Innovations in Leadership Assessment
Companies assess candidates and employees to find the best people to grow their business and fill their leadership pipeline. Although assessments have been slow to change for many years, disruption from Artificial Intelligence (AI) and advances in research are rapidly changing the future of leadership assessment.
Innovations in Leadership Assessment are explored by experts in a new book, Talent Assessment: Embracing Innovation and Mitigating Risk in the Digital Age. I contributed a chapter to this book and summarise some of the opportunities and challenges below to help you make strategic assessment decisions.
Best Types of Assessments
A new study (Sackett, et. al., 2022) analysed decades of research and found that the assessments "closest to measuring work" are the strongest predictors of future job performance. These assessments measure what people do (e.g., structured interviews, behavioural tendencies) and what they know (e.g., job knowledge).
As assessments move further from the work performed, they become less predictive of performance. Unfortunately, companies often use general personality assessments (e.g., HPI, Neo-PIR), which are one of the lowest predictors of job performance. The figure below highlights how well each assessment approach predicts performance, its distance from work, and how easily these capabilities can be developed.
Leadership Assessment and Development
Personality changes slowly and feedback sessions focusing on personality often result in insight, but little development. One innovation that addresses this is the Growth Leader Assessment. This tool was designed to assess and accelerate the development of leadership capacity at all levels in the organisation. It does this by directly assessing practices and routines that drive business results.
The assessment measures a person's Style and Strategies. Styles are traits or mindsets (e.g., growth mindset) and Strategies are practices (e.g., coaching others) that are critical to performance. For example, individuals drive innovation best when they are creative (Style) and implement practices to drive team innovation (Strategy). Questions are designed for each level of leader, so an individual contributor receives insight into how well they drive project team innovation while a business unit leader receives insight into how well they drive organisation innovation.
The assessment can be used for selection but is even more useful for development. Strategies can be developed through coaching or development programmes. This makes building capabilities easier as leaders can directly build practices to help them overcome challenges they may face when scoring low in a trait area. Most importantly, the leaders can build practices that help them drive important results such as revenue growth, productivity improvements, and team engagement. See the figure below for a summary of the key capabilities measured.
AI and Technology Innovation
The use of technology and AI in assessment is drawing much attention. However, poor construction can lead to biased assessments, results that can't be explained and experiences that can turn off candidates.
Some technology tools have a significant impact on predicting on-the-job performance. These assessments tend to be closer to the work people do. For example:
Asynchronous Video Interviews (AVI). These assessments use AI to conduct and score interviews. A well-constructed AVI can be as predictive as face-to-face interviews. This enables companies to scale interviews to a larger population.
High-Fidelity Simulations. These specialised assessments use rich media to simulate the job. They can highly predict on-the-job performance, but design costs can be high. They may be best used for multiincumbent jobs (e.g., call centre employees).
Some assessments offer alternative ways to measure personality and cognitive ability. These assessments are further from work and there is little evidence that they predict on-the-job performance. Use with caution.
Gamification. These are game-based measures of personality and cognitive ability. In addition to the lack of predictive capabilities, consider candidate reactions before using these assessments.
Social Media. These use AI to analyse social media to estimate a person's personality. In addition to the lack of predictive capabilities, consider data privacy before using.
The future of leadership assessment is changing rapidly, bringing many opportunities and risks for companies making assessment decisions. New research shows that assessment practices used by many companies are no longer "best" practices. Consider changing your assessment tools, but do so by first understanding the new assessment landscape.
If you would like to learn more about our Produgie’s Growth Leader Assessment and how it could impact your business. Book my time for a short introduction call.
This article was written by Dr. James Eyring, CEO of Organisation Solutions, and incorporates information from a new book, Talent Assessment: Embracing Innovation and Mitigating Risk in the Digital Age. It draws on multiple chapters, including his own chapter, Driving Company Growth and Leader Development: Innovations from Asia.
References:
Kantrowitz, T., Reynolds, D. H., & Scott, J. (Eds.). (2023). Talent Assessment: Embracing Innovation and Mitigating Risk in the Digital Age. Oxford University Press.
Sackett, P. R., Zhang, C., Berry, C. M., & Lievens, F. (2022). Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection: Addressing systematic overcorrection for restriction of range. Journal of Applied Psychology.
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