Priya, the Hyderabad Professor Who Didn't Know She Looked Cautious

    A Hyderabad university professor thought of herself as innovative. Her peers saw her as cautious and slow to change. The Elbaek Model showed her the gap — and what she did next changed how her students and colleagues saw her.

    Priya, the Hyderabad Professor Who Didn't Know She Looked Cautious

    Priya, the Hyderabad Professor Who Didn't Know She Looked Cautious

    Priya taught at a university in Hyderabad and believed, quite sincerely, that she was one of the more innovative faculty members in her department. Her students, colleagues and the everyday reality of her classroom told a different story — she was seen as cautious, hesitant, slow to change. She didn't discover this through a difficult appraisal or a whispered comment in the staff room. She discovered it through a simple exercise called the Elbaek Model — and once she saw the gap, she closed it.

    In short

    Where this sits on your Winning Kite

    Accurate self-assessment is a foundation trait on the Relationship Intelligence — right — side of your Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework). You cannot build trust, influence or genuine connection with colleagues, students or teams if the person you think you are and the person others experience are two different people. The Elbaek Model is the tool I use to make that gap visible — and once it's visible, it's fixable.

    Every leader thinks they know themselves. Most don't.

    When you think about success at work, what comes to mind first? Great strategy. Flawless execution. Maybe exceptional leadership. All important. But in my years training the Indian Army, BRO, RBI, BARC, JSW Steel and thousands of corporate professionals, I've seen again and again that the real game-changer is something quieter — your relationships with the people around you. Your boss, your teammates, your students, your clients, even the office chaiwala. Relationships carry your career.

    But before you can build stronger relationships with others, you need to see yourself clearly first. Most of us assume we already know ourselves well. That assumption is often an illusion. It's only when we dig deeper that we discover blind spots — things about us that are completely obvious to the people around us, and completely invisible to us.

    That is exactly what happened to Priya.

    Meet Priya: innovative in her own mind, cautious in everyone else's

    Priya was a university professor in Hyderabad. Ask her to describe herself as a teacher, and she would have told you — honestly, not arrogantly — that she was innovative. She believed she kept pace with new ideas, that she was open to trying things differently in her classroom, that she wasn't the sort of professor who simply repeated the same lecture notes year after year.

    Her peers saw someone else. To her colleagues, Priya came across as overly cautious. Hesitant. Someone who talked about new teaching methods more than she actually used them. When new digital tools or interactive formats came up in department discussions, Priya was the one who wanted to "wait and see," who worried about what could go wrong, who defaulted to the tried-and-tested lecture format even when everyone else was ready to experiment.

    This is precisely the kind of gap the Elbaek Model is built to expose — and it did, for Priya, without a single uncomfortable confrontation.

    The tool: the Uffe Elbaek Model, explained simply

    The Elbaek Model was developed by Uffe Elbaek, a Danish innovator and leadership expert known for his work in organisational development. It's brilliantly simple to use, and that simplicity is exactly why it works in Indian workplaces — no elaborate psychometric instrument, no expensive consultant, just honesty and a piece of paper.

    Think of it as a self-assessment map. You pick a set of personality or behaviour traits, represented as axes with two opposing qualities at either end — traits that matter for your specific role. Some common examples:

    For each axis pair, you rate yourself from 0 to 10 on each end — with the important rule that the combined score across the pair cannot exceed 10. If you rate yourself 8 on collaborative, you can only give yourself 2 on independent. This forces real trade-offs instead of vague self-flattery.

    Take Nikhil, an IT manager from Bengaluru, who rated himself 8 on collaborative and 2 on independent — he knew he thrived in group projects and struggled working solo. Or Ayesha, a financial analyst from Mumbai, who gave herself a 9 for optimistic and just 1 for pessimistic, reflecting how naturally she leaned toward the positive read on any situation. These are quick, honest self-portraits — the first half of the exercise.

    The second half: someone else rates you too

    Here's where the exercise turns into a mirror. You don't just draw your own self-assessment diagram. A trusted partner — a colleague, a friend, a mentor, a supervisor — draws two diagrams of their own: one for themselves, and one depicting how they perceive you on those same axes.

    When you overlay your self-assessment diagram with their assessment of you, the areas that don't overlap — the hatched, non-matching zones — are your blind spots. Qualities and behaviours that are completely visible to the people around you, but hidden from your own view. You can make this even more reliable by involving more than one partner; two or three honest assessments give you a far richer, more triangulated picture than just one.

    Rahul, a senior executive at a startup in Pune, is a good illustration of how sharp this gap can be. Rahul rated himself 9 on optimistic and 1 on pessimistic. His colleague Swati, assessing him on the same axis, scored him only 6 on optimistic and 4 on pessimistic. Rahul was genuinely shocked — until Swati walked him through specific situations where he had quietly chosen the cautious, risk-reducing path instead of the optimistic one he believed defined him. That's when the blind spot became real for him, and he could start consciously balancing optimism with practicality.

    Why the gap exists — and what it means about you

    When you rate yourself much higher than your partner rates you, it usually means you haven't assessed yourself accurately — and often, ego is quietly doing the inflating. It's the classic "I'm the best" self-talk running into the blunt Hindi question, "Teri aukaat kya hai?" That inflated self-view creates friction and misunderstanding with the very people you work with every day.

    The opposite gap matters too. If you consistently rate yourself lower than others rate you — as with Priya on the innovation axis, in a sense, though flipped — you may be dealing with a confidence issue rather than an ego issue. Either direction, the fix is the same: get accurate information about yourself, because accurate self-assessment is one of the building blocks of real emotional intelligence.

    Psychologist Daniel Goleman calls self-awareness the bedrock of emotional intelligence — you cannot manage what you cannot see. The Elbaek Model is simply a practical, workplace-ready way to build that seeing.

