It all starts, of course, with the most familiar use case: attracting the right person for each role. Several years ago, a leader we’ll call Steve was a finalist candidate in a CEO search for a large logistics company. He was clearly brilliant. He had unusually high business analytic skills, an incredible drive for results, and an impressively well-balanced appetite for risk, and he was particularly strong in his ability to disrupt and lead innovation consistently and productively. But his social intelligence was underdeveloped. It wasn’t that he had a particularly large ego; indeed, he demonstrated self-awareness and empathy. He had simply never applied his mind to how best to approach working with and through others by influence and how to develop his stakeholder map strategically. He managed his team well but was less good at building constructive, productive relationships with his peers, his line manager, and other stakeholders.

The need to improve interpersonal intelligence is not uncommon in senior leaders. As people develop their careers, they focus on building expertise in their chosen line of work. If they have talent, they do well and get promoted. Eventually, if they are really good at what they do, they’ll be promoted to the executive level and even further. However, all too often we meet people who have been promoted to the most senior levels without understanding that the nature of their job has changed completely: it is no longer about doing the job themselves; it’s about enabling and facilitating others to do the job and, when necessary, clearing the roadblocks that might prevent them from succeeding. Those others will range from the direct team to peer executives, clients and suppliers, the CEO or the board, and external stakeholders. In other words, leadership is no longer only downward, but it is also outward and upward.

Developing leaders more individually

As the examples above show, whether assessments are specifically focused on identifying leaders’ development needs or not, they inevitably reveal those needs, and they can and should underpin leadership development efforts of all kinds. Assessments are also a first step in setting goals for coaching and are the most effective way to set priorities for, and understand the success of, broader leadership development journeys. Many companies are getting this right, our research suggests. For example, 78% of executives we surveyed last year said that the assessments mostly or entirely resulted in them being given development opportunities tailored to the assessment results.4

Planning more effectively

Many corporations now provide their executives with coaches, particularly as executives become more senior. And where coaching follows on from deep-dive executive assessment the impact is amplified, because the executive feels they have been heard and understood, so they buy into the feedback, and it becomes much easier to engage them in the coaching.

Conclusion

Organizing your home office is an investment in your productivity and well-being. By following these steps, you can create a workspace that is not only functional but also enjoyable to work in. Remember, the key is to create a setup that works best for you and to keep it maintained for long-term efficiency. By following these tips and regularly maintaining your workspace, you’ll be well on your way to achieving a more organized and productive home office.