Leadership Assessment: Guide and Best Practices for Hiring

When it comes to the talent management of senior hires, few organisations would question the importance of effective leadership. This is particularly true of large organisations with several layers of management, as senior staff often have a very wide purview.

Underperformance at the top could very well bring down the organisation itself, and this has been seen many times in the corporate space. One of the main reasons underpinning poor performance, retention, and succession of senior hires is a lack of understanding of leadership itself. Despite decades of research, many senior leaders simply don’t know how to thoroughly assess senior staff, nor do they know what to do with the data once they have it.

In this article, we will outline how leadership assessments should be conducted, and how they can be used to aid recruitment, development, and promotion.

When assessing leaders for recruitment, both cognitive and behavioural assessments should be considered whenever possible. Cognitive assessments, designed to measure general cognitive ability, are especially potent predictors of performance at senior levels. Although these tools are most frequently used at early careers level, they are even more predictive of performance at senior levels. This is because management and leadership involve highly complex decision-making and problem-solving, both of which are underpinned by cognitive ability.

Behavioural assessments are also key, but typically not for the reasons you might think. Most organisations that use behavioural assessments attempt to capture the candidate's leadership style, which is very distinct from leadership ability. Instead, fit to the organisational culture should be considered the priority from a behavioural assessment perspective. Misfit to the organisational culture can be extremely damaging to organisations, and the more senior the hire, the greater the scope for harm. Such senior hires are likely to meet significant resistance from the wider organisation, failing to achieve anything meaningful.

Practically speaking, organisations must manage this stage tactfully, as candidate attrition can be high for senior hires. With early career hires, these assessments are done at volume early on in the recruitment process, but senior hires need to be more carefully managed. Instead, we recommend running a mini assessment centre for senior hires, with all associated pomp and ceremony. This could include rounds of interviews, assessments, and exercises, with the aim of thoroughly vetting candidates. Moreover, candidates are less likely to deselect themselves when being asked to complete assessments, as they are already there in person, allowing you to incorporate assessments without risking attrition.

Assessing for development follows a very different approach compared to assessing for recruitment. Realistically, not every characteristic you assess for in recruitment can be improved, nor does awareness necessarily help shape personal development. Consequently, assessing for development only makes sense when the data you collect is actionable, which is typically the case with behavioural assessments and skills assessments. Cognitive assessments, however, despite being excellent recruitment tools, are effectively useless development tools, as nothing can be done to improve cognitive ability.

When it comes to behavioural assessments, it's essential to recognise that personality traits cannot be reliably “improved”; they are immutable components of a person's character.

Skills assessments are also useful diagnostic tools that can help with development and training. When it comes to allocating training, budgets are often tight, and money needs to be spent strategically. Skills assessments can help identify skills gaps, both for individuals and throughout the organisation. Without effective assessments, organisations are likely to spend money on developing skills unnecessarily, wasting time, effort, and resources. Instead, skills assessments can serve as early diagnostic tools, helping to focus both the efforts and budgets of your training team.

Using leadership assessments for promotion is a contentious issue, and there are definitely pros and cons. The biggest reason not to use leadership assessments for promotion is the fact that actual performance is measured by the organisation. In a normal recruitment setting, assessments are used as predictors of performance, as performance data simply isn’t available. If organisations did have access to performance data, that would make assessments largely redundant, as is the case here.

Performance as an individual contributor is quite unrelated to managerial performance, calling on a very different range of behavioural predispositions. Consequently, personality questionnaires designed to measure traits associated with the human side of leadership should be used to guide promotion decisions. Emotional intelligence, assertiveness, cooperativeness, and social tact are powerful indicators of leadership ability but are often unnecessary for performance as an individual contributor.

Lastly, assessments can be used to aid onboarding following promotion, not just to help decide upon succession. This is particularly useful when leaders are expected to make evidence and data-driven decisions but may have little experience with this. Skills tests can help identify areas of weakness for the future, correcting issues before they arise. Ideally, these diagnostics should be conducted as soon as possible, giving the learning and development team plenty of time to craft a professional development plan.

Leadership assessments can offer tremendous benefits for recruitment, development, and promotion, and should be strongly considered by any employing organisation. However, you must have a strong rationale for their use, as many organisations fail to make the most of their leadership assessments. Most importantly, best practices differ significantly between applications, and many assessments for recruitment have no applicability for development (and vice versa). Realistically, however, given the stakes involved with talent management at senior levels, any advantage, no matter how slight, can have a significant impact on the wider organisation. Therefore, organisations should consider experimenting with assessments whenever there is scope to do so.

For more information on how Test Partnership could help with leadership assessments, book a call with us to discuss your requirements.