The Evolution of Leadership Assessments

A constant intrigue that most of us live with is one about ourselves! The desire to gather insights about ourselves and draw inferences from those insights to understand or explain our behaviors is a deep-rooted desire. We frequently find ourselves responding to various types of surveys – formal or informal – to make sense for ourselves.

Formal personality / psychometric tools pertaining to how we communicate, lead, manage emotions etc., have been one of the key mediums to satiate this quest.

 

Leadership Assessments – The 20th Century Evolution

 

Leadership Assessments have also evolved significantly over the years. In the early 20th century, assessments were viewed as tools that could be used to assess a person’s personality or cognitive ability. These gave an overall sense of a person’s profile. The interpretation or application of these in various work situations was not the focus or the capability of the tools at that time. These were highly specialized tools that could only be interpreted by a specialized few – humans! And thus were largely exclusive.

By the early 21stcentury however, leadership assessments have aligned with rising wave of data analytics, machine thinking, and ability to factor in several data points towards creating a comprehensive output. They have also become much more focused on providing meaningful and synthesized data for identified objectives. Be it for talent development, recruitment, potential identification, innate preferences et all, leadership assessments today are able to provide insights for all these specific scenarios.

Case Example

 

An example, reflective of the above-mentioned capability of assessments today, can be seen in our work with a large global bank. The organization was embarking on a major change initiative caused by certain regulatory requirements. Additionally, this change was initiated during a largely negative internal environment caused by some unfortunate publicity about the bank in the public domain. Change is almost always met with resistance by the people, and in a pre-existing negative environment like this, the change was met with significant resistance from the organization leaders.

This bank was able to lay down the process and structural changes required to comply with these regulatory requirements very clearly. However, the focus on its people, the intangible as an aspect of change, was not as clear.

Thus, the focus of our intervention was clearly the people aspect of change – how to make them amenable to adapt to and drive the change. The Emotional intelligence (EI) route was chosen to first help the leaders in the organization navigate this change themselves, and then drive and inspire the change in the rest of the organization. Using the InspireOne TMI EI tool – the Personal Emotional Quotient Metre (PEQMTM) – we were able to first identify their EI profiles, and then through one-on-one feedback sessions explain the implication of that profile to adapting, managing and driving change. Often, simply understanding the manifestation on one’s profile in the workplace situation can be leveraged while responding to situations.

In addition to this, the organization could get a holistic picture of their leader’s current needs through the group report. Using the individual and the group reports (Data points) the organization was able to shift its focus entirely onto the derailers and enablers of the change: the people.

This is only one example of how leadership assessments can be used to target very specific needs in the organizations. Our previous blog also explored the work we did with a large conglomerate in which assessment tools were used to identify potential functional and business leaders. The assessments conducted were able to provide the organization with data points to clearly chart out development plans for each leader either as a functional leader or a business leader depending on their innate orientations.

Leadership assessments today are much more scalable and can be easily customised to address the unique challenges we face today in this VUCA world. However, this is not the end of the road. Leadership assessments like any other field will continue to grow. Let’s look at some of the advancements in this field today itself.

IBM Watson is an artificial intelligence (AI) based assessment tool that can even assess a person’s personality based on his/her tweets. A leader has easy access to technology that can monitor his/her heart rate, providing information that can be used to better manage stress. Leaders have ready access to surveys that can be used immediately after meetings to assess his/her performance etc.

With AI-based tools and gamification entering the field of assessment, organizations have a lot to look forward to in the coming years.

Source : InspireOne

Leadership Assessments: New Practices

Scientific and predictive validity seem to be the mantra for organizations today as they look at building rigor and objectivity in their hiring process. Instead of merely hiring the ‘right person for the right job’, organizations have become more appreciative of charting out a career graph for new hire hires even as they are being considered for the job.

We appreciate the importance of choosing candidates who possess the capacity and orientation to take on strong leadership roles tomorrow. Investing to select future leaders at the level of hiring itself presents multiple benefits to the organization concerned.

1. The decision of hiring individuals is based on well-researched assessment tools, which show a strong correlation between scores on the assessment and performance in leadership roles. Hence, the organization is trusted to make a sound hiring decision.

