Self development

People are interested in self-development for many reasons. Some are seeking greater satisfaction or happiness, others are seeking success in a particular profession, still others are looking for better ways of understanding their place in the world. All of our assessments have been designed to help individuals with their personal growth in these areas.

Our assessments are useful to individuals, because each report includes information about the way you reason, its implications for the way you approach real world situations, and suggestions for learning activities that are targeted to your current developmental level.

Each assessment taps a different knowledge area. We encourage you to select assessments that are related to your specific growth interests. If you are interested in your developmental progress in more than one area of knowledge, you may be interested in one of our multidimensional assessments, which examine reasoning in multiple knowledge areas.

We strongly suggest that you work with a mentor, coach, or counselor who can help you interpret your assessment results.

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.

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. Lectical 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 18 distinct phases in adulthood, each of which has specific implications for performance.

For general information about our assessments, click here.

Our research into the development of 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 are a mid-level manger and want to know if your approach to workplace problems is working as well as it should, you need an assessment of workplace decision-making. If you want to know the level of your reasoning about knowledge and learning, you need an assessment of reflective judgment. If you want to know the level of your thinking about yourself and relationships, you need an assessment of self understanding.

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.

View sample reports.

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 select 4 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.

View sample reports.

For adolescents (14+) and adults who are interested in understanding the current level of their reasoning skills and what they can do to develop these skills

Building on the work of Perry and Kitchener & King, we have designed a general assessment of reflective judgment—the LRJA. This assessment, in which you will be asked 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 you reason and how you are likely to approach information and learning.

In the modern world, continuous learning is essential. 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. For example, college students with more developed reflective judgment skills are likely to perform better than those with less developed reflective judgment skills.

View sample reports.

For adolescents (14+) and adults who are interested in exploring their thinking about themselves in important relationships

Our self understanding assessment is primarily informed by our own research on the development of self understanding in adulthood and the research of Blasi, Kegan, Fischer, and Armon, among others.

In this assessment, you will be asked to think about yourself as a member of a variety of relationships and as a person who lives and works in particular contexts. You will also be asked to think about the difference between your "ideal" and "real" selves. The assessment is composed of a series of essay questions.

How we think about ourselves and our relationships has important implications for our life-satisfaction. Self-reflection of the kind you will engage in when you take this assessment is considered by many psychologists to be important for personal growth. Taking the assessment, in itself, can be an important learning experience. Because of this, and because the essays you will write for this assessment are an important personal record, we will provide them with your report.

We strongly suggest that you work with a mentor or counselor who can help you interpret the results of your report.

The LMLA combines the LDMA, LLMA, and LRJA to provide a profile of a leader's developmental progress in three areas of knowledge. If you are a manager and want to see how your skills line up with the task demands of different levels of management, you will find the LMLA helpful.

The LMLA 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 for her to work on bringing her decision-making skills up to the level of the other skills if she wishes to succeed as a mid-level manager or move into upper management.

The LMSA combines the LRJA, LGLA, and LSUA to provide a profile of an individual's developmental progress in three important areas of self knowledge. The figure on the left shows 19 developmental phases (8:4-13:2), the approximate percentage of adults in the world population that can reason at various levels in at least one area of knowledge; and one individual's scores on the three topics included in the LMSA.

This individual, an engineering student tested at age 21, has a profile that is common among college students. Attending college has provided many opportunities to advance her reflective judgment, but her reasoning about the good and self understanding look like they've been on the back burner. There are several self-reflective practices from which she could benefit.

LMSA sample report

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 an individuals' skills line up with the task demands of a particular role, or (2) what that person needs to learn next to prepare for the demands of that role.

*Consultations are approximately one hour in duration and focus on general developmental implications of the assessment results. For expert support in a particular area (management, self-understanding, etc.) we strongly recommend that you work with a coach, professional mentor, or counselor.

view sample reports

If you are a new client and would like to take an assessment, please go to our registration page. If you are a returning direct client and would like to take an assessment, please log in. If you are already logged in, please select an assessment.

If you would like us to keep you informed, please join our self-development mailing list: