

Finish with the Awareness assignment.

Option 1:

Choose an area that was discovered in session for the awareness exercise and start by selecting 1 Creative Competency and 1 Reactive Tendency that they are curious about. ​

• Get to know this tendency and notice it in action at work and home, no need to change it, just become more aware.​
• What internal assumptions appear?
• Notice what’s happening emotionally, physiologically, thoughts and narrative. ​
• Get to know it intimately. ​
• Study it like a young child studies ants. ​
• Welcome it; it’s not about rejecting it. It has likely served you well.​

2. Invite them to explore a Creative area they desire to develop more fully (in this or next session).

• Review the beliefs, assumptions, and behaviors of this Creative Competency. Review the interactive manual.
• Notice this competency in a leader who demonstrates this at work. What are they doing? What do you notice?
• Notice what comes up as you explore this competency – thoughts, emotions, fears, desires.