Choose and develop leaders on more than gut feeling
Leadership roles shape how whole teams work. Use reasoning, personality and judgement tests when you appoint a manager, and leadership style questionnaires and feedback when you develop one.
What changes in leadership decisions
A fairer route into leadership
Internal and external candidates for a management role take the same assessments, so promotion depends less on visibility or on who knows whom.
Insight into leadership style
See how someone tends to lead: how they make decisions, give direction and handle pressure, and where that fits the role or needs attention.
Development with a starting point
Leadership programmes work better when every participant knows their own profile and has a few concrete goals to work on.
How it works for leadership roles
Describe the leadership role
A first team lead, a senior manager or a director? Set the abilities, traits and motives that matter for this level and context.
Choose the mix
For appointments, combine a reasoning test, a personality questionnaire and a situational judgement test. For development, add the leadership style questionnaire.
Assess and report
Candidates or participants complete the assessments in their own language. The match report sets each person next to the role profile.
Interview or coach
For an appointment, use the gaps as interview topics. For development, turn the report into a personal plan with a coach.
Assessments for leadership
For appointments, use tests with evidence for selection. The leadership style questionnaire in our library is intended for development.
Cognitive ability
Senior roles ask more of reasoning with complex and incomplete information. A reasoning test shows how someone handles that.
Personality
Traits such as conscientiousness and emotional stability say something about how someone tends to work and react under pressure.
Situational judgement
How someone weighs realistic leadership dilemmas, such as a conflict in the team or a hard call on priorities.
Motivation and values
Whether someone is drawn to leading people, or prefers expertise and autonomy, matters for how they will feel in the role.
A person decides
Assessments support an appointment, they don't make it. Combine results with interviews, references and track record. AI used in recruitment and promotion decisions counts as high-risk under the EU AI Act, so we design for human oversight and transparent scores.
Frequently asked questions
Should internal candidates take the same assessments as external ones?
Yes, if they compete for the same role. The same tests and the same role profile make the comparison fair and easier to explain. Internal candidates also bring a track record, so weigh the assessment together with what you already know about their work.
Can we use a leadership style questionnaire for selection?
Not ours: in the library it is marked for development only. For appointments, use tests with evidence for selection, such as reasoning, personality and situational judgement, and explore leadership style in the interview.
When does 360° feedback make sense for a leader?
Once a leader has been in the role long enough for colleagues to have seen them at work, usually after six months or more. It's a development tool: it shows how behaviour comes across, not whether someone should keep the role.
How long does a leadership assessment take?
A selection mix of reasoning, personality and situational judgement takes about an hour, depending on the length of the reasoning test. For development, a personality and a leadership style questionnaire together take around 35 minutes.
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