The head of an investment group within a large diversified financial services firm, in partnership with his counterpart in human resources, wanted to strengthen his own leadership skills and those of eight key executives within the investment group. They decided to use a 360° assessment to gather data on the leadership skills of the executives, and hired a top executive coach, Liz Cheever of Cheever Communications, to work individually with each of the nine executives to discuss the results of the assessment and craft an improvement plan. The decision-makers asked Cheever to conduct a review of 360° assessments in order to find one that would meet their standards for ease of use, soundness of method and relevance to business leadership.

Although Cheever had never worked with the Performance Leaders 360° Leadership Assessment, it made her short list due to the reputations of Performance Leaders and Denison Consulting for quality, depth, and business focus. After receiving Cheever's recommendations, based on competitive analysis of ten 360° assessments, the decision-makers chose the Performance Leaders 360° Leadership Assessment.

They chose Performance Leaders for several reasons:
• the assessment's strong focus on leadership, not just management
• relevance of the questions in the assessment to what they wanted to measure
• thoughtfulness of the survey questions
• smooth, easy, and quick online administration
• the capacity for each executive to invite an unlimited number of respondents to provide evaluative feedback
• the extensive Denison database of scores, which would allow the leaders to see their results normalized against those of leaders from other companies
• the amount and specificity of the data provided, in highly visual reports

In a matter of days, Performance Leaders launched and administered the assessment, which ran for two weeks. Then, less than a week after the assessment closed, Cheever initiated work with each individual executive.

The Performance Leaders 360° Leadership Assessment enabled Cheever to provide high-impact, data-driven, one-on-one coaching sessions with the nine executives. Cheever faced a tough audience, many of whom were skeptical of the coaching process and who were intent on questioning the fundamental meaning of the numbers. The Performance Leaders team worked with Cheever to ensure that she had all the facts at her fingertips so she could focus on effective coaching. With sound data and experience, Cheever was able to gain the leaders' trust and sincere buy-in, and to establish together which skills to focus on.

Performance Leaders' attention to customer service drew kudos from the firm's executives. Performance Leaders ensured effective and timely development discussions for the leaders by working with the firm's executives to decide on the easiest way to administer the surveys, keeping the executives informed through every step of the process, and quickly providing additional data to answer questions posed by members of the group.

In addition, the Performance Leaders team provided a composite analysis of the group, identifying patterns and relative strengths and weaknesses. This additional analysis leveraged the benefits of the 360° process by helping top managers to chart a meaningful strategy for the group to work together more effectively as well as to continue developing individual strengths.

One month later, the investment group had the ingredients in place to create change within the group. All nine executives had a comprehensive perspective on their baseline leadership skills, and they had a coach who shared that understanding and had won their confidence to build ongoing programs that would increase their strength as leaders. As they began that work, according to the investment group's human resources leader, the success of the project had already "created quite a stir" in the organization.