What is Leadership seems to be a question whose answer is already known. Every year, in Italian companies, significant resources are invested in managerial development paths. When an HR finds himself having to answer the question "does this person have leadership potential?", the answer must be based on a solid method to measure it and cannot be separated from the answer to the question "What is leadership?".
Leadership: look for its definition or the behaviors that express it?
Typing "leadership meaning" on Google you get over 18,000 monthly searches. The question is genuine — and the answer, almost always, is disappointing: a list of noble skills (vision, communication, decision, empathy) that describe an ideal, not a work tool.
Leadership is not a character trait. It is a set of observable behaviors, which are expressed differently depending on the context, role and level of responsibility, but also the characteristics of the people and teams that the leader must lead.
This changes everything. We go from researching static characteristics, to researching the expression of behaviors that have the right impact on people in a specific context.
The focus is, therefore, leadership behaviors, their consistency with the context and their effectiveness. One can converge on a definition of leadership, but operationally it is more useful to focus on leadership behaviors that can be observed, developed and - above all - measured.
Leadership: understand it with a focus on the past or the future?
The role of the organizational context with all its dimensions determines what are the leadership behaviors to be sought, measured and developed in people.
Today, the depth and speed of social, business and organizational changes have prepared us to reconsider many assumptions and work practices that lead not only to reviewing leadership models, but also what we rely on to predictably measure people's leadership potential.
These changes, together with the more widespread innovation, do not allow you to have a leadership "receipt" suitable for all companies. Therefore, leadership behaviors must be appropriately contextualized and updated.
A point of attention must be paid to the increasingly widespread HR Analytics and Artificial Intelligence tools used for the predictive measurement of behaviors. These tools are based on data and analysis models collected and made available to different algorithms. However, in highly changing contexts they expose to the risk of relying on data and analysis models that are no longer current.
Let's just think about how the 2020 pandemic changed the relationship that people have with work and the place that they give to work in their lives compared to the past. After this event, the data from the engagement surveys may no longer be representative of the meanings, priorities and expectations of the people in the company. Expectations regarding the leadership styles acted in the company were also completely different from those described in previous engagement surveys.
This is inevitably reflected in new leadership behaviors consistent with the new context. Therefore, the database behind HR Analytics and performance predictive artificial intelligence tools may no longer be valid.
The conceptual leap that makes the difference: from "what is it" to "how to measure"
The question that should guide every HR Manager is not "is this manager a good leader?" But rather:
- Which leadership behaviors are most effective in this context?
- Which ones are consistent with the purpose and culture of the Company?
- What leadership behaviors is the person expressing?
- With what frequency, intensity and consistency?
This orientation opens up a completely different perspective on talent management and leadership development.
The focus aims to understand where each person is positioned with respect to a behavior model that is a reference for the specific company, and where they can arrive in terms of acquisition and development of such leadership behaviors.
How leadership behaviors are measured: the tools
Measuring leadership not only requires updating the patterns of behaviors to be detected, but also updating the tools used to measure them.
There are established methodologies to make leadership measurable that can be updated and combined to allow a predictive measure of the effectiveness of leadership behaviors.
The most effective methodologies, in fact, combine more sources of information, including:
1. Assessment Center and Development Center
- Structured contexts with simulated situations (group exercises, role play, in-basket) that recreate contexts of similar complexity to those of companies, also considering the spread of Artificial Intelligence as tools.
- Trained observers who detect and classify behaviors of the leadership model, with awareness of new contexts and ways of working.
- People don't tell how they would behave — they show it: so the assessment based on simulated situations is the tool that still has the maximum predictive validity
2. Psychometric tools
- Standardized and validated tests that measure personality dimensions linked to professional performance, useful to better understand the expressed behaviors of the person, but also to predict their developability
- They provide a map of individual predispositions: result orientation, leadership, emotional stability
3. Structured behavioural interviews (BEI)
- The candidate describes real situations of the past (Situation, Task, Action, Result)
- It allows you to infer quality and consistency of leadership behaviors over time
4. 360° feedback
- It collects the perception of colleagues, collaborators and superiors, providing a picture of the effectiveness obtained by leadership behaviors expressed in the specific organizational context
- Highlights gap between self-perception and external perception: key information for development
What makes a leadership measurement reliable?
Not all instruments are equivalent. A leadership measurement is reliable when:
- It is based on a model of behavior shared and lowered in the specific organizational context
- Use more methods and more evaluators (multi-source approach, multi-method)
- Distinguish between current performance (what he does today) and potential (what he will be able to do tomorrow)
- Produces structured and usable feedback for concrete HR decisions
Why measuring leadership is a strategic priority for HR?
In an increasingly competitive job market context, companies that know how to identify and develop leadership talent with method have a concrete advantage: less turnover in key roles, planned successions, better performing teams.
For those who work in HR — whether it's an HR Director who has to support promotion decisions, or a L&D Manager who manages a development plan — having objective leadership data is not a luxury. It's a condition for working well.
base 9's approach
In Base 9 we design and create Assessment Centers, Development Centers for potential assessment and development paths also for large populations.
We work with clients to build leadership models specific to the characteristics and culture of the organizational context.
From here, we build the evaluation set by creating ad hoc-built simulations, selecting validated psychometric tools and structured interviews.
Particular attention is given to the consistency between the evaluation set and the changing context of tomorrow's work where the use of Artificial Intelligence will be widespread. Through our AI Based Challenge® platform, in fact, participants are called upon to manage professional situations by being able to work with Generative AI. This allows us to bring out approaches, ways of thinking and behaviors of people when they work with dynamics typical of tomorrow's contexts.