LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
As you know, leadership is a complex skill, a marriage of expertise and reasoning, emotional maturity, interpersonal skills, dispositions, and personality. A comprehensive portrait of a leader would, ideally, include measurements of all of these dimensions. Assessments of factual knowledge, preferences, and personality have been around for many years and are likely to be part of your assessment toolbox, but reliable assessments of interpersonal skills, reasoning, and emotional maturity have emerged only recently. Our work focuses on reasoning. We use a revolutionary new technology to design accurate and reliable assessments that measure how well leaders/managers think about common workplace scenarios, issues, or dilemmas.
To date, we have completed the research required to design five assessments for leaders/managers— the LDMA (managerial decision making), LLRA (leadership reasoning), LRJA (reflective judgment), and in certain situations, the LSUA (self-understanding) and LERA (ethical reasoning).
You may find it easier to understand some of the information on the remainder of this page if you first read our background information on the assessments.
For a short summary of the basic strucure of leadership reasoning at different levels, click here.
In 1990, our founder, Theo Dawson, began the journey that led to the design, testing, and implememtation of a developmental assessment system called the Lectical™ Assessment System. The system is based on Harvard Professor Kurt Fischer's Dynamic Skill Scale, and can be used to score the developmental level of any sample of reasoning in any area of knowledge.
The Skill Scale is composed of 13 levels, which cover the entire life-span. Our assessments have been designed to capture the top 5 levels of the scale, which are observed in adolescence and adulthood. Junior high school students primarily reason at levels 9 and 10, high school students usually reason at level 10 in several areas of knowledge, and college graduates or individuals with equivalent knowledge and experience are likely to demonstrate reasoning at level 11 in some areas. A small percentage of adults reason at levels 12 or 13 in one or more disciplines.
Our assessment system reliably distinguishes 4 phases per level. This means we can identify 8-10 distinct phases in the workplace, each of which has specific implications for performance.
For general information about our assessments, click here.
Our research into the development of leadership reasoning has exposed several more or less distinct knowledge areas, each of which unfolds through the same general sequence of developmental levels. Interestingly, although it is usually desirable for skills in all of these knowledge areas to develop at the same rate, a substantial body of research shows that this is not always the case. In fact, reasoning skills in different knowledge areas often develop at different rates. For example, a philosophy major may score near the top of our scale on reflective judgment, but perform no better than the average college sophomore on managerial decision making, whereas a mid-level manager may perform as expected on managerial decision making but lag behind in reflective judgment.
For this reason, it is necessary to assess development in the specific areas that are important to you. If you want to know how a mid-level manger approaches workplace conflicts involving multiple competing perspectives, you need an assessment of workplace decision-making. If you want to know how she is likely to approach learning and inquiry, you need an assessment of reflective judgment. If you want to know how she thinks about and values the leadership role, you need an assessment of leadership reasoning. If you want a profile, you need a multidimensional assessment.
We think of leadership as a set of interwoven skills that develop over time. These skills are most likely to be developed when leaders cultivate a habit of critical reflection on their own practice, purposefully broaden and deepen their existing knowledge through information and perspective seeking, develop excellent collaboration skills, and obtain good mentoring. Leaders are more likely to do these things if they work in a culture that rewards learning.
No single skill or personality profile makes one leader greater than another. Good leaders are balanced. They maintiain all of their skills at a level that meets the task demands of their work.
For management students, managers, and individuals who are thinking about moving into management
The LDMA examines the quality of adults' decision making skills when confronted with real-life leadership problems that require the coordination of different perspectives, values, and power relationships. For example, a dilemma presented in one form of the LDMA requires the test taker to deal with a hostile employee response to demands made by a new senior manager. Another dilemma asks the test taker how to deal with an employee whose level of productivity has suddenly decreased during a period of high customer demand.
The LDMA is composed of two sections. Section 1 consists of a dilemma followed by several probes requiring short essay responses. Section 2 is a survey-like questionnaire.
The LDMA may be the single most important assessment in our leadership portfolio. To a great extent, leadership success depends upon one's ability to make high quality decisions. If you are going to use one assessment of leadership skills, we encourage you to consider the LDMA.
Learn more about the LDMA.
For students, managers and other leaders, and individuals who are thinking about moving into a leadership role
The LLRA examines how leaders think about the leadership role. In section 1 of the LLRA, testees are asked to name several qualities of good leaders and explain their choices in a series of short essays. Section 2 is a survey-like questionnaire.
There is a large research literature on the relation between leadership reasoning and leader performance. This literature shows that (1) a leader's mental model of the leadership role has a direct impact on his or her behavior and therefore effectiveness, (2) more developed mental models of the leadership role are associated with greater leader effectiveness, (3) leaders are more effective when employees' mental models of leadership line up with the mental models of their leaders, and (4) leaders with more developed mental models of leadership can handle more complex leadership situations.
Learn more about the LLRA.
For students, managers and other leaders, and individuals who are thinking about moving into a leadership role
Building upon the work of Perry and Kitchener & King, we have designed a general assessment of student's reflective judgment—the LRJA. This assessment, which requires testees to reason through one of several challenging real-world dilemmas, is composed of a set of essay questions, followed by a short survey. Level of performance on this assessment provides a measure of how an individual generally approaches knowledge and learning.
In the modern workplace, continuous learning is essential. It is especially important for anyone climbing the management ladder. There is a substantial research literature on the relation between reflective judgment and learning. This literature shows that individuals whose reflective judgment skills are more developed can work with more complex and abstract information. The LRJA is especially useful in helping to determine (1) what kind of training will be useful to a particular individual and (2) if the individual handles information and inquiry well enough to tackle the task demands of a particular management position.
Learn more about the LRJA.
For students, managers and other leaders, and individuals who are thinking about moving into a leadership role
The LERA examines how people think about the good and the right. This includes their thinking about the good life and good citizenship, the meaning of morality, and how they deal with ethical issues. Most of what we have learned about the development of reasoning about the good comes from research by Armon, Keller, Edelstein, Kohlberg, Colby, Damon, Rest, Selman, and others, and of course, our own research on moral and evaluative reasoning.
The LERA is composed of a series of essay questions that ask testees to show how they think about different aspects of the good and the right.
How we think about the good influences many of the choices we make in life, and reflection of the kind people engage in when they take this assessment is important for personal growth.
Learn more about the LERA.
For students, managers and other leaders, and individuals who are thinking about moving into a leadership role
Our self understanding assessment is informed by our own research on the development of self understanding in adulthood as well as the research of Loevinger, Augusto Blasi, Albert Bandura, Robert Kegan, Kurt Fischer, Daniel Hart, Gil Noam, and Cherly Armon, among others.
In this assessment, test-takers are asked to think about themselves as members of a variety of relationships. They are also asked to think about the difference between their "ideal" and "real" selves.
How we think about ourselves and our relationships has important implications for life-satisfaction and success. Self-reflection of the kind individuals engage in when they take this assessment is considered by many psychologists to be important for personal growth. In other words, taking the assessment, by itself, can be an important learning experience.
Persons taking the LSUA must be working with a mentor, counselor, or coach who can help them interpret the results.
Learn more about the LSUA.
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