Cicada: Natural Leadership Profile
A practical guide to understanding what your results mean, and how to use them to become a more intentional leader.
This isn't a personality test. It's a map of your leadership defaults.
Your profile shows the instincts you reach for first when you lead. Under the right conditions, those instincts are real strengths. Pushed too far, or into the wrong moment, the same instinct becomes a limitation.
Your individual report goes deep on each of the four pieces below. This guide focuses on what to do with them.
How you naturally lead.
How your Element gets expressed.
The pace and standards you create.
How you engage others in the work.
Section 2
The most useful insight in your report isn't any single result. It's how your results interact.
You aren't simply a Culture Builder, or a Pathfinder. Your leadership pattern comes from four things working together: Element, Secondary Influence, Drive, and Work Style.
A worked example
Culture Builder
I naturally build the conditions for people to thrive.
Firestarter
I tend to do that through energy, possibility, and momentum.
Self-Improvement
I hold myself and the work to an internal bar.
Collaborator
I tend to think and solve with other people.
Put it together
You tend to build culture through momentum and collaboration, while continually pushing the work to improve.
Where might the tension show up?
!Your desire to improve and your ability to create momentum may mean the team is already moving toward the next thing before they've had time to feel successful with the last one.
Instead of asking “Does this label sound like me?” ask “How does this combination show up when I'm at my best, under pressure, or leading through something unfamiliar?”
Section 3
A quick-reference map of the full Cicada framework. Use it to place your own result, or to understand someone else's.
Element
Vision Family
Pathfinder
✓Finds new possibilities
!May keep generating instead of deciding
Vision Family
Firestarter
✓Creates belief and momentum
!Can create urgency without clear priority
Build Family
Builder
✓Turns ideas into something real
!Can become the bottleneck
Operate Family
Orchestrator
✓Creates sequence and standards
!Can over-plan or over-perfect
Operate Family
Closer
✓Drives decisions to completion
!Can move faster than trust allows
People Family
Bridge
✓Builds shared understanding
!Can over-engineer alignment
People Family
Culture Builder
✓Builds conditions for people to thrive
!Can let care delay accountability
Drive
Driven by Self-Improvement
✓Raises the bar against your own past best
!Standard may never feel fully met
Driven to Win
✓Energizes the room, plays to beat something
!Can prioritize the scoreboard over quality
Driven by Excellence
✓Pushes quality and competitiveness together
!Pace can become hard to sustain
Steady Paced
✓Calm, doesn't manufacture unnecessary contest
!May leave the standard or urgency unspoken
Work Style
Individualist
✓Brings a considered, well-formed position
!Can exclude input that's needed early
Collaborator
✓Pulls collective intelligence into decisions
!Can over-consult, reading as indecisive
Adaptor
✓Flexes mode to fit what the task calls for
!Can read as unpredictable if shifts aren't signaled
Section 4
Strong leadership isn't about having every instinct. It's about knowing when your natural instinct is exactly right, and when the moment calls for something else.
Lean In
✓Where is this instinct exactly what the situation needs?
Watch For
!Where does this same strength become too much?
Reach For
→What do you need to do on purpose, because it won't happen on its own?
Growth happens in the Reach For. Your Watch For shows you where a natural strength can start working against you. Your Reach For is the behavior you practice when the situation calls for another gear.
A worked example: Self-Improvement
Lean In
✓Keep raising the quality of the work. Let your own bar pull things forward.
Watch For
!The bar keeps moving. Nothing, including a real win, ever quite feels finished.
Reach For
→Define "good enough" ahead of time. Name the finish line before you start, then let the win land when you hit it.
This is the method, not a rule specific to Self-Improvement. Apply the same three questions to your own Element, Drive, and Work Style.
Your profile describes what you naturally reach for first. It doesn't describe what you're capable of.
Leadership growth comes from expanding your range: recognizing what a situation requires, and intentionally using a different approach when your default isn't enough.
Growth often means adding a gear, not replacing the one you have.
Section 6
A leadership gap isn't something you're bad at. It's something the situation needs that you may not naturally reach for.
What do I overuse?
Which strength becomes costly when I lean on it too heavily?
What do I avoid?
What kind of leadership situation makes me uncomfortable or drains me?
What do others compensate for?
Where might my team regularly supply something I don't naturally bring?
What does my role require now?
Leadership needs change as teams and organizations grow. Has yours changed in a way that calls for a different gear?
What Should I Do With a Gap?
Develop It
✓This capability matters enough that I need to strengthen it myself.
Reach For It
→I don't need it constantly, but I need to intentionally use it in certain situations.
Design Around It
◇I don't need to become great at this. I need people around me whose instincts complement mine.
Section 7
Choose one pattern. Not everything. One.
My Leadership Experiment
Lean In
One strength I want to use deliberately
Watch For
I'll know I'm overusing it when
Reach For
Instead, I will practice
Try It
One situation this week where I'll test this
Reflect
What changed in me, the team, or the outcome
“Your defaults aren't the problem. Leadership growth comes from recognizing when your default is exactly what the moment needs, and when you need another gear.”
Your default is not your limit
Keep this guide on hand
Download it as a PDF, or take the assessment to get your own results.