Testing Leadership: Assessing Your Leadership Talents

By P. Casse and P.G. Claudel

This book is a compilation of tests in relation to the practice of leadership. These tests have been designed by the authors in the course of their teaching and consulting activities, and validated through hundreds of seminars all over the world with a large number of participants offering all kinds of different profiles and operating in various functions within a great variety of for profit and non-profit organizations. Readers can use the self-assessment exercises for their own sake (Self Development), for the benefit of their teams (Team Building) as well as for their organizations (Cultural Diagnosis). We also encourage Professors and Teachers to include them in their curricula to make the learning more exciting and powerful

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Jan 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781499093179

P. Casse

Paul Georges Claudel has spent most of his career in the corporate world. He was VP Human Resources of a large multinational company. He is currently a consultant and teaches in various universities and business schools in Europe and the United states. Dr Pierre Casse has spent twenty five years working in various organizations including OECD and the World Bank. He joined the academic and the consulting communities in 1986. He has been teaching leadership in various Business Schools and Universities since (IMD. Kellogg, Oxford…). He is currently a full Professor at the Moscow School of Management (Skolkovo) and he holds the leadership chair at the IEDC (Bled-Slovenia)

Book preview

PART 1

THE

LEADERSHIP

FUNDAMENTALS

1 THE FOUR VALUE ORIENTATIONS

Assessing your personal leadership profile

Purpose and Content

This assessment exercise will help you to explore your leadership profile in relation to four typical capabilities that professionals use when performing in the work place. These four value capabilities, or orientations, are:

• Action – the ability to implement

• Process – the ability to organise

• People – the ability to motivate

• Idea – the ability to innovate

Research shows that all professionals call upon these four capabilities, although to differing degrees, when on the job. In fact some people, for instance, will typically feel more comfortable calling upon their people orientation, while others will feel more comfortable with their Idea orientation. These preferences will determine an individual’s leadership profile and will have implications as to how different people perform in any given situation.

Instructions

Please select in each pair of attributes the one which you consider is most typical of your personality. No pair is an either/or proposal and there is no right or wrong answer. Make your choice as spontaneously as possible.

Scoring

Circle the items you have selected and add up the number of circles for each value driver. The maximum is 20 per value driver and your total for the four value drivers should be 40.

Debriefing A – The Leadership Drivers/Orientations

Debriefing B – The Leadership Mind-Sets

Most professionals make use of their two stronger orientations which in combination define their Leadership Mind-Set, as described below.

Leadership Guidelines

The 4 value orientations model provides a framework for understanding why people behave the way they do in the work place. Everyone has a combination of these capabilities and for most people one or two of the orientations will be preferred and will determine how the person reacts in any given situation. Leaders, to be effective, must have some understanding of the fundamental orientations which drive peoples’ behaviour, including what drives their own behaviour. Without this fundamental knowledge and understanding, leaders will find it difficult to move people in the direction they want them to go.

In using the 4 value orientations exercise and model, the following guidelines should prove helpful:

» This assessment is situational in that it reflects the situation in which you are currently operating. It could be that if you change positions, the demands of the new situation will enhance a different capability. However, if you strengthen one capability, you will do so at the detriment of another.

» It is important to know what your strongest orientation is so that you can devise strategies for building on it.

» This assessment instrument can serve as a powerful team building tool. Ask your team members to do the assessment. You can then analyse the results to determine whether there is a good balance of orientations within the team.

» You can also use the assessment to determine if there is a good match between an individual’s profile and the job you have assigned him/her. If there is a mismatch, this could explain why there might be an issue with poor performance which would probably require some corrective action on your part as team leader.

» However, if you give your team members the opportunity to evaluate themselves, you have to be prepared to respond to their conclusions appropriately. If you do not, this could lead to frustration on their part and a loss of credibility for you.

» It can also be a valuable exercise to average out the scores of the team to discover whether there is a dominant culture within the team, and conversely whether there is a black hole regarding one or other of the four orientations.

2 THE EMOTIONAL QUOTIENT (EQ)

Assessing how you feel about your life in general

Purpose and Content

Most of us are familiar with the notion of Emotional Intelligence, (EI), which measures our ability to interpret our emotions as well as the emotions of others. The level of our EI also determines how effective we may be in managing emotions to obtain what we are seeking in our personal and our professional endeavours. There is no doubt that EI is a necessary skill for leadership effectiveness. Our EI allows us to connect more effectively with others and stimulate appropriate behaviours.

However, the assessment instrument presented here, rather than exploring the impact emotions can have on our behaviour focusses on the fundamental notion of emotions. More specifically, the questions for consideration