Leadership Circle · 360° Assessment

Leadership Circle Profile

The most comprehensive 360° leadership assessment available — revealing not just what you do as a leader, but why you do it.

Research-Validated 360° 29 Leadership Dimensions Ph.D.-Level Coaches Certified Practitioners
Format
Online 360° Survey
Duration
15–20 Min per Rater
Debrief
1:1 with SPARC Coach
Validation
IPRA Research-Validated
About the Assessment
Most leaders work from an incomplete picture.

Most leaders operate with an incomplete picture. The feedback you receive is often filtered through organizational politics, social norms, and the desire to be polite. Your own self-perception — however thoughtful — carries blind spots that years of experience alone cannot correct. The result is a gap between how you intend to lead and how others actually experience your leadership.

The Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) closes that gap. It is a research-validated 360° assessment that goes beyond traditional competency measures to reveal the underlying beliefs, assumptions, and habits of thought that drive your leadership behavior. It does not simply tell you what you do as a leader — it illuminates why you do it.

That distinction is what makes the LCP useful in a way most 360s are not. It maps your leadership against a proven framework that integrates both the inner dimension of leadership — your beliefs, motivations, and self-concept — and the outer dimension — how those internal patterns show up in your behavior as experienced by those around you.

The Framework
Creative Competencies & Reactive Tendencies

The LCP is the only instrument that measures the two primary leadership domains simultaneously. The upper half of the circle maps 18 Creative Competencies that drive effectiveness. The lower half reveals 11 Reactive Tendencies that limit it.

Creative leaders focus on bringing desired results into being. Reactive leaders focus on problem resolution — reacting against stress, anxiety, and inner conflict. Understanding this dynamic is the key to sustained leadership growth.

Creative · Upper Half
Relating, Self-Awareness, Authenticity, Systems Awareness, Achieving
Reactive · Lower Half
Complying, Protecting, Controlling
Leadership Circle Profile Diagram
The Evidence
Why the LCP Works

Leaders who score predominantly in the Creative competencies tend to receive higher leadership-effectiveness ratings — and Anderson and Adams' research links them to stronger business-performance ratings at the organizations they lead. The LCP is a universal-model 360 with construct validity documented by the Institute for Psychological Research and Application (IPRA), and is among the most widely-used leadership 360s in global practitioner use.

.93
Correlation
Between Creative leadership competencies and Leadership Effectiveness scores
4.4:1
Strengths Ratio
For every leadership liability, Creative leaders demonstrate 4.4 strengths — Reactive leaders show just 0.9
29
Dimensions
Measured across Creative and Reactive domains, summarized into 8 core leadership scores

Source: Leadership Circle · IPRA construct validity studies · Anderson & Adams, Scaling Leadership (Wiley, 2019)

The Leadership Circle Profile® is the intellectual property of Conscious Leadership, LLC, used by SPARC under license as a Leadership Circle Certified Practitioner.

Our Approach
How SPARC Uses the LCP

At SPARC, we are certified Leadership Circle practitioners with deep experience integrating the LCP into executive coaching engagements. We use the LCP not as a standalone report, but as the foundation for a structured engagement — one that builds in three deliberate movements, returning more of the interpretive work to the client by design.

1
Assessment
You select your evaluators — your boss, peers, and direct reports — and each person completes a confidential online survey. The process takes 15–20 minutes per evaluator and captures a full 360° view of your leadership.
2
A Deliberate Arc
A SPARC coach guides you through your results in three structured sessions — moving from coach-guided exploration to client-led inquiry to your own agenda entirely. Senior leaders don't process complex feedback in a single sitting. We build for that.
3
Development
Together, we craft a personalized Leadership Development Plan with concrete goals, practices, and milestones. Ongoing coaching supports you in turning awareness into lasting behavioral change.
What You Receive
Every LCP Engagement Includes
Comprehensive Report
A detailed written report with percentile scores, self-vs-evaluator comparisons, and de-identified open-ended feedback across all 29 dimensions.
Leadership Development Plan
A personalized, actionable development plan built collaboratively with your SPARC coach, grounded in your LCP results and leadership context.
Confidential Coaching
One-on-one support from a certified, Ph.D.-level SPARC coach who helps you translate insight into sustained behavioral change.
Why It Matters
The Leadership Circle Profile is not based on opinion or theory alone. It is the product of decades of empirical research connecting leadership behavior to business outcomes.
Research validated by the Institute for Psychological Research and Application (IPRA)
Who This Serves
Who Is the LCP For?

The LCP is for leaders who are ready to grow — not because something is broken, but because they want to lead at their highest level.

Presidents, Provosts & Deans
Most useful 12+ months into the role, when the gap between intended and received leadership starts to show up in cabinet dynamics, 360 feedback, or board conversations.
Foundation & Nonprofit EDs
When staff feedback has plateaued, the board sees you one way, and you are not sure which view is closest to true.
Senior Leaders Stepping Up
For leaders whose next role asks more than the skills that got them here. Makes the inner habits visible before they become limits on the new mandate.
Leaders in Transition
For leaders entering a new institution, scope, or level of authority — wanting structured data before early decisions calcify into reputation.
Cabinets & Senior Teams
For intact senior teams running LCP individually and then together — surfacing the patterns the team produces collectively, beyond what any one member sees.
Founders & Founding EDs
For founders evolving from doing the work to leading the people doing it. When the operating style that built the organization is not the one that will scale it.
LCP FAQs
How is the LCP different from other 360 assessments? +
Most 360 assessments only measure competencies — what a leader does. The LCP also measures the underlying beliefs and assumptions that drive those behaviors, providing a complete picture of both the inner and outer dimensions of leadership. It is the only instrument that integrates both Creative and Reactive orientations into a single profile.
How many evaluators should I include? +
We recommend including your supervisor, several peers, and multiple direct reports to ensure a well-rounded perspective. Most leaders include 12–20 evaluators, though the minimum is typically 5–6 for statistical reliability.
Is my feedback confidential? +
Yes. All evaluator responses are completely anonymous and de-identified in the report. Your SPARC coach works with you one-on-one, and your results are never shared with your organization unless you explicitly choose to share them.
How long does the entire process take? +
The survey period typically takes 1–2 weeks for all evaluators to respond. Sessions are then scheduled across the engagement arc. Most leaders complete a Foundation engagement in 6–8 weeks; extended and integrated engagements run 8–14 weeks depending on the package.
Can the LCP be used for entire leadership teams? +
Yes. SPARC's Leader Development — For Teams engagement uses the LCP as the foundation for a full team engagement — individual sessions for each leader, followed by a cross-team synthesis and institutional action planning. See the LCP Packages page for the full structure.

The Leadership Circle Profile® is the intellectual property of Conscious Leadership, LLC; SPARC uses it under license as a Leadership Circle Certified Practitioner. Full trademarks & licensing →