The Framework
The 12 Vital Signs
Every leader has a profile. Twelve dimensions that reveal how you lead, relate, grow, and sustain. Each one scored 0 to 10. Each one telling you something the mirror cannot.
Every vital sign is measured on a 0 to 10 scale
Relational
How you connect with others and navigate the space between you.
Empathy
0 = Emotional Blindness / 10 = Deep Attunement
Your capacity to feel what another person feels without losing yourself in the process. Not sympathy. Not performing care. The real thing.
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Differentiation
0 = Enmeshed / 10 = Fully Self-Defined
Your ability to hold your own position while staying emotionally connected to people who disagree with you. The hardest thing in leadership.
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Relational Depth
0 = Surface Transactions / 10 = Intimate Alliance
The quality of your closest relationships. Not how many people you know. How deeply you let yourself be known.
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Internal
The patterns running beneath the surface that shape everything you do.
Self-Awareness
0 = Blind Spots Everywhere / 10 = Radical Self-Knowledge
How honestly you see yourself. Not the story you tell at dinner parties. The truth you avoid when it is quiet.
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Power Orientation
0 = Power Hoarding / 10 = Power Sharing
How you hold power when you have it. Whether you use authority to control outcomes or to develop the people around you.
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Shame Resilience
0 = Shame Dominated / 10 = Shame Resilient
Your ability to experience shame without being consumed by it. The difference between a leader who can recover and one who hides.
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Growth
Your orientation toward change, challenge, and becoming.
Conflict Courage
0 = Conflict Avoidant / 10 = Conflict Engaged
Your willingness to walk into difficult conversations when the stakes are real. Not aggression. Courage.
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Growth Velocity
0 = Stagnant / 10 = Accelerating
The speed at which you are actually changing. Not reading about change. Not talking about it. Doing it.
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Feedback
0 = Feedback Resistant / 10 = Feedback Seeking
How you respond when someone tells you something true that you did not want to hear. This one separates the serious from the performative.
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Capacity
Your reserves. What you draw from when everything else is spent.
Presence
0 = Perpetually Distracted / 10 = Fully Present
Your ability to be in the room you are in. Not rehearsing the next meeting. Not replaying the last one. Here.
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Burnout Risk
0 = Critical Burnout / 10 = Sustainable Rhythm
How close you are to the edge. Most leaders do not know until they have already gone over it.
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Forgiveness
0 = Resentment Locked / 10 = Freely Released
Your capacity to release what someone did to you without pretending it did not happen. The most misunderstood vital sign in the framework.
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Ready to see your own scores?
The nuda veritas assessment measures all 12 vital signs across 94 research-validated questions. The result is not a label. It is a mirror.
Take the Assessment