Psychometric Profiling:
Mental Toughness and Leadership Style

Mental Toughness and Leadership capabilities are crucial for leaders and managers to deliver maximum organisational performance under the typical levels of challenge, pressure and stress associated with high level positions.

Mental Toughness         Leadership Styles         Application         Workshop

Aeona uses two validated and accurate psychometric measures, MTQ48 and ILM72, to measure Mental Toughness and Leadership styles in individuals and groups, from small teams, senior managers or departments to the whole organisation.

These measures help both the individual and the organisation deliver peak performance and manage stress, match the leadership style of individuals with the organisational needs in various situations, develop strategies and tactics to perform under pressure, get the best from their people, improve morale and the working environment, and improve bottom line performance.

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing." Abraham Lincoln

Mental Toughness and MTQ48.

Mental Toughness is the quality which determines in some part how people deal with challenge, stressors and pressure, and is a key aspect of performance and stress management in work and all walks of life.

Excellent leaders and managers typically have higher levels of Mental Toughness than the rest of the population, reflecting the demands of their work. Developing Mental Toughness helps them to better manage stress, deal with multiple tasks and deliver peak performance.

Assessing Mental Toughness is important as it enables you to:

• Assess a person's capacity to deal with stressors & challenges in the workplace.
• Understand why one person succeeds & another struggles when the pressure is on.
• Develop approaches to help organisations & individuals perform under pressure.
• Identify how to increase mental toughness, such as to increase capacity to cope with change, change attitude to challenge, increase confidence, increase self-responsibility and control in life and work.
• Recruit and develop staff more effectively around key criteria.
• Build teams that can deliver performance.
• Build resilience in your people.

Mental Toughness is often thought of as resilience or hardiness and MTQ48 measures four components:

• Challenge Some people see challenges, variety, problems & changes as opportunities and thrive in changing environments. Others see these as threats.
• Control Some people feel in control and that they have influence, and will be able to handle many things at once. Others feel that things happen to them and they have little control, and often they are comfortable dealing with one thing at a time.
• Confidence Some have the self belief to successfully complete tasks, which others with similar abilities but lower confidence consider too difficult. At the other end of the scale, individuals are unsettled by setbacks and feel undermined by these.
• Commitment Some like working to clear measured goals and targets and complete tasks to tough deadlines despite problems and obstacles that arise. Others are more easily distracted or bored.

"Accept challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory." George S. Patton

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Integrated Leadership Measure, ILM72.

The terms "leader" and "leadership" are used widely and defined in many ways, one of which is "... influencing, inspiring and directing the performance of people towards the achievement of key objectives and creating a sense of success." Two key aspects of leadership are:

• Performance - effective leadership results in superior performance and achievement by individuals, teams and organisations
• Follower - a leader is essentially defined by whether someone is prepared to follow their lead. Developing leadership also involves developing the followers.

A good leader will unlock the potential in an organisation, bringing benefit to the organisation, team and individual. Numerous models of leadership give us insight into the ways different leadership styles are optimum in different situations. Most people have a preferred style of how they interact with people, teams and situations, resulting in a preferred leadership style. Good leadership skills are learnt and excellent leaders are able to adjust their style according to need.

Measuring people's prevailing or adopted leadership style raises their awareness of how they lead. It enables:

• Individuals to identify leadership development needs, for personal satisfaction, career development and in the context of the team/organisation.
• Organisations to map their preferred leadership style to achieve their goals.
• Organisations to understand their culture and assess its impact on performance.
• Organisations to identify what is needed to develop a more effective leadership culture.

The Integrated Leadership Measure, ILM72, relates to all major leadership models and assesses an individual's leadership style. It helps people and organisations reflect on how leadership can be effective for them and identify where and how their style may be developed for a given situation.

ILM72 measures six aspects of leadership style:

• Task v Person
• Flexible v Dogmatic
• De-centralised v Centralised
• Reward v Punishment
• The means v The end
• Structured v Organic

and three global scales:

• Determination to deliver - delivering what is promised leads to success; the focus is on the task even at the expense of bruising some people.
• Individual cohesion - enhance the confidence, capability and commitment of individuals to enable them to contribute to the team/organisation and to fulfil themselves.
• Team Cohesion - harness all the potential in the team/organisation for more effective and efficient progress.

Click here to read more information about measuring leadership styles with ILM72 and the Integrated Leadership Model.

Example of the use of MTQ48 and ILM72.

A highly rated local authority with a centralised leadership culture successfully proceeded through two restructuring phases, visioning and planning, but the third phase, implementation of the ambitious change programme through team working, was less effective. Several initiatives were implemented without good results.

Psychometric profiling using MTQ48 and ILM72 gave some insight into potential reasons. The overall mental toughness profile of the senior management team was significantly lower than expected, with lower than expected scores on the challenge scale (ability to cope with change, challenge or variety), commitment scale (ability to deal with clear and demanding goals to deliver high performance) and control scale (suggesting they may not have believed they could make a difference). The leadership global scales were lower than expected for determination to deliver, individual cohesion and team working. While managers thought they were engaging the workforce, they were not actually portraying that message. This helped the organisation understand why delivery was not as successful as the planning stages and enabled them to address the situation through developing the managers' understanding and skills in teamwork and leadership.

Contact us for more information and case studies on how you can benefit from measuring mental toughness and leadership styles in your organisation or for yourself as an individual. You can choose the personal support of 1:1 coaching in person or by telephone, or spread the costs and share the inspiration with a group of between 6-10 people.

"People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing." Dale Carnegie

Achieve more, make changes and be more successful:
Contact Aeona today for a no obligation, confidential discussion.

Tel: 0845 6436 084
Mobile: 07738 290384
Email: info@aeona.co.uk

Evolution: (noun) A gradual development. An exercise carried out in accordance with a procedure or plan.
Evolution through Coaching: Improved performance and desired changes achieved using a strategy to adapt people's attitudes, behaviours and actions.

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