Sophiris Advisory

Working with the Evidence

A guide to Profile Synthesis and the Decision Brief

These tools turn leadership assessment into structured evidence for a decision you make. Both are deliberately descriptive: they describe patterns and strengths in plain terms, with the reasoning always visible, and they stop there. There is, by design, no verdict — no “hire this person,” no promotion score, no prediction of success. The tools lay out the evidence; you draw the conclusion.

The evidence informs your judgement; it never replaces it — the best possible briefing before the conversation, never the conversation’s conclusion.

The assessments behind the tools

Both tools read from the same assessments. Each looks at something different, and the tools keep those differences visible rather than blending them into one number.

Executive Mirror

An individual leader’s read across Vision, Execution, People, Resilience. A self-perception instrument.

Manager Feedback Style

A leader’s feedback archetype (Coach, Challenger, Nurturer, Evaluator, Director, Mentor) — a style, not a score.

Team Readiness

A leader’s own read of their team across ten dimensions. A self-reported view of the team.

Team Intelligence

An assessed read of a team’s composition and dynamics, built from member profiles.

Coaching Gems

Targeted diagnostics that go deep on a single capability.

The two tools

Profile Synthesis — the narrative

Reads a person’s assessments together and writes a plain-language interpretation — where the reads align, where they sit in tension, confident strengths, and areas worth exploring. Reach for it when you want the story. Needs two or more assessments.

The Decision Brief — structured evidence

Organises the same evidence around a specific decision. Choose the “doorway,” and the brief presents the relevant assessments as banded dimensions, with thin areas flagged to watch. Every figure is traceable. Reach for it when you want the evidence laid out against a decision.

Reading the output

strongpresentthinbalance

Bands — strong, present, thin. Descriptive markers of where the evidence reads as a capability, adequately there, or underdeveloped. Interpretive guides for a conversation, not pass/fail cut-offs.
Watch flags. The dimensions that read as thin, weakest-first — a prompt to look, never a verdict.
Typology, not banded. Some reads describe a type, not a level (feedback style). Shown as an archetype, not banded — the numbers describe the type, not the individual.
Balance dimensions. A few are healthiest in the middle (e.g. risk appetite balance). Shown distinctly — a mid score means “leaning,” not “adequate.”
Two reads kept separate. Where two assessments read the same subject differently, both are shown side by side rather than averaged. The divergence is the signal.

The six decision doorways

Hiring

A candidate — or several, side by side — against the specific gap a receiving team needs closed.

Team strength

Where a team is genuinely strong versus quietly exposed, before pressure finds the gap.

Fundraise readiness

What a sharp investor tests — execution, key-person risk, strategic coherence.

Succession / promotion

A person’s read against the demands of a larger role — where they cover it, where the step-up is a stretch.

Board composition

A board as a governing group — perspectives present, perspectives missing.

Self-awareness

A leader’s own patterns — the quiet bet beneath every other decision they make.

Worked scenarios

Each example shows how to read the evidence — and the question it hands back to you. In every case the tool surfaces evidence; the decision stays with the human.

Succession — evidence of readiness

Strong, coherent reads on both lenses. The evidence supports the step-up conversation; it does not conclude it. The question it hands back: where is the remaining stretch?

Succession — evidence of gaps

A strong operator, thin on the step-up capabilities, over a thin bench. Not “don’t promote” — rather, here is what would need support, and here is the surrounding risk.

A capable team, a developing leader

A modest individual read over a strong team. The question: is the team strong because of, or despite, this leader? The tool surfaces the tension; you investigate it.

Two reads that diverge

A self-report and an assessed read disagree. Not “one is wrong” — different lenses may legitimately differ. The divergence itself is the signal worth exploring.

On comparing people

The tools actively support comparing candidates on the evidence — laying briefs side by side to see where each covers a role’s demands and where each reads thin. What they deliberately do not do is collapse a person into a single number to be ranked against others. Richer comparison, not a leaderboard.

Principles and limits

Descriptive, not predictive. The tools describe what the assessments show. They do not forecast success or fit.

Human in the loop. Every output informs a decision a person makes. No output is itself a decision.

The working is shown. Every figure traces to its assessment and dimension. No hidden score, no single number standing in for a judgement.

Consistent and reconstructable. The same inputs produce the same read, traceable to the evidence behind it — so a decision can be revisited later with the evidence intact.

The tools are not a substitute for knowing the person, and not a measure to be read to the decimal. They are a structured, honest briefing — most powerful in a facilitated conversation, not read in isolation.

See it for yourself

The clearest way to understand the evidence is to generate some. Start with the Executive Mirror — it takes five minutes.

Take the Executive Mirror →