Ceos Lma

ceos-lma

Assess leadership and management effectiveness using the LMA (Leadership + Management = Accountability) framework — EOS Toolbox tool #11. Walk a manager through rating themselves on 5 Leadership Practices and 5 Management Practices, calculate scores, flag areas needing attention, and optionally gather 360-degree feedback from direct reports.

Not for: Evaluating whether someone is a fit for their seat (use ceos-people), defining organizational structure (use ceos-accountability), or running quarterly conversations (use ceos-quarterly). LMA assesses whether you're practicing leadership and management habits, not whether you're the right person for the role.

When to Use

• "Run LMA assessment" or "LMA checklist" or "LMA for [person]"
• "How am I doing as a manager?" or "how am I doing as a leader?"
• "Leadership assessment" or "management assessment"
• "Am I creating accountability?" or "am I holding my team accountable?"
• "LMA review" or "show LMA scores" or "team LMA summary"
• "360 feedback for [person]" or "get feedback from my team"
• "Run LMA" or "leadership and management check"

Context

Finding the CEOS Repository

Search upward from the current directory for the .ceos marker file. This file marks the root of the CEOS repository.

If .ceos is not found, stop and tell the user: "Not in a CEOS repository. Clone your CEOS repo and run setup.sh first."

Sync before use: Once you find the CEOS root, run git -C <ceos_root> pull --ff-only --quiet 2>/dev/null to get the latest data from teammates. If it fails (conflict or offline), continue silently with local data.

Key Files

LMA File Format

Each person has a markdown file at data/lma/firstname-lastname.md with YAML frontmatter:

person: "Brad Feld"
seat: "Visionary"
date: "2026-02-15"
status: active            # active | reviewed | stale
leadership_score: 4.2
management_score: 3.8
overall_score: 4.0
leadership_practices:
  clear_direction: 5
  necessary_tools: 4
  letting_go: 4
  greater_good: 5
  clarity_breaks: 3
management_practices:
  clear_expectations: 4
  communicating_well: 4
  meeting_pulse: 3
  quarterly_conversations: 4
  rewarding_recognizing: 4
feedback: []
last_assessed: "2026-02-15"

File naming: firstname-lastname.md — lowercase, hyphenated. Person-centric (survives role changes).

Status Values

The 10 Practices

Leadership Practices

Management Practices

Rating Scale

Scores below 3 indicate a practice that needs focused development.

Process

Mode: Assess

Use when running an LMA self-assessment for a specific person. Recommended quarterly — ideally before Quarterly Planning sessions.

Step 1: Identify the Person

Ask for the person's name. Check if data/lma/firstname-lastname.md already exists.

• Exists: Read the file, show previous scores: "You have an existing LMA assessment from [date] (Leadership: [X], Management: [Y], Overall: [Z]). Re-assess (start fresh scores) or update (revise notes only)?"
• New person: Will create from templates/lma-assessment.md

Step 2: Pull Context from Accountability Chart

Read data/accountability.md to find the person's seat(s) and identify their direct reports.

• Has a seat: Display: "[Person] holds the [Seat] seat with [N] direct reports."
• No seat found: Warn: "[Person] has no seat defined in the Accountability Chart. LMA requires a management/leadership context. Add them via ceos-accountability, or proceed with manual context."

Step 3: Gather Cross-Skill Context

Read data from related skills to provide evidence-based context for specific practices:

Clarity Breaks (Leadership Practice #5):

• Read data/clarity/ via Glob. Count files from the last 90 days.
• Display: "[N] Clarity Breaks in the last 90 days" or "No Clarity Break records found. Consider running ceos-clarity to establish Clarity Break habits."

L10 Meeting Pulse (Management Practice #3):

• Read data/meetings/l10/ via Glob. Check meeting frequency over the last 8 weeks.
• Display: "[N] L10 meetings in the last 8 weeks ([frequency])" or "No L10 meeting records found. Consider running ceos-l10 to establish meeting pulse."

Quarterly Conversations (Management Practice #4):

• Read data/conversations/ via Glob. Check for conversations in the current and previous quarter.
• Display: "[N] quarterly conversations recorded" or "No quarterly conversation records found."

