A staggering 77% percent of corporate and business establishments at a global level, have reported a serious lack of leadership in their organizational ambience. At the same time, 83% have agreed that encouraging leadership at all levels is inarguably essential.
And why shouldn’t it be, given that identifying leaders at their early stages can fuel immediate or future appointment of perfect fit candidates in key decision-making positions like, CEOs, CFOs, Managing Directors etc. and vital executive positions like team leads.
Good leaders are celebrated catalysts for productivity maximization, goal accomplishments, maintaining team harmony and offering the organization enough motivation to undertake newer and more versatile ventures.
A seemingly simple task with the possibility to further institutional interests beyond defined horizons, let’s take a look at how to assess leadership and management strengths in an organization in a nutshell.
Core Skills That Should Be Tested Under Leadership and Management Strengths
What defines leaders better than, ‘One tree with a thousand branches’. Therefore, pin pointing each and every trait that builds a leader, is practically impossible. What is possible though, is judging candidates on the basis on specific leadership and management attributes that are directly relevant to organizations.
Here are a few parameters that almost all corporate and business entities take into consideration while assessing leadership and management skills…
- Core competencies and Experience – Experience and area of expertise are two essential criterions for assessing leadership and management skills. In depth knowledge and experience in applying the same successfully to specific organizational tasks is the key to guiding team members through confusions and stagnations.
- Confidence and positivity – Leaders are seldom the last people to add their bit to an already concluding discussion. They are never fearful of asking questions, challenging rigid procedures or suggesting out-of-the-box solutions for predominant issues. They neither backdown nor play the blame game in the face of unexpected setbacks.
Such levels of confidence and positivity demarcates leaders from the crowd.
- Emotional Intelligence – Current research says, emotional quotient of leaders plays a greater role in organizational success than their intelligence quotient. Higher EQ allows individuals to
- empathize with co-workers,
- develop intercultural sensitivity,
- understand their point of view,
- work with different professional personalities,
- delegate tasks based on individual capabilities and
- drive goals without stepping on team-members’ necks.
Did you know… As per statistics, in the USA alone, businesses lose over $300 billion annually owing to workplace stress and 35% of employees identify their team leaders / bosses as the primary source of workplace stress and 80% believe that change in leadership can impact their stress levels in a positive way or otherwise.
Emotional Quotient therefore, is an attribute that no organization can take for granted while identifying future leaders.
- Communication Skills – Crisp, Clear, Comprehensive and Transparent; the ability to communicate goals, tasks and amendments unambiguously to the team, and communicating reports faultlessly to the upper end of the hierarchy separates leaders from followers. Communication skill is therefore, critical for assessing leadership and management skills.
- The Art of Coordination – Coordinating teams and team activities and maintaining seamless flow of communication is a core management skill. Everything from planning and organizing to staffing and directing, coordination is the key that drives successful accomplishment of organizational goals.
- Strategizing and problem-solving skills – Leaders may not be performers of the year, but they are certainly the force behind those that are. Strategizing, problem-solving and delegation of tasks are critical skills that are directly relevant in quick, productive and successful completion of projects. Monitoring these skills in potential candidates can help discover leadership and management strengths.
How To Assess Leadership and Management Strengths in an Organization – Tools and Methods
Did you know, an estimated $357.7 billion was invested in leadership training at a global scale, the year 2020. The figures though, are predicted to rise through this decade with more and more organizations adopting the endeavor to strengthen their leadership and management base.
Following the
- Define clear parameters – Preciseness is your defense against skill ambiguity. Therefore, while assessing leadership and management strengths, you must have a clear layout of what you are judging your candidates upon. Core competencies, EQ, IQ, Communication, Strategizing, Problem Solving etc. can feature in your list.
- Developmental Assignments – This is all about giving potential candidates bite sized opportunities be it in the form of presentations or coordinating a week-long project in the workplace etc. to display their leadership and management strengths in a scalable manner.
- Observe body language – I’ll give you an easy example… throw in a particular organizational task / problem for team discussion and ask very particular questions pertinent to solutions for the same. Take keen notice of the eye movement of the members in the group.
Embedded Psychology… people, quite unconsciously, tend to look towards the perceived leader when faced with a challenge. If more than 50% of the members have looked at one particular member in the group… that member is 100% likely to bear leadership potentials.
- Leadership and Management Assessment Tools – These are Ai Based, intuitive, cognitive and beyond standardized solutions that help in assessing leadership and management strengths across an array of domains within an organization.
Different tools come with different primary features like feedback collection, comprehensive leadership assessment tests, strength finding, EQ assessments, Under pressure performance tests and more.
These tools can be used alone or in combination to achieve desired assessment outcomes.
- Gamification – Gamified tasks and trainings are great ways to identify and assess leadership and management strengths in a workplace. Gamification is one of the best ways to understand employee skills and behavioral traits at a microscopic level. Reports and feedbacks are generated at every level of the game making it easier to identify and track potential leaders for important positions within the organization.
- Leadership and Management Assessment Programs – These programs are often conducted face to face, in groups or person to person basis. Often conducted by experts in the industry, top psychologists and behavioral experts, these programs can assess leadership and management strengths within an organization at a molecular level.
Winding Up –
Efficient leadership and management are the backbone of organizational success. Even though businesses / corporate endeavors at a global scale are experiencing a shortage of good leaders and managers, knowing how to assess leadership and management strengths in an organization the right way can help you discover latent potentials and hidden talents that can be buffed to further organizational interests and individual career goals.
