Leadership evaluation is one of the most misused tools in organizational life. Done well, it reveals leadership patterns that would otherwise take years to observe, pinpoints development needs, and gives leaders and their organizations a common language for growth. If you use it poorly, you’ll end up with reports sitting in your desk drawer without any changes being made.
It makes little difference which rating you use. It’s all about how you use it.
What is a leadership assessment (and what it is not)?
Leadership assessment is a structured method for assessing a leader’s abilities, behaviors, style, or potential, depending on the purpose of the assessment.
What it is: Data points. A well-constructed leadership assessment provides high-quality information about a person’s typical patterns, strengths, and developmental edges in a fraction of the time that observation alone would take.
What it is not, that’s the verdict. Evaluation results describe trends and patterns. It does not define a person’s ceiling or reliably predict their performance. Leaders who treat evaluation results as static judgments are misusing the tool.
Types of leadership evaluations
360 degree feedback
Collect structured reviews and comments from a leader’s direct reports, peers, managers, and often customers and external stakeholders. What is important is the perspectives of multiple evaluators. Leaders may express themselves differently to their bosses than they do to their teams, and it’s in that perception gap that the most important development opportunities almost always lie.
360 is most useful when leaders are ready to receive psychologically honest feedback, the organization provides sufficient security for raters to provide feedback, and there is a coaching relationship or development process built around results.
psychometric evaluation
Tools such as Hogan, DISC, and Myers-Briggs measure aspects of personality, behavioral preferences, or cognitive styles. These instruments vary widely in scientific rigor. The Hogan suite is backed by decades of predictive validity research. Although the MBTI has a weak record of effectiveness, it is still widely used for team dynamics conversations.
These tools help with self-awareness, team dynamics, and early career development. They are less reliable as standalone selection tools at the executive level, where situational factors are as important as stable characteristics.
Leadership ability assessment
It is structured around a defined competency model. This could be an internal organizational leadership model or a validated external framework. The gothamCulture Leadership Mosaic Survey is built around behavioral dimensions tied to organizational culture and leadership effectiveness. That is, it’s not just what a leader does, but how they do it and what it means to those around them.
How to effectively utilize evaluation results
Combine results and context. Assessment data is most useful when it is in the hands of someone who can interpret it in the context of the leadership role, organizational culture, and specific challenges faced. Sending a report to someone without a debriefing is not development, it’s management.
This will lead to development plans. The point of evaluation is to inform what happens next. Results should be directly tied to a development plan that includes the specific behaviors to build, the resources to use, and how to track progress over time.
Create organization-level insights. Aggregating individual assessments can be strategically valuable. Patterns across your leadership group show where gaps in collective development exist. This is much more doable than just an individual coaching plan.
What to avoid
Avoid using evaluations as a gatekeeper for employment without conducting verification research. Research on the predictive validity of assessments in senior executive selection is much weaker than what vendors typically show.
Avoid treating evaluations as one-time events. A single assessment data point taken at a single moment in time cannot capture how leaders grow and change. The most valuable use of assessments is long-term, tracking changes over time against a consistent framework.
FAQ
What is a leadership assessment?
Leadership assessment is a structured method for assessing a leader’s abilities, behaviors, strengths, and development needs. This includes tools such as 360-degree feedback, psychometric instruments, and competency-based surveys designed to uncover patterns that would take years to observe through direct observation alone.
What types of leadership assessments are most effective?
It depends on your purpose. When it comes to development, 360-degree feedback associated with the coaching process tends to be most impactful. For self-awareness, well-validated psychometric tools like Hogan’s have strong research support. To gain organizational-level insights, culturally integrated assessments like the Leadership Mosaic study link individual leadership patterns to organizational outcomes.
How should the results of leadership assessments be used?
Results should always be provided with reporting conversations, tied to a development plan with specific action goals, and reviewed over time to track progress. Evaluation data without follow-through is the most common reason development investments fail to create lasting change.
Source: gothamCulture – gothamculture.com