Show context summary before rating:

Cross-Skill Context for [Person]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Clarity Breaks (last 90 days): [N] sessions
  L10 Meeting Pulse (last 8 weeks): [N]/8 weeks
  Quarterly Conversations (current + prev quarter): [N] conversations

Step 4: Rate Leadership Practices

Present each of the 5 Leadership Practices one at a time with its description and any relevant context data. Collect a 1-5 rating for each.

For Practice #5 (Clarity Breaks), include the context data: "Your records show [N] Clarity Breaks in the last 90 days."

After all 5 are rated, calculate Leadership Score as the average (one decimal place).

Leadership Practices — [Person]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

| # | Practice | Rating | Notes |
|---|----------|--------|-------|
| 1 | Giving clear direction | [1-5] | [user notes] |
| 2 | Providing the necessary tools | [1-5] | |
| 3 | Letting go of the vine | [1-5] | |
| 4 | Acting with the greater good in mind | [1-5] | |
| 5 | Taking Clarity Breaks | [1-5] | [N] breaks in 90 days |

Leadership Score: [X.X] / 5.0

Step 5: Rate Management Practices

Present each of the 5 Management Practices with description and relevant context data. Collect a 1-5 rating for each.

For Practice #3 (Meeting Pulse), include: "Records show [N]/8 L10 meetings in the last 8 weeks." For Practice #4 (Quarterly Conversations), include: "[N] quarterly conversations recorded."

Calculate Management Score as the average (one decimal place).

Management Practices — [Person]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

| # | Practice | Rating | Notes |
|---|----------|--------|-------|
| 1 | Keeping expectations clear | [1-5] | |
| 2 | Communicating well | [1-5] | |
| 3 | Maintaining the right meeting pulse | [1-5] | [N]/8 L10s |
| 4 | Having quarterly conversations | [1-5] | [N] conversations |
| 5 | Rewarding and recognizing | [1-5] | |

Management Score: [X.X] / 5.0

Step 6: Calculate LMA Score

Overall LMA Score = average of Leadership Score and Management Score (one decimal place).

LMA Score — [Person]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  Leadership:  [X.X] / 5.0
  Management:  [X.X] / 5.0
  ─────────────────────────
  Overall LMA: [X.X] / 5.0

  Leadership + Management = Accountability

Step 7: Flag Practices Below 3

List any practices scoring below 3 with suggested development actions:

Flagged Practices (Below 3)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⚠️ [Practice Name] — rated [N]/5
   Suggested: [specific, actionable development suggestion]

⚠️ [Practice Name] — rated [N]/5
   Suggested: [specific suggestion]

If no practices are below 3: "No practices flagged — all rated 3 or above."

Step 8: Save the File

Show the complete file before writing. Ask: "Save this LMA assessment?"

Write to data/lma/firstname-lastname.md using the template. Update:

• YAML frontmatter: all scores, practice ratings, date, status
• Markdown body: populate practice tables with ratings and notes
• Assessment History: add dated entry

If re-assessing, preserve existing Assessment History entries and add a new one.

Mode: Review

Use when reviewing LMA results across all managers or for checking team-wide patterns.

Step 1: Read All LMA Files

Read all files from data/lma/ via Glob("data/lma/*.md"). Parse YAML frontmatter.

If no files exist: "No LMA assessments found. Run an Assess for your first team member."

Step 2: Display Summary Table

LMA Review — Team Overview
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

| Name | Seat | Last Assessed | Leadership | Management | Overall LMA | Flag |
|------|------|--------------|------------|------------|-------------|------|
| Brad Feld | Visionary | 2026-02-15 | 4.2 | 3.8 | 4.0 | |
| Sarah Chen | Integrator | 2026-01-10 | 3.6 | 4.4 | 4.0 | |
| Mike Torres | VP Sales | 2025-09-15 | 3.0 | 2.8 | 2.9 | ⚠️ Mgmt |

Team averages:
  Leadership: [X.X]
  Management: [X.X]
  Overall LMA: [X.X]

Step 3: Identify Team-Wide Patterns

Aggregate practice scores across all managers. Find the lowest-scoring practices:

Lowest-Scoring Practices (Team Average)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

| Practice | Type | Team Avg | Below 3 Count |
|----------|------|---------|---------------|
| Taking Clarity Breaks | Leadership | 2.5 | 2/3 managers |
| Maintaining meeting pulse | Management | 3.0 | 1/3 managers |

Step 4: Flag Stale Assessments

Check last_assessed date for each person. If > 120 days ago:

"📅 [Person]'s LMA assessment is [N] days old. Consider re-running before the next Quarterly Planning session."

