As you know, leadership is a complex skill, a marriage of reasoning, emotional maturity, interpersonal skills, preferences, and personality. A comprehensive portrait of a leader would, ideally, include measurements of all of these dimensions. Assessments of 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 of how well leaders/managers think. These are important because how well people think is one of the best predictors of their behavior.
To date, we have completed the research required to design four assessments for leaders/managers— the LDMA (managerial decision making), LLRA (leadership reasoning), LRJA (reflective judgment), and LMLA (multidimensional leadership).
You will 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.
Since 1993, our founder, Theo Dawson, has been designing, testing, and working with 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 scale we use 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 may 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 12-13 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 a sequence of developmental levels. Interestingly, although it is often 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 dilemmas, you need an assessment of workplace decision-making. If you want to know how she is likely to approach learning, 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 as a consequence of active participation in a learning culture, combined with good mentoring and a strong habit of reflection.
No single skill 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. Moreover, good decision making skills are essential for strategic thinking. If you are going to use one assessment of leadership skills, we encourage you to consider 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. The LLRA is a good indicator of a testee's (1) leader preferences and (2) personal approach to the leadership role.
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 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.
For students, managers and other leaders, and individuals who are thinking about moving into a leadership role
Building on 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 general sense of how an individual 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 learn and use 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 or (2) if it is time to for an individual to tackle the next level of the management ladder.
The LMLA combines the LDMA, LLMA, and LRJA to provide a profile of a leader's level of skill in these three areas of knowledge. The LMLA is a useful diagnostic to employ when you first begin working with a client, because it can draw attention to specific areas that require improvement.
For example, the workplace decision making skills of the manager whose performance is portrayed in the figure on the left clearly lag behind her reflective judgment and leadership reasoning skills. It would make good sense to bring her decision-making skills up to the level of the other skills if she wishes to function optimally as a mid-level manager or move into upper management.
All assessments are scored by Certified Lectical Analysts, who are required to maintain a high standard of accuracy and reliability (85% agreement within 1/4 of a level with a Master Lectical Analyst). It is important to understand that lectical scores are not like grades or percentile scores, which tell you where individuals are performing relative to others. Lectical scores are more like positions on a ruler or thermometer. Each level and phase is defined in terms of the types of reasoning tasks someone performing at that level can accomplish. This ruler-like quality is unprecedented in academic assessment. It makes it possible for us not only to provide a score, but to tell you (1) how well a manager's skills line up with the task demands of a particular job, or (2) what that manager needs to learn next to prepare for the demands of that job.
| All reports include: | |
| 1. | a lectical score, with an explanation of its general meaning, |
| 2. | information about the meaning of the score relative to the testee's management level, and |
| 3. | learning recommendations. |
If you are interested any of our services, would like to follow up on a special offer, or would like more information, please call 413-303-1484 between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM EST or email us anytime.
We offer a 20% discount to all non-profit organizations that can provide documentation of their status.
If you would like to stay informed, please join our leadership development mailing list:
We're hosting a FREE mindfulness assessment, the Solloway Mindfulness Survey (SMS)
Test your creative potential: Take the Creative Potential Survey.
