How to Interpret Your Scores

Before you read anything

Your report contains honest feedback from people who work with you. Before you look at the numbers, know this: the goal is not to get a perfect score. The goal is to find the one or two things that will make the biggest difference in how people experience your leadership.

This will be uncomfortable

Reading honest feedback about yourself is one of the hardest things you can do as a leader. If your first reaction is defensive, that is normal. Research on feedback interventions shows that about a third of the time, feedback actually makes performance worse, and the difference comes down to one thing: whether you focus on "what does this say about me?" or "what should I do differently?" The first question is natural. The second is useful. Give yourself permission to sit with the discomfort before you do anything with the data.

Don't play detective

Resist the urge to figure out who said what. The moment you start matching comments to people, you stop listening to the feedback and start building a case against the messenger. The anonymity exists so people can tell you the truth. Let them.

Your five tabs

Your report has five tabs: Overview (your scores and gap analysis), Start, Stop, and Continue (raw feedback from each respondent), and Summary (an AI-generated analysis with your strengths, growth areas, blind spots, themes, and a 90-day action plan). Start with the Summary. Then go to the Overview. Then read the individual responses.

The Trust Gauge

This is the simplest number in your report: a single score from 1 to 6, averaged across all respondents, answering one question: "I have total confidence that this person has my back."

Why trust matters

Harvard professor Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety shows that trust is not a soft metric. It is the single strongest predictor of whether a team will take risks, surface problems early, and learn from mistakes. Your trust score tells you whether the conditions for high performance exist on your team.

5.0 to 6.0: Your foundation

5.0 to 6.0 (Strong to Exceptional): Your team trusts you. This is your foundation. Protect it. Look at your "continue" feedback to understand what you're doing that earns this trust, and keep doing it. A score in this range means people feel safe enough to be honest with you, which means the rest of your report is likely to be accurate and useful.

3.5 to 4.9: Conditional trust

3.5 to 4.9: There is trust, but it's conditional. Some people feel confident in you; others are not sure yet. Look at your gap analysis to see where the uncertainty might be coming from. A trust score in this range often correlates with gaps in Openness or Respect.

Below 3.5: Start here

Below 3.5: This is a signal you cannot afford to ignore. Low trust undermines everything else in the report. A leader with strong scores on Focus and Standards but low trust has a team that performs out of obligation, not commitment. It also means some respondents may have held back, so your other scores might be more generous than reality. Start here before anything else. One concrete step: schedule a one-on-one with each direct report in the next two weeks, and in each conversation, ask one question: "What is one thing I could do differently that would make your work easier?" Then listen. Don't explain. Don't defend. Just write it down.

The Gap Analysis

The gap analysis compares how you rated yourself on each of the eight dimensions (Respect, Openness, Focus, Standards, Growth, Integrity, Authenticity, and Trust) to how others rated you. Both use the same 1-6 scale. The gap between the two numbers, shown as a delta value in your report, is where the real insight lives.

Small gap: you're aligned

A small gap (under 0.5 points) means your self-perception is roughly aligned with how others experience you. This is healthy regardless of whether the score is high or low. If both you and your team rate you at 3.0 on Openness, you at least know where you stand. Self-awareness research by organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich found that only about 10-15% of people are truly self-aware. A small gap puts you in that group for that dimension.

You rated higher: blind spots

A large gap where you rated yourself higher than others did (1.0 points or more) is a blind spot. This is the most common pattern. You think you're doing well in an area where your team disagrees. A 1.5-point gap on Respect, for example, means you experience your own behavior very differently from how others experience it. Don't argue with the number. Ask yourself: what might I be doing that I don't notice?

Others rated higher: hidden strengths

A gap where others rated you higher than you rated yourself is less common but worth paying attention to. It usually means you're harder on yourself than your team is, or that you're undervaluing something you do well. This is a strength you can lean into more confidently.

Where to focus

Focus on dimensions where the gap is largest, not where the absolute score is lowest. A 4.0 with a 2.0 gap is a bigger problem than a 3.0 with a 0.2 gap. The first means you're blind to something. The second means you already know.

The Net Talent Score

Your NTS is a single number between -100 and +100, calculated from the question: "How likely are you to recommend working on a team or project led by [name]?" The score is the percentage of Ambassadors (9-10) minus the percentage of Sceptics (6 or lower). Your report also shows the individual dot distribution so you can see exactly how many Ambassadors, Supporters, and Sceptics you have.

+50 or higher: Excellent

+50 or higher (Excellent): People actively want to work with you. But don't coast on it. Look at your Supporter count. If you have 60% Ambassadors and 30% Supporters, those Supporters are the people who could become Ambassadors or could quietly drift. Your "continue" feedback tells you what to keep doing. Your "start" feedback tells you what might tip Supporters over the line.