2. The assessment can throw up some very insightful data with respect to the candidate’s strengths and opportunities keeping in mind a specific role. By providing a career graph to the individual along with a development plan at the time of joining, the organization provides confidence to the candidate that the right efforts are being invested in making him or her successful.

3. Many times hiring technically sound individuals may prove costly at a later stage when the individual is being considered for promotion. Because candidates have been accepted purely on the basis of their technical or behavioral skills, they may not necessarily make the best people managers. Assessing candidates on their leadership capacities helps organizations in planning ahead of time.

CASE IN POINT

Our client, part of the USD 3 billion Indian conglomerate, is engaged in sales and servicing of luxury cars through state-of-the-art showrooms in Southern India. It is one of the world's leading premium brands and is amongst the most admired car brands across the world.

To achieve its vision to acquire and maintain global leadership position in the automobile space, the Company recognized the significance of having the right leaders spearheading the business. Through ongoing and structured deliberations with the Capability Building and Senior Leadership Team, and in partnership with InspireOne, the company came up with a rigorous Leadership Assessment exercise for the hiring of college graduates.

The hires were selected to go through an internally-led Leadership Acceleration Program (LAP) which focused on a fast-track job rotation program of 9-12 months. By the end of the program, these newly hired recruits were designated leadership positions with teams reporting into them. 

Hiring Process:

The Company’s selection panel visited tier 1 and tier 2 Indian business schools for a pre-placement interview. All students who choose to go through the selection procedure went through 5 stages and candidates were filtered as they moved through stages:

Analytical Test: This was a short paper and pen test, which contained 10 questions on Logical Reasoning. A time-bound test, approximately 1 minute was designated to solve each question. All students who cleared this test were moved to the next level.

Group Discussion: A case study of the companywas provided to a group of 6-7 candidates. The candidates were judged on how they were able to take decisions as the CEO of the organization around various situational challenges that cropped up in year 2006.

Personal Application: Candidates were asked to fill a personal application form which provided an insight into their personality. The questions pertained to the personal experiences that the candidate may have gone through. 

Personal Interview: The selection panel conducted a one-on-one interview with the candidate for roughly 20-30 minutes. The candidate was primarily judged on the 4 E's i.e. positive Energy, ability to Enthuse, Edge, Execution power and passion.

Evaluation of Leadership Capacity: This was the last and most critical filter to determine selection of a candidate. In line with the vision to select future leaders, the company partnered with InspireOne. The objective of this online questionnaire was to identify the natural leadership orientations, leadership styles and career anchors of the candidate. Based on the outcome of the questionnaire, the selection panel took a decision of 'hire' or 'no hire'.

Customization:

Keeping in mind the values and ethos that the organization aimed to promote as part of its culture, the team came up with following 13 behavioral requirements for a candidate to be selected.

1. Self motivation

2. Execution orientation

3. Analytical

4. Ability to work under pressure

5. Goal orientation

6. Passion to serve

7. Nurture Talent

8. Creativity

9. Accountability & Ownership

10. Collaboration

11. Decisiveness

12. Passionate

13. Seeks Quality

To meet the requirements of the organization, we mapped the leadership orientations to each behavioral requirement. A measurement scale was designed in order to evaluate the candidate on the 13 parameters. Each parameter could gain a maximum of 5 points for a candidate. Hence, a candidate could score a maximum of 65 on the overall scale. Defined by the purpose of the exercise and the background of the candidates, the range defined for hire was approximately 15 - 25.

In addition to the measurement outcomes, we analyzed the report and provided a brief summary for each candidate based on his or her strengths and areas of development. The scoring and analysis was conducted keeping in mind the specific role that the candidate was being considered for.

Assessing success:

Using the aforementioned assessment process, the organization has hired 56% of the candidates from the total applied. In order to assess the success the organization may be recommended to use the following measures:

Performance appraisal data at the end of the Leadership Acceleration Program is an effective way to determine accuracy of the results from the assessment exercise. 100% candidates must successfully complete the Leadership Acceleration Program and are deemed ready to take on leadership responsibilities.

Engagement surveys conducted within respective teams after 6 months of taking on leadership role should produce sufficient data.

Minimal attrition rate from amongst the candidates hired through the new assessment exercise to be documented on yearly basis.