Avanti Preferences and Behaviours
The piece and the compass: how you prefer to lead, and how your leadership lands
The Piece and the Compass
Your jigsaw piece shows where you start from: the ways of working that come most naturally. Your compass shows where your leadership travels and how others experience it. Together they show which strengths flow, which you have learned, and which are waiting to be seen.
Your piece is where you start. Your compass is where your leadership travels.
Why Combine Them
Leaders often receive two kinds of insight and are left to join them up on their own. A preferences profile tells them how they like to work. A 360 tells them how others experience their leadership. Each is valuable. The most useful questions, though, sit between them: why some strengths come easily and others take effort, why people see some qualities more clearly than others, and where to focus development so that it works with the grain of who the leader is.
Avanti Leadership Preferences and Avanti Leadership Behaviours 360 are designed to be read together. Leadership Preferences shows a leader's natural lean across four pairs, drawn as moons, and the jigsaw piece those moons form. The 360 shows eight points of leadership on a compass, as the leader and their colleagues see them, with Emotional Intelligence as the needle. This combined offer brings the two into one conversation.
The distinction between preference and behaviour matters. Preferences describe what feels natural, not what a person can do, and capable leaders work across every piece of the jigsaw. Behaviour is what others can see. Building on natural preference tends to be energising and sustainable. Leading beyond preference is entirely possible, and often admirable, but it draws more energy and deserves to be recognised and supported. Our thinking here is informed by strengths research that separates realised strengths, unrealised strengths and learned behaviours (Linley, Willars and Biswas-Diener, 2010).
What the Combination Reveals
Read together, the two instruments show things that neither shows on its own.
Strengths that flow
Which strengths are both natural and visible, so the leader can use them with confidence and pass them on.
Effort worth honouring
Where a leader leads well beyond their preference, so that effort can be named, valued and sustained.
Potential waiting to be seen
Where preference is strong but not yet visible to others, which is often the quickest route to growth.
The story behind declination
Why self-view and others' view differ, read through the leader's natural lean rather than as a judgement.
Where to partner
Which colleagues' pieces fit naturally where the leader has open space, so development can be shared.
The Impact
The combined offer helps leaders grow in ways that are true to who they are, and helps teams and organisations make better use of the range they already have.
For the leader
Development that works with the grain: a clear sense of which strengths to lean on, which to make visible and where to partner, with less effort spent trying to become someone else.
Sustainable leadership
Recognising learned range helps leaders pace themselves and protect their energy, rather than leading against preference for long periods without support.
For the team
Read across a leadership team, the combined picture shows which collective strengths come naturally, which rest on effort, and how pieces complement each other.
For the organisation
Coaching and leadership programmes that are better targeted, with growth that can be seen when the 360 is repeated.
For communities
Leaders who understand how their values and care for people actually land, and who make their commitment to communities and lived experience visible.
How It Runs
| Stage | When | What happens | Who |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brief | Week 0 | A conversation on purpose, confidentiality and choosing 8 to 15 raters. | Leader with Avanti |
| Preferences | Week 1 | Leadership Preferences: 48 forced-choice pairs, about 20 minutes. | Leader |
| 360 | Weeks 1 to 3 | Leadership Behaviours 360: 64 statements, completed by the leader and 8 to 15 raters, about 20 minutes each. | Leader and raters |
| Reports | Week 4 | The Leadership Preferences report, the 360 report and the combined Piece and Compass page. | Leader |
| Coaching | Week 4 or 5 | A 90 minute coaching conversation that joins the two pictures and agrees commitments. | Leader with Avanti coach |
| Team option | Week 6 | For leadership teams: the team jigsaw beside the leadership team compass. | Leadership team |
| Revisit | 9 to 12 months | Repeat the 360 to see what has grown. | Leader and raters |
The coaching conversation: The piece and the compass
Your piece
Where you start from: your moons, your leading piece and the pieces beside it.
Your compass
How your leadership lands: true north, the needle and the declination between your view and others'.
The four zones
Natural strength, learned range, quiet potential and open space, compass point by compass point.
Commitments
One natural strength to use more, one quiet potential to make visible, and one partnership to build.
What Is Included
- A Leadership Preferences report of about 15 pages, with moons, jigsaw and bridging guidance.
- A Leadership Behaviours 360 report of about 20 pages, with the compass, the needle and declination.
- The combined Piece and Compass page: every compass point placed in one of the four zones.
- A 90 minute coaching conversation with an Avanti coach, and a development plan.
- For teams, the team jigsaw beside the leadership team compass.
What People Take Away
- 1Describe their natural preferences and how these shape the way they lead.
- 2Understand how colleagues, partners and communities experience their leadership across the eight compass points.
- 3Distinguish natural strength, learned range, quiet potential and open space in their own profile.
- 4Use their preferences to make sense of differences between their self-view and others' view.
- 5Plan development that works with their grain, including where to partner with others.
- 6Lead in ways that make their values and commitment to communities visible.
When to Use It
Leadership programmes
The individual spine of a programme, revisited at the end to show growth.
Executive coaching
A rich, balanced starting point that respects who the leader is.
New appointments
Understanding how a leader's natural style is landing in a new role and setting.
Leadership teams
Seeing the team's collective strengths, and which rest on effort.
Leaders feeling stretched
Naming learned range and finding ways to sustain it.