Step 5: Show Trends

If a person has multiple assessment history entries (from re-assessments), show the trend:

LMA Trend — [Person]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

| Date | Leadership | Management | Overall | Direction |
|------|-----------|------------|---------|-----------|
| 2025-11-01 | 3.4 | 3.2 | 3.3 | |
| 2026-02-15 | 4.2 | 3.8 | 4.0 | ↑ Improving |

Step 6: Drill Down

Ask: "Want to view details for a specific person, or run a new Assess?"

Mode: 360

Use when gathering feedback from direct reports to compare against a manager's self-assessment. This creates a gap analysis between self-perception and team perception.

Step 1: Identify the Manager

Ask for the manager's name. Read data/lma/firstname-lastname.md.

• Has self-assessment: Load it, show current self-ratings.
• No self-assessment: "No LMA self-assessment found for [person]. Run an Assess first — 360 feedback requires a self-assessment to compare against."

Step 2: Identify Direct Reports

Read data/accountability.md to find people who report to this manager.

• Has direct reports: Display the list: "[Person] manages: [Name 1], [Name 2], [Name 3]"
• No direct reports found: "360 mode requires direct reports. [Person] has none listed in the Accountability Chart. Use ceos-accountability to update the org chart, or name respondents manually."

Ask which direct reports will provide feedback (may be a subset).

Step 3: Collect Feedback

For each respondent, rate the manager on all 10 practices (1-5). Use the same rating scale:

"[Respondent Name] is rating [Manager Name]'s leadership and management practices."

Present all 10 practices and collect ratings. This can be done one respondent at a time — the feedback array is additive. Each session adds one respondent's feedback.

Store each respondent's feedback in the feedback frontmatter array:

feedback:
  - name: "Sarah Chen"
    relationship: "direct report"
    ratings: [4, 3, 5, 4, 3, 4, 4, 3, 4, 3]  # 10 ratings in practice order
    date: "2026-02-15"

The ratings array follows practice order: Leadership 1-5, then Management 1-5.

Step 4: Compare Self vs Team

After at least one respondent's feedback is collected, display the comparison:

360 Comparison — [Manager Name]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Leadership Practices:
| # | Practice | Self | Team Avg | Gap |
|---|----------|------|---------|-----|
| 1 | Giving clear direction | 5 | 4.0 | -1.0 |
| 2 | Providing the necessary tools | 4 | 3.5 | -0.5 |
| 3 | Letting go of the vine | 4 | 4.5 | +0.5 |
| 4 | Acting with the greater good | 5 | 4.5 | -0.5 |
| 5 | Taking Clarity Breaks | 3 | 3.0 | 0.0 |

Management Practices:
| # | Practice | Self | Team Avg | Gap |
|---|----------|------|---------|-----|
| 1 | Keeping expectations clear | 4 | 3.0 | -1.0 |
| 2 | Communicating well | 4 | 3.5 | -0.5 |
| 3 | Maintaining meeting pulse | 3 | 4.0 | +1.0 |
| 4 | Having quarterly conversations | 4 | 3.0 | -1.0 ⚠️ |
| 5 | Rewarding and recognizing | 4 | 2.5 | -1.5 ⚠️ |

Step 5: Flag Large Gaps

Flag any practice where the absolute gap between self and team average is >= 2 points:

Significant Gaps (≥ 2 points)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⚠️ [Practice Name] — Self: [X], Team: [Y] (gap: [Z])
   This is worth discussing with the team. Large gaps indicate a
   difference between how you perceive your effectiveness and how
   your team experiences it.

If no gaps >= 2: "No significant gaps detected. Self-assessment and team feedback are generally aligned."

