The observer's perspective

After I took the LPI (Leadership Practices Inventory) test I realized that at least in my case sometimes people see the things I do in a different way or I do things that I don’t even notice I’m doing. In order to have accurate results I decided to ask one of my friends at work to evaluate me.  And it surprised me that in the area of challenge the process I put high scores and she wrote down numbers lower than 6 so I asked her why because I was sure I took risks and challenging opportunities. However, she said that I always thought things through for a long time until I was totally convinced that it was the best idea. That didn’t surprised me at all because in the PMAI my highest score was for Sage, so that made me realized that she was right because I take challenges, but after researching and making sure that it is  the best decision. Furthermore, in the section of model the way and encourage the heart  I scored myself with average numbers (5-7) and she only wrote down 9-10.That was the moment when I realized that some of us might be doing things that benefit others frequently and we don’t even notice it until someone else points it out. I thought that only once in a while I asked for feedback or set a personal example of what I expected, but apparently I do it more often that I thought. In the other two sections (Inspire a shared vision and Enable others to act) we had really similar scores that didn't differ by more than a point. Therefore, this demonstrated me that there is a big difference between the perspective we have of ourselves and the one our employees or observers do.