Leadership

What is the Integrated Leadership Measure?

The ILM72 is a leading edge psychometric tool which integrates all major leadership models and is designed to measure leadership styles, The measure enables people in leadership positions to identify how they perform and behave as leaders in the work place - and how development might be guided to improve their effectiveness.

An examination of every leading leadership model showed that they all seemed to have their roots in six specific scales. These scales measure aspects of leadership style which the individual has adopted. People may adopt different styles in different situations. Leadership is situational.

It is now possible to measure an individual's adopted style and match these to the needs of the organisation.

ILM72 also provides an indication of an individuals score on 3 important factors which determine effective leadership, known as global scales. These three scales do overlap but they are separate factors, they are also not necessarily equal in weight.

These global scales correlate with a number of well known leadership models including Covey, Situational Leadership and the Action Centred Leadership model developed by Professor John Adair

Where does ILM72 add value?

Leadership is one of the key elements in inspiring people towards the achievement of organisational goals.

For Individuals

The needs of organisations are always changing this impacts on the optimum leadership style at any given time. The ILM72 enables you to:

• Examine individual styles and match these to the needs of the organisation
• Identify developmental needs & benefits - linking to the competency framework where appropriate.
• Understanding which skills, knowledge and behaviours should be developed and where are the priorities.
• Provide a clear basis for defining effective leadership in any situation/organisation
• Provide a framework for coaching, mentoring & personal development

For the Organisation

• Match the leadership style with the needs of the organisation at different times and in different circumstances
• Analyse the leadership profile of selected groups and assess against performance and/or behaviour

ILM72 Development

A detailed examination of every leading model in the academic and occupational spheres was carried out under the expert guidance of Dr. Peter Clough C.Psych. The project team incorporated both academic and occupational models. It was demonstrated that:

• All the models seemed to have their roots in one or more (sometimes all) of 6 leadership styles.
• There were linkages between all the models to a greater or lesser extent
• Further analysis showed that a second order set of characteristics emerge. These are the three global scales.
• This provides the basis upon which all models can be linked together.

What Does the ILM72 Measure?

The 6 specific scales

The 6 specific style factors are bi-polar. This means that the two ends of the scales are different and in this case there is no high or low end. They are simply two ends of a continuum between to related positions. The sten scale is in deciles.

• Stens 1 - 3 (30%) typically represent a preference for the style factor associated with this end of the scale
• Stens 8 - 10 (30%) typically represent a preference for the style factor associated with that end of the scale
• Stens 4 -7 (40%) typically represent the typical or average or normal person.

1. Task v. Person

   This reflects and measures the extent which the individual is orientated towards meeting the needs of the task or is concerned with the needs of individuals. A well understood scale in examining leadership and features directly in many models.

2. Flexible v. Dogmatic

   Someone at the Dogmatic end of the scale would have a strong belief that they know how things should be done around here. At the extreme one might see "there is only one way to achieve something .... and it's my way!". At the other end of the scale a Flexible style is one where the individual is open to ideas and suggestions, understanding "there is more than one way to skin a cat".

3. De-Centralised v. Centralised

   Someone who adopts a Centralised style is someone who prefers that everything goes through them. They may have a strong need to control or they may have a less mature group to work with and there is greater need for strong guidance. Someone with a De-centralised style is happy to delegate to others and to work through others. Their ethos is one of empowerment.

4. Reward v. Punishment

   Reward indicates that the leader is prepared to reward and recognise acceptable and high performance. This can be monetary or in the form of a tangible benefit or it could be "warm strokes". It equates to Covey's "win-win" concept.

   Punishment means that the prevailing style is to accept good or high performance as the norm ("that's what I pay the person for already") and to punish in some way any shortcoming in performance.

5. The Means v. The End

   A Leader whose style is focused on the End is someone for whom the result matters and little else does. Everything can be sacrificed for that goal. This does not necessarily mean that they are immoral or amoral - they are likely to be very focused.

   Someone who is focused on the Means is someone who is concerned about how the goal is achieved and will adopt standards and values to ensure that it is done properly. They will also take into account the implications of what they do - and will typically tend to be visionary, concerned about environment and development capability in people and process.

6. Structured v. Organic

   The Organic style is one where leadership seems to come naturally in some way - these individual do not seem to force it and they are often described as natural leaders. In some instances this might be related to "charismatic" or having "style" but not always.

   The Structured style is one where leadership is drawn from a text book, models or training. This is not a natural style, the leader following detailed plans & processes to achieve things through others.

The 3 global factors in more detail:

The analysis shows that the six specific scales are subsumed within three global scales. These Global factors have been derived from statistical analyses of the data gathered for the core study.

The 3 (second order) global factors are uni-polar. This means that the two ends of the scales are different and one end is low with the other end (usually the higher scoring end) being high.