360 Assessment and the Inner Game of Leadership

How deeper feedback helped one leader believe what others already knew

I was lucky to coach an extraordinary leader. He was extraordinary in two ways.

First, he had the best technical judgment in a large, highly technical company. People went to him with the hardest problems.

Second, by his own admission, he had little self-confidence — an extraordinary thing for a mature leader who was, in effect, the COO of the business.

As part of a larger leadership program, I was his 360-feedback coach. On a five-point scale, he rated his own leadership around a 3.5 — far below how his colleagues, direct reports, peers, and senior leaders saw him.

At the end of the program, he asked if I would coach him longer term.

“A lot of people tell me I need to develop more confidence,” he said. “I think some of them feel bad for me.”

I was taken aback.

This was a senior leader with major operational responsibility in a highly technical company. From the outside, he looked like a clear success story.

But something was holding him back internally.

I wasn’t sure I could help. But he kept asking. Finally, I said, “Sure, Jim. I’ll try.”

That became one of the most meaningful coaching engagements of my career.

The Inner Game of Leadership

Sir John Whitmore, one of the pioneers of modern executive coaching, drew from The Inner Game of Tennis to make a simple but powerful point: performance is often limited less by external obstacles than by internal interference — fear, self-judgment, defensiveness, or the stories we tell ourselves.

Coaching helps reduce that interference so natural capability can show up more fully.

Executive coaching often works at three levels: the leader’s relationship with self, with others, and with the work itself. For Jim, the deepest work was on the inner game — how he saw himself and what he believed he was allowed to contribute.

One of the most revealing patterns in 360 feedback is the gap between how leaders rate themselves and how others rate them.

When leaders rate themselves higher than others do, the developmental question is often about social awareness: What are they not seeing about their impact?

Jim was the opposite. He was an extreme under-rater. Others saw strength, judgment, and credibility that he did not fully see in himself.

When leaders rate themselves lower than others do, the question may be about self-trust: What strength, authority, or credibility are they not yet able to claim?

The self/other gap is one of the key clues in 360 feedback. Every coach should look for it, even when the report does not call it out clearly. It is often a doorway into the leader’s blind spots and inner game.

The Power of Deeper Feedback

We began the six-month coaching relationship with the Hogan assessment. It gave us useful language about Jim’s style, values, and how he might show up under pressure. It highlighted his warmth and curiosity — and hinted that he was holding back.

But the real breakthrough came from the interview-based 360.

Survey-based 360s are useful. They show patterns and gaps between self-perception and how others experience the leader. An interview-based 360 goes deeper. It surfaces the specific moments, behaviors, and impact that matter most — the “why” and “when” behind the numbers.

As I spoke with Jim’s colleagues, one theme kept coming through clearly: they trusted his technical judgment more than anyone else’s.

In a company full of highly credentialed engineers and geologists, when difficult technical issues arose, people went to Jim. He had started in the field with his hands. He understood the data from the ground up — where it came from, what it really meant, and where it could mislead. He was deeply curious and had spent his career getting better.

Everyone else already saw him as a serious technical leader.

Jim had not yet seen it himself.

What began as the economic reality of not going to college had quietly hardened into an identity of being “a little less than.” His self-concept had not caught up with the value and credibility others had already seen in him.

Leadership Transformation

Leaders often carry stories about how they add value and what rules they must follow. These stories can become part of their identity — and sometimes social factors help keep them in place.

For Jim, the story was about education and class. For others, it might be gender, race, family background, accent, or being the first in their family to reach senior levels. I have seen versions of this pattern with many different leaders.

The story of not finishing college can feel much larger inside a leader’s mind than it does to the people around them. When that story becomes part of someone’s identity, defensiveness can protect it — making it difficult to examine, discuss or update.

A trusted coach can sometimes help by asking careful, respectful questions — and then getting out of the way so the leader can make meaning of their own answers.

Jim eventually named it: “I know they trust me. I just can’t quite believe it.”

Over several months, we kept returning to that theme — not with pep talks, but with small, deliberate experiments.

He spoke up more. He offered his perspective earlier. He let more of his personality — including a wonderful, dry sense of humor — show up in the room.

Leadership Impact

Later, the CEO pulled me aside.

“I don’t know what you did with Jim,” he said, “but keep doing it. He’s showing up differently. The board is loving him. He’s speaking up more. He’s funny. He’s bringing real insight. People always respected him — now they’re getting more of him.”

That was the moment the coaching work became visible.

The coaching did not give Jim new technical ability. He already had it. It did not create respect that wasn’t already there. It helped him bring more of what was already available.

The 360 had shown a striking gap. Jim rated his own leadership a 3.5. Others rated him 4.8 or higher.

But the real gap wasn’t just in the numbers.

The deeper issue was that Jim was offering less of himself than his people wanted and needed. They were ready for more of his judgment, more of his voice, and more of his presence — and he was holding back. The organization was getting less of his leadership than it could have.

The coaching helped close that gap. Not by giving him something new, but by helping him show up more fully as the leader others already saw and wanted more of.