See what a leader actually does. Not what they say about themselves.
Four assessments that show a leader where they stand, how their people experience them, how they perform when a conversation gets hard, and whether they actually changed.
Every one of them ends the same way: with what to do next. So development starts in the right place, and the organization can see that it worked.
Built by Anna Barnhill, MCC · ICF Master Certified Coach, Top 1% Globally
Self-report is where the blind spots live.
A leader can score beautifully on a self-report questionnaire and still freeze, deflect, or escalate the first time a genuinely tense conversation lands on their desk. The questionnaire only ever asked them to describe themselves. Organizations pay for that gap twice: once for development that starts in the wrong place, and again when nobody can prove it worked.
Nobody accurately rates their own blind spot.
That is what makes it a blind spot. Most people describe themselves generously, especially on the qualities that are hardest to self-rate honestly: composure, reading the room, taking feedback without getting defensive.
A score per dimension. No explanation.
A low score on composure, with nothing about what it looks like in the room or why it shows up specifically when things get hard. The leader files the report. Six months later, nothing looks different.
Nobody is watching when it actually counts.
Emotional intelligence shows up in a tense conversation, not in a description of one. Seeing it used to take a trained assessor in the room, which no organization can afford for more than a handful of leaders.
What is missing is a way to see what a leader does the moment things get uncomfortable, and why.
Not what they say about themselves in the calm of filling out a form.
Four assessments. One honest picture.
Each one answers a different question about the same leader. Used together, they show where a leader’s own read of themselves and their team’s experience line up, where they don’t, and what to work on first.
Leaderwired Assessment
“Which part of my own wiring is producing this pattern?”
A map of the seven components of a leader’s operating system, with clear upgrade priorities. Included with the book, or deployed across a cohort.
What you get →Leaderwired 360
“How do the people around me actually experience me?”
Feedback from peers, direct reports, and stakeholders that names the strength behind every weak spot, and shows exactly how a leader’s behavior shifts under pressure.
What you get →Conversational EQ Assessment
“What do I actually do when a conversation gets hard?”
Emotional intelligence measured in real, pressured conversations, not a questionnaire, with results grounded in the leader’s own words.
What you get →Leader Effectiveness Survey
“Did the people around me actually see me change?”
A three-minute stakeholder pulse, run during and after a coaching engagement, that turns leadership growth into evidence the organization can see.
What you get →| Assessment | Answers | Format | Time | Best used |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leaderwired Assessment | Where a leader stands, and what to upgrade first | Self-report, online | About 25 minutes | Before development begins, as the shared baseline |
| Leaderwired 360 | How a leader’s people experience them | Multi-rater feedback, each rater on their own schedule | A rater round, then a written report | To verify what changed, and to surface blind spots |
| Conversational EQ Assessment | How a leader performs under real pressure | Live conversations by voice or text, in a browser | About 30 minutes, or a 10-minute Snapshot | Before and after, for an honest comparison |
| Leader Effectiveness Survey | Whether a leader’s effectiveness changed, as their stakeholders see it | Short stakeholder pulse, on a phone or in a browser | About 3 minutes per stakeholder | At the midpoint and end of a coaching engagement, to prove the change |
Not a score. A map.
Most assessments hand a leader a type and stop. This one shows them the seven components of their own leadership operating system, which one is doing the most work, and which one to upgrade first.
The problem it solves
A leader can describe their own pattern but not what is producing it. They know they avoid the hard conversation, or over-control, or go quiet under pressure. They do not know which layer of their wiring is behind it, so every fix is a guess.
What you get
- Your component profile. Where each of the seven components stands: belief architecture, mindsets, emotional processing, thought patterns, behavioral defaults, values alignment, and communication protocols.
- Your skillset gaps. Which of the five premium skillsets are already strengths and which are the next upgrade.
- Your upgrade priorities. The order to work on things, foundations first, instead of chasing the loudest symptom.
- Your foundation strength. Whether the cultural foundations beneath the map will hold under organizational pressure.
A leader walks away knowing which specific layer of their own wiring is producing the pattern they already knew they had.
Two ways to take itIndividual leaders receive the assessment with the book Leaderwired.
Organizations deploy it across a cohort as the shared baseline before development begins, so every leader’s progress has a starting point.
A low score with the reason attached.
A report that says “you score low on composure” tells a leader nothing they can act on. A report that says “your composure holds in normal conditions but turns into withdrawal under pressure” tells them exactly where to start.
The problem it solves
Most 360s end at a spider chart: a score per dimension, a summary paragraph, and no explanation of what the behavior looks like in the room or why it shows up when things get hard. Every 360 promises confidentiality. Almost none of them explain the score. So the leader files the report, and six months later nothing has changed.
