Use Assessments To Identify Future Leaders

The world is wrestling with a global pandemic since 2020. Leadership had to invent itself to drive the masses of humanity during such a crisis. The pandemic has brought to the front the necessity of good leaders.

Leaders who could lead through a crisis with clear minds, keep their cool even when the worst hits us and critically think through tough situations are required at present. The pandemic might have tested our health and morale. But it has tested the leaders even more.

A crisis reveals the true leaders. If you have identified future leaders of your organization, well and good. If not, how do you identify them? By establishing systems and processes that hone leadership skills and build leaders? Yes, to some extent. To find the true leaders, you will have to use certain assessments to find the best leaders for the organization’s future.

Some leaders are born but most leaders are identified by organizations. It is not a secret that it requires time and effort to find the leaders. Though it is difficult to define leadership in a nutshell, with a set of required traits, it is fairly easier to identify effective leaders. So, why assessments?

To objectively identify people with effective leadership traits, assessments can be used where leaders possessing the required traits can be honed upon to lead and assist to put in place a sturdy succession planning and leadership training program.

If the organization is planning to bring leaders from outside, assessment becomes inevitable to verify the leadership qualities.

Critical Thinking and Learning Agility

One of the most important significant traits which are sought after in a leader is critical thinking. Critical thinking can be defined as the ability to perceive a situation through its multiple ramifications steering clear of assumptions and opinions.

From a piece of given written information, a good leader must be able to analyze, interpret and draw conclusions. If the information contains assumptions, a critical thinker must be able to recognize the assumptions from facts. Given an argument to comprehend, a critical thinking leader will evaluate the strengths of the argument and draw a conclusion. Using a Watson-Glaser test to measure critical thinking is highly prescribed by hiring managers. This can be used as a timed assessment for job applicants and also as an untimed assessment during professional training programs.

In a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, a good leader should have the ability to be on toes and make decisions without depending on prior knowledge. This is known as Learning Agility. A test developed by John C Raven with the name Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) test is used by many successful organizations to determine the learning agility trait in a leader. This test is appropriate for individuals of above-average intelligence and once the professional clear it, it is a sure-shot indicator that he/she has high learning agility.

Team Management Skills

To make the dream work of the organization come true, teamwork is necessary. An exceptional leader will require team-building and effective team management skills. In today’s world, team management is more important to overcome any kind of crisis. Hybrid work culture or interdependent teams have become the norm in today’s corporate world where team members are distributed globally to carry out tasks to accomplish a single goal.

One such assessment that assesses the team management traits of a leader is the famous Five factor model assessment. It is a hierarchical organization of personality traits through five basic dimensions namely, Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Using natural language adjectives and theoretically based personality questionnaires, it assesses personality traits across observers and cultures. We can get insight into the behavior and temperament of a person in a given situation.

In conclusion, leaders imbibe critical and new competencies required to lead in today’s uncertain world successfully. Assessing these competencies in a leader is crucial for any organization to build and develop robust teams.