Leadership Optimization

Everything the Guide points you to.

The Leadership Optimization Implementation Guide never prints a web address. It prints an ID — L1.2, L4.4.3 — and the ID is on this page. That way the book can stay right for years while what sits behind an ID gets rebuilt, renamed, or replaced.

Start here

Take the assessment first.

The Guide is five chapters, one per stage, and you start at yours rather than at the beginning. The assessment reports four lenses — Influence, Presence, Candor and Development — and never averages them. Your stage is your lowest lens, not your overall picture.

Thirty-two questions, about nine minutes. Sixteen and about five if nobody reports to you — and that is not a lesser version, it is the half of the instrument your answers can actually carry.

Take the assessment

How to use this page

Find the ID printed beside the exercise you are working on. The first number in an ID is the stage — L3.4.2 is the second movement of Stage Three — so the ID tells you which chapter it came from without a cross-reference table.

Every printable is a clean copy you can print as often as you need, for yourself or for forty people. Print a fresh copy per person and per instance — a worksheet somebody has already filled in is not a worksheet anybody else can use, and these are per-person by design.

They all live in one free library. You give a name and an email once and have every sheet from then on — there is nothing to buy. Your name is never shared with your organization, and you are not added to a mailing list.

Get the printables

Stage One · Leadership Void

Authority standing in for earned influence. The work is entirely about you, and none of it waits on anybody else’s calendar.

L1.2

The Label on the Door TestEvery meeting, title or layer here that carries the word leadership, and what each one actually did in the last ninety days. The answer is not the finding — the absence of a single line in the other column is.

L1.4.1

The Three QuestionsSix people whose cooperation you need, and the three questions every one of them is quietly asking about you — answered in their voice, not yours.

L1.4.2

The Position Myth Self-AuditEight moments where you could have led and the question of whether you were entitled to came up. Waiting, or assuming? Almost nobody is balanced.

L1.4.3

The 20/60/20 MapWarriors, resisters and the skeptical middle. Run with a team, the rule is that nobody compares answers first — and the circled names are the whole point.

L1.4.4

Pattern, Not PerformanceThe receipt test. Every place you believe you hold influence, and the occasion that earned it. A blank line is a relationship you have been counting on without paying into.

L1.4.5

Reading the RoomOne person — the one least like you. What their stress response actually looks like, what you have been reading it as, and the one adjustment.

Stage Two · Stated Leadership

The words are right and the presence behind them never showed up. Every sheet here asks for something a specific person could have watched you do.

L2.2

The Mirror TestWhat you believe five people would say about you under stress, then what two of them actually say. Ask “what could I do differently?” Never “why did it go that way?”

L2.4.1

The Self-Talk AuditOne full day, carried with you. What the voice actually said, verbatim — then accurate, kind, and forward or an old story.

L2.4.2

Authenticity, Substance, GravitasWhere you demonstrate each one, and where you are performing it. The second column is the one you will want to leave blank.

L2.4.3

Leading in Three DirectionsUp, across and down — one specific, recent, observable instance in each. The up column is usually the empty one.

L2.4.4

Define RealityThe realities everybody closest to them can already see and you have not said out loud. Then a number on how long you have known.

L2.4.5

The Receipt You Never GotThree people who needed your full attention and got a distracted version of you — and what showing up would have looked like in that exact moment.

Stage Three · Leadership Avoidance

Knowledge, plus a reason not to act on it. The cheapest stage in the Guide and the hardest, and those are the same fact.

L3.2

The Avoided-Conversation TestThe conversations you are avoiding, with both costs beside each one. Only one of the two columns is a number you can feel today.

L3.4.1

Who Else Was Standing ThereNot what your silence cost the person involved. What it taught the people who watched nothing happen.

L3.4.2

Care, Candor, and Which One You Default ToPlaced twice — on an ordinary day and under pressure — then the evidence. If both rows are blank you are not balanced, you are avoiding both.