+10 to +49: Solid but mixed

+10 to +49 (Strong): Solid but mixed. You likely have a meaningful number of both Ambassadors and Sceptics. The distribution matters: are your Sceptics clustered, or spread across the team? Look at the gap analysis to see which dimensions might be driving the skepticism. A score in this range often means you're strong in some areas and noticeably weak in one or two.

Below +10: A warning

Below +10: This is a warning. A score near zero or negative means your Sceptics outnumber or match your Ambassadors. This doesn't mean you're a bad leader. It means something specific is not working for a significant portion of your team. The good news: because the feedback is specific, you can find out exactly what it is. Your "stop" feedback is the place to start.

The Start-Stop-Continue Feedback

Your report shows this feedback in two places. The Start, Stop, and Continue tabs show every individual response, labeled by respondent number (not name). The Summary tab shows an AI-generated synthesis: the three most important themes for each category, distilled from all responses.

Summary first, then details

Start with the summary. It identifies the patterns. Then read the individual responses for nuance and specifics that the summary may have compressed.

Look for convergence

Look for convergence. If three people independently say "stop cancelling one-on-ones" or "start explaining the reasoning behind decisions," that is not a coincidence. That is a consensus about something specific you can change.

Don't skip 'continue'

Pay equal attention to "continue." This is not the filler category. It tells you what you're doing that people value. If multiple respondents say "continue your Friday check-ins" or "continue being available when things go wrong," those are behaviors you might take for granted but your team relies on. Do not stop doing them while you work on other things.

When feedback is vague

If the feedback is vague ("be more transparent," "communicate better"), cross-reference with your gap analysis. Vague feedback usually points to a real issue that the respondent struggled to articulate. The dimension scores can help you triangulate what they meant.

Reading your metrics together

Each metric tells you something different, but the real insight comes from reading them as a system. A few patterns to watch for:

High NTS but low trust often means people respect your competence but don't feel safe around you. They'd recommend working with you because you deliver results, but they're not bringing you their problems. Check your gap analysis on Openness and Authenticity.

High trust but low NTS is rarer, but it usually means people like you and feel safe, yet don't feel you push them or the work forward. Look at your scores on Focus and Standards.

A blind spot on one dimension plus a "start" theme on the same topic is the strongest signal in your report. If your gap analysis shows you rated yourself 2 points higher than others on Openness, and your SSC feedback says "start sharing the reasoning behind decisions," you have both the what and the why. Act on that first.

The Summary Tab

Your Summary tab is an AI-generated analysis that pulls together your scores and qualitative feedback into a single narrative. It includes an executive summary, your top three strengths, your top three growth areas, your largest blind spots (dimensions where the gap between self and others is widest), recurring themes across all feedback, and a 90-day action plan.

Strengths

The strengths section is not a pat on the back. It identifies what your team genuinely values about your leadership. These are the behaviors to protect and double down on.

Growth areas

The growth areas are where the data points to the most room for improvement. They are pulled from your lowest dimension scores, your largest gaps, and the themes in your "start" and "stop" feedback.

The 90-day plan

The 90-day action plan breaks your growth areas into twelve weekly tasks, one per week. Each task is small and specific. You can mark each week as complete and write a short reflection on how it went. The plan is designed around what research on behavior change consistently shows: small, consistent actions over time produce larger and more lasting change than ambitious overhauls that stall after two weeks.

How to react (and how not to)

The first 24 hours

In the first 24 hours, just read. Don't make a plan. Don't send an email to your team. Don't have a conversation about it with anyone you think might have been a respondent. Let the information settle. Keep asking yourself the useful question: "What should I do differently?" Every time you catch yourself asking "What does this say about me?", redirect. The first question protects your ego. The second one improves your leadership.

Don't question the process

Do not dismiss low scores by questioning the process. "They didn't understand the question" or "that person has a grudge" are the two most common ways leaders avoid hearing feedback. If multiple people gave you a low score on the same dimension, the process is not the problem.

Pick one thing

After a day or two, pick one thing. Not three. One. Choose the "start" or "stop" behavior that maps to your largest gap or your lowest trust-related dimension. Work on that for 30 days. Then reassess. Or, if you prefer, follow the 90-day action plan in your Summary tab, which sequences the work for you week by week.

What good looks like

A healthy report is not one where every number is high. A healthy report is one where your self-assessment is close to how others see you, your trust score is solid, and you have clear, specific feedback to act on. Some of the most useful reports are the ones with low scores, because they tell you exactly where to focus.

The leaders who get the most out of this process are the ones who treat the report as a starting point, not a verdict. The number tells you where to look. The qualitative feedback tells you what to do. The 90-day plan tells you when. The next six months tell you whether you did it.

References

1. Edmondson, A.C. (1999). "Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams." Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.
2. Eurich, T. (2018). "What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It)." Harvard Business Review.
3. Kluger, A.N. & DeNisi, A. (1996). "The Effects of Feedback Interventions on Performance." Psychological Bulletin, 119(2), 254-284.
4. Reichheld, F.F. (2003). "The One Number You Need to Grow." Harvard Business Review.