The LīF Assessment: Where You Stand in the Leadership Integrity Framework®

The question the book starts with

My book opens with a conversation about this assessment. I was sitting across from Marque, a former client who had become a friend and one of the book’s early readers, explaining what I wanted the LīF Assessment to do. It wasn’t meant to diagnose anyone or define them. It was meant to help a leader locate themselves in the framework and ask one question: Is my leadership integrated, and is it sustainable?

Marque listened, then asked, “Are they even aware they should ask this question?”

He was right to ask.

The book became my long answer to him. The assessment was meant to be the short one. It’s a structured way to ask that question about your own leadership, in this role, with these people, right now. Chapter 12 describes it and includes a QR code that leads to it.

This post introduces the LīF Assessment as it exists today, including what it asks, how to read what it shows you, what it doesn’t claim, and where it’s going next.

What the LīF Assessment is

The LīF Assessment is a self-reflection built on the Leadership Integrity Framework, and it takes twenty to thirty minutes to complete. In it, you rate twenty statements about how you lead, from “rarely true” to “consistently true.” Then you answer four short questions in your own words, two or three sentences each, and a closing question about which statement made you pause the longest.

The statements require real-world evidence and cannot rely on broad sentiment. For example, most leaders would say their decisions reflect their values. The first statement, however, names something narrower: “When pressure is high, my decisions still line up with what I say I value.” To answer it honestly, you have to think of a real decision made under pressure. Many of the statements are written this way, so the automatic answer is harder to give.

When you complete the assessment, a copy of your answers arrives in your inbox with a link to a short guide, “Reading Your Answers.” The guide helps you add up four totals, one for each dimension, or a calculator does it for you. The assessment is free, and your answers are seen only by me.

The totals are the easy part. What the guide asks you to look at next is the distance between them.

Where to look

The framework rests on one key premise: the four dimensions aren’t separate skills to master one at a time, and the trouble tends to live between them rather than inside any one of them.

So the guide doesn’t ask you to admire your highest total or worry about your lowest. It asks you to find the two totals that are furthest apart. When one dimension runs well ahead of another, the stronger one often covers for the weaker. The guide describes four of these gaps. Here are all twelve, grouped by the dimension that’s stronger.

Purpose is your inner compass: the values, identity, and conviction you lead from.

When Purpose is stronger…

Than Presence: values that never quite reach the room. The convictions are real, but others don’t see or hear them, so they stay private or theoretical.
Than Partnership: conviction held alone, which others are expected to follow. Leadership moves from building something together to telling others where to go.
Than Perspective: principles applied without seeing where they land. The principle may be sound, but it gets applied without enough attention to context, or to consequences no one intended.

Presence is how your leadership is felt in the room: composure, steadiness, and the impact others can see.

When Presence is stronger…

Than Purpose: composure without a clear center. The calm is visible and convincing, but it isn’t anchored in values the leader could name, so over time it can start to feel like a performance, to others and to the leader.
Than Partnership: performance without real connection. The room is impressed, but trust doesn’t grow, and people don’t feel safe enough to disagree.
Than Perspective: command of the room, with the wider system out of view. The meeting goes well, while the wider organization and the longer-term effects go unexamined.

Partnership is the relational field you lead through: trust, connection, and the capacity to work through conflict together.

When Partnership is stronger…

Than Purpose: harmony kept at the cost of what you stand for. Keeping relationships comfortable starts to matter more than the conviction, and the difficult conversation keeps getting postponed.
Than Presence: strong relationships, and a voice that recedes when the room gets bigger. The trust is real one-on-one, but in larger, higher-stakes settings the leader’s voice gets quieter or carries less weight.
Than Perspective: relationships without direction. The team is close and supportive, but no one is sure where it’s going.

Perspective is your systemic awareness: seeing the patterns, the connections, and the ripple effects of decisions.

When Perspective is stronger…

Than Purpose: strategy without soul. The analysis holds together, but it isn’t anchored in what the leader, or the people it affects, actually value.
Than Presence: clear analysis that doesn’t land with the people in front of you. The thinking is strong, but it doesn’t move the people in the room.
Than Partnership: seeing the whole system and bringing no one with you. The leader can see where things need to go, but the picture stays in their head, and no one else takes ownership of it.

I recommend you read the line for your relevant pair (where your totals are furthest apart) as a question to check against your past week, month, or quarter and not as a holistic description of your leadership.

Your totals may also come out even, all four within three points of each other. That’s common, and it still tells you something. It sends you to the last question on the form, the statement that made you pause the longest. A pause usually means the honest answer and the answer you’d like to give weren’t the same. That particular statement may say more about where you are right now than any total.

None of these results places you in any definitive category or provides you with a label. Your totals simply describe how you see your own leadership today, in your current role or situation. They don’t say what kind of leader you are.

What it doesn’t claim

The LīF Assessment hasn’t been psychometrically validated, and it isn’t trying to be. It doesn’t measure you against a norm or compare your answers with anyone else’s, and it forecasts nothing about how you’ll perform.

Every statement is written against a defined element of the Leadership Integrity Framework, which draws on research in adult and vertical development and on more than 3,000 hours of coaching senior leaders. The wording comes from listening to how those leaders actually describe these tensions.

If you want a validated, normed measure, good ones exist, and I use several of them with the leaders I coach. They answer different questions, and they usually come with a trained professional to debrief the results. This one gives you a structured way to start thinking about your own leadership, on your own, whenever you’re ready.

Because your answers describe how you lead now, they will move. A new role, a hard year, or a stretch of real growth will change them. Take the assessment again in six months. The difference between the two sets of answers is often more interesting than either one alone.

What comes next

Today, the guide shows you how to read your own answers, and the reading is yours to do. The next version, now being built, will offer personalized insights about your leadership patterns.

It will live here on the site instead of in a separate form. When you finish, your four totals and a picture of where you stand in the framework will be calculated for you, so there’s nothing to add up. You’ll also receive a few reflection questions written for your own answers. For the first several months, I’ll read each set before it reaches you.

What won’t change is the assessment itself. The statements and the written questions will carry over, refined only where the leaders using them now show me that something isn’t clear. The way of reading them stays the same: you look first at the gap between dimensions.

Your Starting Point

If you’d like to ask Marque’s question about your own leadership, the LīF Assessment takes twenty to thirty minutes, and it’s free. Begin the LīF Assessment →

If you’d rather not read your answers alone, the LīF Session is a two-hour conversation built around them. You complete the assessment beforehand, and we start from your largest gap. About the LīF Session →

For the four dimensions in depth, and the stories of the leaders who lived them, Leadership Integrity Framework: How to Stay Grounded, Build Trust, and Lead with Wholeness in Uncertain Times goes much further than this post can. Get the book →

If you’d like to hear what I’m working on next, join the community. I write only when I have something worth sharing, such as a new project or a reflection on leadership, and you choose what you receive.

Take the Next Step

Take the LīF Assessment

Not sure where to start? The LīF Assessment shows where you stand across the four dimensions right now, and where the largest gap between them sits.

Begin the Assessment

Explore the Leadership Integrity Framework

Want to understand the four dimensions before you dive into the book? Start with the framework overview.

Explore the Framework

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