Do you have a clear sense of the ceiling your leaders are currently setting for your organization?
And do you have a clear sense of the trajectory your leaders have put your organization on?
These are two questions every CEO, executive, and HR leader should be able to answer.
The reason is simple: current performance is not a good way to evaluate either the organization’s ceiling or trajectory, and thus, can be misleading.
An organization can be producing strong results while becoming less adaptable, more dependent on a few leaders, or less capable of handling what is coming next. General Electric and Boeing are both useful reminders that strong performance can coexist with a negative trajectory that only become obvious later.
So, knowing how the organization is performing today is not enough.
We also need to understand what leadership currently makes possible—and where that leadership is taking the organization.
That is why I am increasingly talking about Leadership Health.
What Is Leadership Health?
Leadership Health is the condition of leadership across an organization or a defined leadership population. It reflects the degree to which leadership enables performance today while expanding the organization’s capacity to navigate future change, complexity, and uncertainty.
I think of Leadership Health as shaping two things.
- The first is the organization’s ceiling: what the organization can handle before leadership becomes the constraint.
- The second is its trajectory: whether judgment, ownership, adaptability, and leadership capacity are expanding, holding steady, or contracting over time.
And, those two things are not always aligned.
An organization can have a fairly high ceiling today while still being on a negative trajectory.
The Three Dimensions of Leadership Health
To understand Leadership Health, I look at three dimensions.
- Results Delivery asks whether leaders can reliably get the job done. Are they producing the quality and amount of work the organization needs? Are they meeting commitments and delivering important outcomes?
- Leadership Capability looks at the level from which leaders are operating. Do they have the internal capacity to think, adapt, relate, decide, develop others, and navigate pressure, change, and complexity effectively?
- Leadership Environment looks at the conditions surrounding those leaders. Are leaders operating in a system that enables or constrains the talent and capabilities of its leaders.
The most useful picture comes from looking at all three together.
Why I Developed the Leadership Health Scan
That is exactly why I developed the Leadership Health Scan.
It is a free, 5–7 minute assessment designed to give executives, HR leaders, and L&D leaders an initial snapshot of the Leadership Health of a defined leadership population.
It is not designed to evaluate one individual leader. It is meant to assess a group—such as an executive team, VP population, directors, or another clearly defined leadership group.
And it is not intended to be a full organizational diagnosis. It is a starting point that can help surface patterns worth exploring more deeply.
What I Am Seeing So Far
Roughly 50 leaders have completed the Scan so far.
That is still an early sample, so I do not view it as a representative benchmark.
But the initial pattern is interesting.
The most common profile so far is relatively strong Results Delivery paired with weaker Leadership Capability and Leadership Environment.
In other words, many organizations appear to be getting acceptable or strong results while the deeper leadership conditions underneath those results are less healthy.
That matters because it can create a false sense of security.
The way that I interpret these results is that these organizations may be performing well today, but their ceiling is stunted and their trajectory is downward.
Why Complete the Scan?
There are several reasons the Scan can be useful.
- You may want to know whether current performance is masking deeper leadership risk.
- You may want to understand whether your leaders have the capability required for greater complexity, pressure, and change.
- You may want to see whether the surrounding environment is enabling strong leadership or making it harder.
- And you may simply want a better sense of whether the leadership in your organization or division is putting you on a positive, flat, or negative trajectory.
The Scan will not answer every question.
But it can help you see which questions deserve more attention.
Ultimately, it is an initial holistic evaluation of your leaders.
From Snapshot to Deeper Diagnosis
While holistic, this Leadership Health Scan is meant to be a light diagnostic.
If the results look healthy, they can help you see what is worth protecting and strengthening.
If they surface concerns, the next step is to understand what is driving the pattern. Is the primary issue Results Delivery? Leadership Capability? Leadership Environment? Or some combination of the three?
That is where deeper diagnosis becomes important.
A major part of my work is helping executives, division heads, and HR/L&D leaders assess and elevate Leadership Health within their organizations.
Because when Leadership Health rises, the organization’s ceiling rises with it.
And its trajectory can change.
If you want an initial snapshot, complete the free Leadership Health Scan.
And if you want to go deeper, reach out to me and we can explore a more comprehensive Leadership Health diagnostic for your organization or division. Let me know.
