What Lies Beneath: Discovering Your Team's True Potential

Great leadership begins with clear insight. The right assessments can uncover hidden strengths, silent struggles, and the fastest path to high performance.

When you’re in a new leadership role, it can be surprisingly difficult to accurately assess your team without spending months finding out the hard way.

It’s hard to know who to trust, who to listen to, or how to judge performance objectively. To know the difference between giving someone the benefit of the doubt, or being unreasonable.

What lies beneath the surface can vary enormously - some issues are easily resolved, others not so much. There's almost always untapped potential, which can be revealed with confidence, clarity or skill development.

On the flipside, it is also common to find that poor performance that has been left to fester, individuals who not operating at level, poor processes, a lack of clarify, alignment, or people who just won't collaborate.

Most leaders start by interviewing their teams and seek in put from other key stakeholders, which is essential. However, there are also a range of assessment options available to bring objectivity and clarity to the table, to unite and accelerate your team forward from there.

I consider myself assessment tool agnostic as I simply don't believe that the same diagnostic is right for every situation. After many years and hundreds and hundreds of assessments, the most critical considerations are that the tool selected is right for the context, and that the results are delivered constructively.

Here are some common tools and when to use them:

1. Personality Builds deep self-awareness by revealing innate strengths, motivators, and derailers. Valuable for coaching, succession, and career planning. When used across a team, the collective impact is significant.

2. 360-Degree Feedback Highlights blind spots and strengths from multiple perspectives. Ideal for development when psychological safety is high, not recommended for new teams or leaders.

3. Behavioural/Social Style Clarifies communication and behavioural preferences. Best used to improve understanding, relationships and connection. A lighter, more cost-effective option.

4. Strengths Emphasising strengths boosts confidence and performance. Useful for individual growth and team synergy.

5. High-Performing Team A powerful method to identify performance levers and gaps, with benchmarked insights. Especially useful for new teams or those ready to scale up (requires 5+ people).

6. Leadership Capability Assesses strengths and potential across leadership attributes such as influence, inclusion, adaptability, and delivery, measured against proven benchmarks.

7. Mental Toughness Supports resilience, wellbeing, and performance, effective both individually and in a group setting.

This list is far from exhaustive and all of them have their place when thoughtfully applied. Used well, assessments enhance your qualitative insights and fast-track meaningful progress.

What tools have helped you better understand yourself or your team?

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Sophie Graves | Executive and Team Leadership Coach

I help CEOs, senior leaders and their teams to define their version of success, and lead strategically and sustainably for greatest impact.

If you would like to have a confidential chat about options for you or your team, please send me a direct message or email sgraves@theadaptgroup.com.au.