What you get
- Behavior in normal conditions and under pressure, measured separately, so the report shows exactly where a leader’s effectiveness shifts when it matters most.
- Eight dimensions, two levels. Three about the leader: team orientation, emotional intelligence, and adaptive discernment. Five about what their team does as a result: trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and results.
- The strength behind every weak spot. Each pressure pattern is named as the distortion of a real strength, so the leader knows what to keep and what to catch.
- The gap between self-view and reality, dimension by dimension, so blind spots stop being guesses.
- Specific written feedback on a strength, a growth opportunity, and a possible blind spot, and a place to record commitments against it.
A 360 that tells a leader what to keep, what to catch, and where to start, the same day they read it.
The organization invites the raters: peers, direct reports, and other stakeholders. Each completes a short survey on their own schedule, in a browser. Ratings are confidential and reported in aggregate, as any 360 should be. What is different is what the report does with them. The leader receives a written report and a place to record commitments.
What it is notNot a promotion or selection tool. It is built to develop a leader, and it works best alongside coaching.
Emotional intelligence, measured where it actually shows up.
Standard emotional-intelligence tests ask a leader to rate themselves. This one watches. It puts them into a handful of short, real conversations, some with the assessor playing someone from their own work life, and reads what they actually did.
The problem it solves
Emotional intelligence shows up in a moment, not in a description of one. A leader who rates themselves high on composure can still escalate the first time a conversation turns. Until now, the only way to see that was a trained human assessor watching them work, which no organization can afford for more than a handful of people.
What you get
- A read across five domains of emotional intelligence: self-perception, self-expression, interpersonal skill, decision making under emotional pressure, and stress management.
- Results grounded in the leader’s own words, so every finding points to a moment they can recognize, not a number with no source.
- An honest before-and-after on a retake, using a different set of scenes, so progress is real progress rather than a memorized replay.
- A firsthand experience of how they actually handle a pressured exchange with someone reacting to them in real time.
A read of emotional intelligence grounded in a leader’s real behavior inside a real pressured exchange, not their most flattering self-report.
Full assessment: five short conversations, about 30 minutes, by voice or typed text in a browser.
Snapshot: a single-scene version, about 10 minutes.
Individual-contributor version for people who do not manage others, so results stay comparable across a team.
What to expectParticipants know the format before they start. Some moments are deliberately challenging. There are no trick questions about them personally, just situations, and no facilitator is needed to run it.
Growth the organization can see.
Leadership growth that only the leader perceives is not yet growth in the eyes of the organization. The Leader Effectiveness Survey asks the people who work with a leader every day whether their effectiveness has actually changed on the goals chosen for the engagement, and overall.
The problem it solves
Every coaching engagement ends with the same question from the sponsor: did anything change? Satisfaction scores and the leader’s own account do not answer it. What answers it is the observation of the manager, peers, and direct reports who see the leader lead, captured in a way that is quick enough to get real responses and honest enough to trust.
What you get
- A Growth Score for each development goal and for overall effectiveness: how much change stakeholders observed, on a clear scale from notably less effective to notably more effective.
- The Calibration Gap. The distance between how the leader rates their own change and how their stakeholders experience it. Well calibrated, a perception gap, or hidden progress. In our work, closing that gap matters as much as raising the score.
- What changed, in stakeholders’ own words, and the one thing each of them would most like to see next. Numbers prove that change happened; the comments show what it looked like.
- The Engagement Arc. Growth Scores tracked across the midpoint and the end of the engagement, goal by goal, so the sponsor sees a trend rather than a snapshot.
One thing measured: change that other people can see.
The leader’s coach sets one to three development goals, written as behaviors stakeholders can observe, and invites the manager, peers, direct reports, and other stakeholders. Each completes the survey in about three minutes, on a phone or in a browser, at the midpoint and the end of the engagement.
Honest by designNumeric ratings are reported anonymously in aggregate. Written comments are shared word for word, identified only by relationship group. The leader rates their own change separately, which is what makes the Calibration Gap worth trusting.
What you receiveA Growth Evidence Report for each round, delivered and debriefed by the coach, so results land with context rather than as raw data.
Findings you can act on the day you read them.
Most assessments manufacture precision. Every instrument in this suite is built to earn trust first, so that what it tells you is worth acting on.
Every finding comes with the mechanism behind it: the strength that is distorting, the moment that produced it, or the layer of wiring that is driving it.
Results point to the leader’s own words and behavior, so nothing arrives as a verdict from nowhere.
Reports separate how a leader behaves in normal conditions from how they behave when it gets hard, because that is where development actually lives.
When there is not enough evidence to score something fairly, the report says so rather than guessing.
Retakes use different scenes, so a second result reflects real change rather than a memorized replay.
These are instruments for developing leaders, not for justifying a decision already made about them.