    Back to Priya: what she did once she saw the gap

    Once Priya ran this exercise with her peers and saw the overlay — her own "innovative" self-score sitting next to their "cautious" score of her — she had a choice. She could get defensive, dismiss the feedback, decide her colleagues simply didn't understand her teaching philosophy. Instead, she did what accurate self-assessment is supposed to make possible: she accepted the data and acted on it.

    Priya stepped out of her comfort zone. She began introducing digital tools and more engaging, interactive formats into her classroom — the very things her colleagues had noticed she talked about but rarely implemented. The result wasn't a dramatic reinvention overnight. It was a steady, visible shift, and it earned her genuinely strong feedback — from students who found her classes more engaging, and from colleagues who noticed she was now living up to the innovative self-image she'd always privately held.

    That's the real power of this tool. Priya didn't need a performance improvement plan or a difficult HR conversation. She needed one honest mirror, held up by people who saw her clearly.

    The same tool, three different Indian workplaces

    Priya's story sits alongside two others I use often in my sessions, because together they show how universal this blind-spot pattern is across sectors:

    Manufacturing: Ramesh, a production manager at an automotive plant in Chennai, discovered through the Elbaek Model that his team saw him as overly assertive — almost aggressive — something he had genuinely never realised about himself. Once he saw it, he consciously shifted toward a more collaborative leadership style, and his team's productivity and morale both improved.

    Hospitality: Arjun, the general manager of a luxury hotel in Jaipur, learned through the same model that his natural optimism sometimes caused him to overlook practical concerns his team was raising. Seeing that gap helped him balance optimism with realism — leading to better-managed projects and a happier team.

    Interestingly, in some tellings of this exercise, a different Priya shows up too — a team lead at a software firm in Bengaluru who rated herself just 3 out of 10 on assertiveness, only to have her team rate her 7 out of 10. That Priya's blind spot ran the opposite direction from our Hyderabad professor's — she was more assertive than she gave herself credit for, and seeing that boosted her confidence in decision-making. Two very different women, two very different gaps, same tool, same lesson: you don't get to choose whether you have blind spots. You only get to choose whether you go looking for them.

    How to run this yourself, this week

    You don't need a classroom, a corporate offsite, or a licensed coach to try this. Here's exactly how I ask participants in my signature leadership programs to do it:

    1. Choose relevant traits. Pick 4-7 axes that genuinely matter in your role — Honest vs. Diplomatic, Analytical vs. Creative, Introverted vs. Extroverted, Risk-Taking vs. Cautious, Innovative vs. Conventional, Assertive vs. Passive, Detail-Oriented vs. Strategic Thinking. Don't just copy a generic list — adapt it to your actual work.
    2. Self-assess honestly. Rate yourself on each axis, remembering the pair must total 10. Don't try to guess the "correct" or most flattering answer. Authenticity is the entire point.
    3. Get an external assessment. Ask someone trustworthy — your manager, a reliable teammate, a mentor — to rate you on the exact same axes.
    4. Overlay and discuss. Compare the two diagrams. Wherever the gap is largest, that's your blind spot. Talk about it openly with the person who rated you — that conversation alone does more for your self-awareness and your professional relationships than the scoring exercise itself.

    Why this matters more than most leadership advice

    Most leadership content tells you to "be more self-aware" without ever telling you how. The Elbaek Model is the how. It converts a vague instruction into a 20-minute, concrete exercise with a trusted colleague and a piece of paper.

    And it doesn't stop at individual insight. In my corporate training sessions across sectors — education, manufacturing, hospitality, IT, government and defence establishments — this single tool consistently produces the most honest conversations of the entire program, because it isn't about criticism. It's about data. Two people, comparing two diagrams, discovering where perception diverges. No blame, just clarity.

    That clarity is what separates a good professional from what I call a Star at India Inc. — someone who knows exactly how they land with the people around them, and adjusts deliberately instead of by accident.

    The takeaway

    Priya didn't become innovative the day she ran this exercise. She was probably always capable of it. What changed was that she finally saw the gap between the professor she believed she was and the professor her students and colleagues experienced every day — and she closed it, one digital tool and one classroom decision at a time.

    That's what accurate self-assessment does. It doesn't hand you a new personality. It hands you the truth about the one you already have, so you can decide, deliberately, what to do with it.

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    Avinash Chate

    TEDx Speaker · Founder, The Future Corporate · Author of Stars at India Inc.

    Avinash has trained the Indian Army, BRO, RBI, BARC, JSW Steel and 1000+ corporate leaders across India. His work focuses on leadership, emotional intelligence and behavioural training rooted in Indian values and modern business needs.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What is the Elbaek Model?

    The Elbaek Model, developed by Danish innovator Uffe Elbaek, is a self-assessment tool that plots personality traits on axes (like Innovative vs. Conventional) so you can compare how you rate yourself against how others rate you, revealing blind spots.

    What blind spot did Priya discover using the Elbaek Model?

    Priya, a university professor in Hyderabad, saw herself as innovative in her teaching methods, but her peers rated her as overly cautious and hesitant to try new approaches. The gap between her self-score and their score was her blind spot.

    How do you use the Elbaek Model at work?

    Pick 4-7 trait axes relevant to your role, rate yourself honestly from 0-10 on each (the pair must total 10), ask a trusted colleague to rate you on the same axes, then compare the two diagrams. Large gaps are your blind spots — discuss them openly.

    Where does the Elbaek Model fit in the Winning Kite Framework?

    The Elbaek Model builds Accurate Self-Assessment, one of the core traits on the Relationship Intelligence (RQ) side of the Winning Kite Framework — because you can't build honest relationships with others until you see yourself clearly.

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