Step 6: Save Updated File

Show the complete updated file before writing. Ask: "Save this 360 feedback?"

Update:

• YAML frontmatter: add respondent to feedback array
• Markdown body: update 360 Feedback table with respondent's data
• Assessment History: add dated entry for 360 feedback collection

Output Format

Assess: Practice rating tables (Leadership and Management), calculated scores, flagged practices below 3, and complete file shown before save.

Review: Summary table with all managers, Leadership/Management/Overall scores, stale flags, team-wide practice patterns, and trends if multiple assessments exist.

360: Side-by-side comparison table (Self vs Team Average vs Gap) for all 10 practices. Flagged gaps >= 2 points. Complete file shown before save.

Guardrails

• Always show the complete file before writing. Never modify an LMA file without showing the change and getting approval.
• Validate ratings are 1-5. Reject values outside this range with: "Ratings must be between 1 (Never) and 5 (Consistently)."
• Don't auto-invoke other skills. When LMA results suggest running a Clarity Break or scheduling a quarterly conversation, mention the option but let the user decide. Say "Would you like to start a Clarity Break?" rather than doing it automatically.
• Don't confuse with People Analyzer. LMA is a self-assessment of leadership/management effectiveness. People Analyzer (ceos-people) evaluates whether someone is the right person in the right seat. If the user seems to be evaluating a person's fit, suggest ceos-people instead.
• 360 requires existing self-assessment. Don't allow 360 feedback without a self-assessment to compare against. The comparison is the value.
• Sensitive data warning. On first use in a session, remind the user: "LMA assessments contain information about leadership effectiveness. This repo should be private."
• Respect the quarterly cadence. Suggest running LMA before Quarterly Planning sessions. Flag assessments > 120 days old. But don't nag — once per session is enough.
• One rating per practice. Don't allow split ratings (e.g., "3.5"). Use whole numbers 1-5 only.
• Cross-skill data is context, not deterministic. Low Clarity Break count doesn't automatically mean a low Leadership #5 rating. Present the data and let the user decide their rating.

Integration Notes

Accountability Chart (ceos-accountability)

• Direction: Read
• What data: data/accountability.md — seat names, owners, and reporting relationships
• Purpose: Identifies who the manager is, what seat they hold, and who their direct reports are. Essential for both Assess (context) and 360 (respondent identification).

People Analyzer (ceos-people)

• Direction: Read
• What data: data/people/firstname-lastname.md — GWC assessment, current status
• Purpose: Optional context during Assess. If a person is below_bar, LMA can help identify whether it's a leadership gap (not empowering them) or a management gap (unclear expectations).

Clarity Break (ceos-clarity)

• Direction: Read
• What data: data/clarity/ — Clarity Break notes and frequency
• Purpose: Provides evidence for Leadership Practice #5 (Taking Clarity Breaks). Count of recent breaks gives objective context for the self-rating.

L10 Meetings (ceos-l10)

• Direction: Read
• What data: data/meetings/l10/ — L10 meeting notes
• Purpose: Provides evidence for Management Practice #3 (Maintaining the right meeting pulse). Meeting frequency and regularity give objective context.

Quarterly Conversations (ceos-quarterly)

• Direction: Read
• What data: data/conversations/ — Quarterly conversation records
• Purpose: Provides evidence for Management Practice #4 (Having quarterly conversations). Conversation frequency gives objective context.

Quarterly Planning (ceos-quarterly-planning)

• Direction: Related
• What data: No direct data access
• Purpose: LMA is ideally run before Quarterly Planning sessions. Leadership and management effectiveness directly impacts Rock execution and team accountability.

Annual Planning (ceos-annual)

• Direction: Related
• What data: No direct data access
• Purpose: Annual planning is a natural time to re-assess LMA. Leaders reassess their effectiveness as they plan the new year.

Delegate and Elevate (ceos-delegate)

• Direction: Related
• What data: No direct data access
• Purpose: Related development tool. LMA assesses how you lead and manage. Delegate and Elevate assesses what work you should focus on. Both serve leadership development.

Write Principle

Only ceos-lma writes to data/lma/. Other skills may reference LMA assessments for leadership development context, but do not modify them.