Bob Bookman, creator of the INSIGHTMirror 360, began his career as a management performance improvement consultant nearly thirty years ago when he became Board Certified as a Master Executive Coach. He subsequently launched a coaching firm that reached its pinnacle with twelve
full-time coaches, and clients that included over a score of Fortune 500 companies.

Then in the summer of 2001, Bob experienced a breakthrough event that he described as “like an anvil hitting me on the head.” He had just read the Gallop Study of 2000 on the characteristics of outstanding leaders. One of the project’s most important findings, corroborated by such highly respected management experts as Peter Drucker, Donald Clifton, and Marcus Buckingham, was that leaders often waste their time trying to “fix” employees’ weaknesses. The study found that concentrating on weaknesses often doesn’t work, and at best only helps people prevent failure. In fact, the twenty-year study, which included over 200,000 leaders from around the world, found that most outstanding leaders emphatically agreed that it is almost exclusively within their own strengths and the strengths of their employees that lie the true opportunities for world-class performance.

Bob suddenly realized that he had built a consulting practice following the common wisdom among most executive coaches at that time, based on the opposite of what the new research had uncovered. He had been a “fixer of weaknesses”—rather than a “reinforcer of strengths.”

He immediately understood that focusing on what people did well was absolutely essential to encourage positive performance improvement. He recalled his own painful experiences as a public school student, greatly dispirited by his lack of ability in foreign languages and math—while not
sufficiently capitalizing, or given the direction by guidance counselors on what he did well, in English and creative writing. Only when he got to college, where he could concentrate on his academic strengths—especially writing—did he begin to flourish as a scholar. And Bob’s talents as an author later directly helped the early growth of his consulting practice, through frequent publishing of articles on management and creativity in well-known journals that brought in a large portion of his business at that time.

Armed with this new insight, Bob made a breakthrough decision to sell his executive coaching business and set out on a totally new course of action—to develop one of America’s premier assessment surveys: the strength-focused INSIGHTMirror 360 with carefully researched questions, supported by an award winning Action Guide. Both leadership publications strongly support the following two tenets:

• It is within people’s strengths where lie the true opportunities for exceptional performance. Hence the exceptional manager assists people in both identifying and using their strengths on a regular basis.

• The exceptional manager also knows that people need help managing their weaknesses because if you don’t manage the weeds, you will beautiful garden left in decay.

The INSIGHTMirror 360 has resulted in over 40,000 assessments in both the U.S. and India in fewer than four years. Assessment reliability and validity studies score extremely high marks, and you can read about them by accessing a link on the INSIGHTMirror home page.

Acceptance of the 360 Assessment among clients and the trade press has been universally favorable. For example, Government Training News, a publication with a large national circulation, recently wrote:

• The INSIGHTMirror 360 is the Rolls Royce of online 360 degree assessments, at Honda prices.”

• “The INSIGHTMirror Action Guide effortlessly breaks the mold of dull workbooks and boilerplate advice with very imaginative and humorous ways of illustrating valuable information on strengthening strengths and managing weaknesses.”

Testimonials for the INSIGHTMirror 360 can be seen on our Testimonial Link.

We Are a Team of Ten
INSIGHTMirror 360 has six full-time trainer/coaches who can help you plan and implement your 360 program, either by phone or in person. All six are either ICCO or Coach University certified, and all are outstanding at what they do best—assuring the complete success of your assessment initiative.

Two full-time programmers provide e-mail responses to our clients’ questions within 24 hours through our “Help Desk.” This service is available to all project personnel, plus all Ratees and Raters. We also have on staff a full-time customer service representative and one marketing
representative you can talk to directly at any time you wish, at no extra cost.

We look forward to being of service!