L3.4.3

The Four Dimensions Underneath ItAuthenticity, self-management, humility, courage. The column that matters is what the failure looks like in you, not in general.

L3.4.4

Decide Before the Pressure ArrivesThe pressure you can see coming, what the easier wrong will look like when it arrives, and what you are deciding now instead. Date the page.

L3.4.5

Find Your Ten PercentThe tolerances nobody wrote down, how long each has been normal, and who would be surprised to learn it is tolerated.

Stage Four · Leadership Disconnect

A gap nobody checked. Every sheet here asks you to look at something that is currently making no noise.

L4.2

The Customer MapEvery role, who the next person in line actually is, and the column that does the work: has anybody told them, in those words?

L4.4.1

The Five Levels, Placed HonestlyYou, your leadership team, your organization — each with the evidence beside it. A level you cannot evidence is a level you are hoping for.

L4.4.2

Where Your Calendar Actually GoesTwo passes, in order. The ratio first, from the real calendar, then the honest inventory. Doing it backwards turns it into a wish list.

L4.4.3

What Stopped HappeningThree people, what used to be true, what is not anymore, and the exact sentence you will say.

L4.4.4

The Two RoadblocksDoing instead of developing, and assuming the message landed. Both with a specific instance and what it cost six months later.

L4.4.5

A Roster, Not a MirrorWho covers what, whose blind spot they cover, and who covers theirs. If you can fill it in without asking anybody, you have described the team you imagine.

L4.5b

The Alliance Feedback Prep SheetFour lines before you walk in. The same sentence lands as help or as a verdict depending entirely on whether the person can tell you are for them.

Stage Five · Leadership in Motion

Still moving, which means it can still stop. The only stage with no exit — what follows is maintenance, and maintenance has markers rather than exits.

L5.2

The Three ConversationsOne with yourself, one with somebody you lead, one with a mentor who will ask you about it again. The third is the one with a cost attached.

L5.4.1

The Five Practices, Scored HonestlyDefine it, teach it, practice it, measure it, model it — each scored, then evidenced. If define it is not strong, start there.

L5.4.2

The Bench Fit MapEvery seat that matters, who could hold it, and the column nobody fills in honestly: have you asked, or have you assumed?

L5.4.3

Training Your ReplacementWho is being trained to hold your seat, what they can already do unsupervised, and the one thing only you can currently do.

L5.4.4

What Would Still Be StandingWhat survives six months after you leave, what evaporates the moment you are gone — and a date for the test.

L5.4.5

The Ripple You Will Not SeeThree names, what you see in them that they may not, and the deliberate investment. One of the three should make you slightly uncomfortable.

Beyond the five stages

Leadership does not rise or fall across a whole organization at once. It rises or falls at five specific moments, and in most organizations every one of them runs on instinct. None of these belongs to a single stage.

LT1

Who You HireScreening for somebody who understands that influence is earned rather than issued — and telling the wrong fit apart from the never-trained.

LT2

Who You PromoteNot “would you like to be a supervisor.” What does a great week actually look like for you — and then believing the answer.

LT3

Who You AddressMaking the accountability conversation ordinary rather than exceptional, so it stops depending on somebody being brave in a particular week.

LT4

Who You Do Business WithBefore you commit, watch how their leaders treat their own people — and whether that matches what they say about themselves.

LT5

What You Do When Somebody LeavesBuilt to produce the thing you most need and least want to hear — and to answer who else already knew how to do that.

When you would rather measure it than estimate it

Movement Five of Stage One asks you to read somebody’s stress response accurately, and an estimate is enough for every sheet on this page — the Guide never asks for more than that. When you would rather have it measured, Dove Development & Consulting runs the behavioral instrument behind this work, and there is a person there to run it with you: dove-development.net

The printables

Every sheet above is marked in the library, and all thirty-six are ready now. One free library, one name and email, every sheet from then on — including anything added or revised after the book was printed.