Honest instruments are the reason the numbers they give you are worth acting on.
Baseline. Develop. Verify.
A development investment with a starting point, a sequence, and proof at the end. That is what the suite is for.
Baseline
Every leader starts with the Leaderwired Assessment, so development has a starting point and a sequence. A Leaderwired 360 or a Conversational EQ Assessment adds the outside view before the work begins.
Develop
Leaders work through the Leaderwired Institute, the Leaderwired EQ Gym, executive coaching with Anna, or AI Coach Anna, with the map in hand.
Verify
The Leader Effectiveness Survey proves the change stakeholders observed during the engagement. A repeat Leaderwired 360 or Conversational EQ Assessment shows how the leader’s behavior under pressure moved.
The suite is one stage of the Leaderwired loop (Assess, Learn, Practice, Support, Retain, Verify). See how it fits together for organizations →
Built by the coach in the room.
These instruments were not designed by a survey company. They come out of sixteen years of coaching Fortune 500 executives, and they measure the things that decide whether that coaching holds.
What sets the suite apart
- The reason behind every score. A leader learns what is producing the pattern, not just that the pattern exists, so the first step is obvious.
- Behavior under pressure, not self-description. Three of the four instruments measure what a leader does when it gets hard, from the people around them, in a live conversation, and over the course of an engagement.
- Evidence the organization can see. Sponsors get proof of change in stakeholders’ own words and numbers, not a satisfaction score.
- One methodology from assessment to development. The same 7-5-3 Human Upgrade Code runs through the book, the assessments, the Leaderwired Institute, and the coaching, so results translate directly into what to do next.
Assessments that start development in the right place, and prove it worked.
ICF Master Certified Coach, Top 1% Globally. Forbes Coaches Council. Professional Fellow, Institute of Coaching, McLean/Harvard Medical School. Author of Leaderwired, the book behind the 7-5-3 Human Upgrade Code.
Justin BarnhillCo-founder and the systems side of Leaderwired. Engineer and operator, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, responsible for the rigor behind every report an organization receives.
About UsFrequently asked questions
How is this different from the assessments we already run?
Most instruments describe a leader: a type, a set of scores, a summary. These are built to change one. Every result comes with the reason behind it and the next step, three of the four measure behavior under pressure rather than self-description, and the Leader Effectiveness Survey gives you something almost no assessment offers: proof, from the leader’s own stakeholders, that the development worked.
What do we do with the results?
Act on them the same day. Each report names where to start, and the same methodology runs through the Leaderwired Institute, the Leaderwired EQ Gym, executive coaching with Anna, and AI Coach Anna, so a finding turns directly into practice. Then the suite measures whether it held.
How do the four assessments differ?
They answer four different questions about the same leader. The Leaderwired Assessment shows where a leader stands and what to upgrade first. Leaderwired 360 shows how the people around them actually experience them. The Conversational EQ Assessment shows what they do when a conversation gets hard. The Leader Effectiveness Survey shows whether their stakeholders saw them change over the course of a coaching engagement.
Which one should we start with?
Most organizations start every leader with the Leaderwired Assessment as the shared baseline, add Leaderwired 360 or the Conversational EQ Assessment for the outside view, and run the Leader Effectiveness Survey during coaching engagements to prove the change. A demo will show you how the mix fits your bench.
Can we use these for promotion or selection decisions?
No. Every assessment in the suite is a development tool, built to give a leader an honest read and a place to start, never to justify a decision already made about them.
How is rater anonymity protected in Leaderwired 360?
Ratings are reported in aggregate, feedback from any group of raters too small to protect an individual is withheld from the report, and written comments are delivered without names. Confidentiality is table stakes for any 360. What sets Leaderwired 360 apart is that every score comes with the strength behind it and the condition under which it shifts.
How long does each one take?
The Leaderwired Assessment takes about 25 minutes. The Conversational EQ Assessment runs about 30 minutes, or about 10 minutes for the Snapshot, by voice or typed text in a browser. Leaderwired 360 runs as a rater round, with each rater completing a short survey on their own schedule, followed by a written report. The Leader Effectiveness Survey takes each stakeholder about 3 minutes, on a phone or in a browser.
Is the suite for individuals or organizations?
Both, in different ways. Individual leaders receive the Leaderwired Assessment with the book. Organizations deploy the full suite across a cohort or a leadership bench. Send an enterprise inquiry to see how it fits your rollout, or request more information and we will come back to you.
What happens in a demo?
A one-hour demo with Justin for organizations evaluating a rollout. Bring the people who own the decision and a cohort you are developing, and we will show you which instruments fit, what each report gives you, and how the results flow into development. A few questions at booking help us prepare the demo around your roles.
See what a leader actually does.
Four assessments. One honest picture. Development that starts in the right place and ends with proof.