How to Interpret Your Scores

Contents

• Before you read anything
• The Trust Gauge
• The Gap Analysis
• The Net Talent Score
• Start, Stop, Continue
• Reading your metrics together
• The Report tab
• Your Leadership Archetype
• How to react (and how not to)
• What good looks like

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 hinges on 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 let the discomfort settle 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 two tabs

Your dashboard has two tabs. Overview holds your scores and gap analysis: the Trust Gauge, your eight Mirror Model dimensions, your Net Talent Score, and your Leadership Archetype. Report holds the synthesis: an executive summary, your top strengths, growth areas, blind spots, recurring themes from your team's open-text feedback, the Start-Stop-Continue patterns the system surfaced, and a 90-day action plan. Start with the Report. Then go back to Overview when you want to look at a specific score in detail.

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 trust this person to look out for my best interests."

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.

5.5 to 6.0: Exceptional

Your team trusts you fully. Read your "continue" themes carefully. What's earning this is exactly what your team needs you to keep doing. The risk at this level is complacency: protecting the habits that produced it takes deliberate effort, not inertia.

4.5 to 5.4: Strong

Your team trusts you on most things. The question is whether that trust holds in the rooms they aren't in, and on the highest-stakes calls. The path from Strong to Exceptional usually involves asymmetric openness: sharing a doubt or a reconsidered decision before your team has to ask for one.

3.5 to 4.4: Developing

Trust is real but conditional. Your team believes you look out for them on most things. On the higher-stakes ones, they're still deciding. Look at your gap analysis on Openness and Respect. That's where conditional trust usually traces back to.

2.5 to 3.4: Emerging

Trust is incomplete. Your team's working assumption on harder calls is that your interests come first. This is rarely about individual incidents and usually about a pattern. Your Start-Stop-Continue themes are the place to find what specifically created it.

Below 2.5: Needs Attention

Low trust undermines everything else in the report. A leader with strong scores on Focus and Standards but trust in this band has a team that performs out of obligation, not commitment. It also means some respondents may have softened their other answers, so other scores may 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 shape of the score matters

Two leaders with the same Trust Gauge average can have very different teams underneath it. The report detects this using the spread of individual ratings, not just the mean.

A Trust Gauge of 4.0 where every respondent gave you a 4 means your whole team has the same read on you: somewhat agree. That is a cohesive signal about a specific gap in how you show up under pressure. A Trust Gauge of 4.0 where some respondents gave you 6 and others gave you 1 or 2 is a split: part of your team trusts you completely and part does not trust you at all. The average is identical. The situation is not.

In the first case, the work is about closing a gap that your full team shares. In the second case, the work is about understanding what distinguishes the group that does not trust you from the group that does. Tenure, function, visibility during your hardest moments, proximity to the decisions where your behavior shifts under pressure. The gap between those two groups is the most specific information in that part of your report, and a generic improvement plan will not reach it.

The report reads these distribution shapes for you. Your dashboard tells you which of these patterns is in play and what to do about it specifically, so you don't have to triangulate the math yourself.

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.

Your dashboard reads more than the gap size on each dimension. It reads the spread of your team's ratings inside each dimension as well, distinguishing a tight consensus from a split read at the same score. Each combination of band and shape produces a specific reading and a specific action, so the 90-day plan you receive is built against the dimension-by-dimension picture your team actually returned, not a template.

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.

+70 or higher: Exceptional

Your team is actively advocating for you. People at this level genuinely want to keep working with you and would recommend you to others. Protect what's working. Look at your "continue" themes to understand what's earning this level of advocacy and keep doing it. The risk in this band is complacency: a small number of Supporters who could become Ambassadors quietly drift if you stop investing in them.

+50 to +69: Excellent

Strong advocacy with limited skepticism. Most of your team would actively choose to work with you again. The path from Excellent to Exceptional usually runs through a small group of Supporters who haven't tipped over into active advocacy yet. Your "start" themes often name the specific behavior that would close that gap.

+30 to +49: Strong

A solid base of advocates with a meaningful Supporter middle. The score is positive, but the distribution matters here as much as the number. Use your Net Talent Score visualisation to see which group is largest and where the path forward lies.

