Raise your hand if your company has ever sent you to an offsite. 🙋♀️
Now keep it up if you took a personality test there. And keep it up if, sometime in the last year, you got a 360 review.
These are the leadership industry’s greatest hits. Companies love them, spend a lot on them and roll them out every year. And they’re not useless! Each one is good at something.
They just stop helping at the exact moment you need them most.
The offsite
The offsite is great for a few things. You get out of the office. You actually talk to the people you only see on Zoom. Maybe there’s a trust fall. (There’s always a trust fall.)
You leave feeling connected, inspired and ready for real change.
Then Monday morning hits. Your inbox has 247 unread emails, the launch is behind, and the “real change” lives in a notebook you’ll never open again.
The offsite gives you a great day. It can’t give you a different Monday.
The personality test
Myers-Briggs. Enneagram. DISC. StrengthsFinder. Maybe all four.
And they’re fun! It’s kind of thrilling to read a paragraph that describes you perfectly.
But then something sneaky happens.
“I’m an introvert, so I’m not great at leading big meetings.”
“I’m a Type 2, so of course I can’t say no.”
“I’m just not a confrontation person.”
And suddenly the test that was supposed to help you understand yourself is deciding what you’re allowed to do.
You can be an introvert who runs a great all-hands. You can be a people-pleaser who learns to say no. You can hate conflict and still have the hard conversation.
And while we’re here, notice the labels you hand your team too. “She’s our creative one.” “He’s not a numbers guy.” They’re listening.
The 360
The 360 sounds amazing on paper. Honest feedback from your boss, your peers and your team, all in one report!
And sometimes it really is useful. But here’s how it usually goes: you get a PDF full of comments, you read the one critical line about forty times, and then... nothing. No plan. No follow up. No one helping you figure out what to do with it.
A 360 with no follow up is just a very expensive way to feel bad.
What all three are missing
Look at what these tools actually do. The offsite shows you what’s possible. The personality test tells you your tendencies. The 360 tells you how others see you.
All useful information. And none of them teaches you what to do with it when the founder sends a “quick thought!!” at 6pm, or when your team needs you calm and you’re anything but.
That’s the missing layer. The part that turns all that insight into how you actually lead on a regular Tuesday.
Where we’re going next
In part three, we’re getting into that missing layer: the skills underneath everything else, and why they’re the part that finally makes leadership development stick.
Until then, use the tools. Just don’t let them do all the work.
Which one of these has kept you stuck the most? Is there one I’m missing? 👀