Beyond Self-Rating Leadership: A 360-Degree Audit Architecture for Evidence-Based Executive Maturity Assessment
Abstract
Leadership assessment often privileges self-perception or superior appraisal, even though executive conduct is experienced differently by peers, employees, clients, partners and institutional stakeholders. This paper develops a 360-degree audit architecture for evidence-based executive maturity assessment using the Total Leadership Index (TLI). Unlike conventional multi-source feedback, the proposed architecture does not treat ratings as interchangeable opinions. It preserves source visibility, links scores to observable behaviour and documentary evidence, assigns a separate evidence-confidence grade, fixes role-sensitive weights before data collection, and embeds confidentiality, consent, non-retaliation, calibration and due-process controls. The study follows a conceptual-methodological framework-development approach and integrates literature on multi-source feedback, self-other agreement, performance assessment, sustainable leadership, organizational resilience and succession governance. The resulting model specifies five rater categories, a standard 25-20-25-20-10 weighting structure, source-specific evidence standards, moderation rules, red-flag handling and an implementation cycle for corporations, SMEs, entrepreneurial ventures, project organizations and public institutions. The paper’s principal contribution is to reframe 360-degree feedback from a developmental survey into a governed audit of executive impact across four maturity domains: decision stillness, temporal precision, structured reflection and governed speech. The architecture is positioned as a mechanism for strengthening leadership succession, resilient execution, stakeholder trust and long-term organizational sustainability. Because the model is conceptual, no empirical effectiveness claims are made; a staged validation agenda is proposed for psychometric testing, inter-rater reliability, fairness, predictive validity and longitudinal development outcomes.