+10 to +29: Developing

You have advocates, but skepticism is showing up too. The aggregate is positive but not commanding. Look at your gap analysis to see which dimensions might be driving the skepticism. A score in this band often means you're strong in some areas and noticeably weak in one or two.

Below +10: Needs Attention

Your Sceptics outnumber or match your Ambassadors. This doesn't mean you're a bad leader. It means something specific isn't working for a meaningful portion of your team. The good news: because the feedback is structured, you can find out exactly what it is. Your "stop" themes are usually the place to start.

The score is one signal. The shape of your distribution is the other. The system identifies which of six distribution shapes your team falls into (Dominant, Tilted positive, Polarized, Coiled, Fraying, or Balanced) and reads them differently. Two leaders with a +35 score can have completely different distributions and the path forward depends on which one. The dashboard names the shape you have and the action plan is generated against the specific band-shape combination, not the number alone.

Start, Stop, Continue

Three open-ended prompts run alongside the dimension scores: what should this leader start doing, stop doing, and continue doing? The questions force a behavioral answer rather than a vague one, and the answers are where the dimension gaps turn into specific things you can act on.

You see patterns, not individual responses

For respondent anonymity, the dashboard does not show you what each individual person wrote. The full text feeds the synthesis. The synthesis is what reaches you, weighted by how many independent respondents named the same theme. When most of your team names some version of the same behavior, that pattern surfaces in your Report tab as a single insight with its frequency noted, never as a verbatim quote. The trail to any one person is gone. The signal is preserved.

What this looks like in your Report tab

The Report tab pulls the open text into your strengths, growth areas, blind spots, recurring themes, and the start-stop-continue recommendations woven into your 90-day plan. Each one is grounded in the patterns the synthesis pulled from the open text, cross-referenced against your dimension scores. If multiple people name some version of "explain your reasoning" in Start and your Openness score sits in the lower half of the scale, those signals are read together. You don't have to triangulate the connection yourself.

Numbers tell you where, words tell you what

A leader's dimension scores show where the gaps are. The Start-Stop-Continue patterns tell the leader what to do about those gaps. A low Openness score tells you something is broken. A theme like "share the reasoning behind decisions before announcing them" tells you what specifically. Your report reads them together so the action you receive is anchored in both the score and the language your team used.

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 Start/Stop/Continue feedback says "start sharing the reasoning behind decisions," you have both the what and the why. Act on that first.

The Report tab

Your Report tab 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.

Your Leadership Archetype

Once the dimension scores are in, the report identifies your Leadership Archetype. Your team's ratings are ranked across all eight dimensions, and the archetype whose primary dimension pair matches your two highest-scoring dimensions is assigned to you. If your top two dimensions are trust and growth, you are the Captain. Integrity and standards: the Sage. Authenticity and standards: the Challenger. Openness and authenticity: the Pioneer. Trust and respect: the Guardian. Growth and openness: the Catalyst. And so on across twelve named archetypes.

The archetype is derived from how your team actually experiences you, not from your self-assessment. A leader who rates themselves highly on Focus and Standards but whose team rates them highest on Trust and Respect gets the Guardian archetype, not the Architect. Your team's read wins.

Why this matters when interpreting your report: the archetype gives you a named lens for your strengths before you read your gaps. If you are a Guardian, a lower Integrity score carries different weight than it would for a Sage. If you are a Catalyst, the coaching in your growth areas reads through the lens of someone whose strength is development and openness, and whose failure mode is leaving things in motion without landing them. If you are a Challenger, a low Openness score is more structurally important than for most other archetypes, because challenge without the capacity to hear challenge back creates a one-way dynamic that shrinks the thinking in the room.

Read your archetype alongside your Gap Analysis. The two together tell you not just where to focus, but what your version of that focus looks like in practice.

The archetype also cross-references with your Start-Stop-Continue themes. The failure modes described for each archetype tend to show up in the Stop feedback of leaders who hold that archetype. If you are a Sage and your Stop feedback names something about holding a bar too rigidly under deadline pressure, that is not a coincidence. Your report is consistent. You just have to read it as a system.

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 Report 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 benefit most from 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.