Managers and companies can’t hang their laurels simply on the status quo in a dynamic business world. Successful businesses need leaders who are willing to embrace the company culture and mission statement and become transformational leaders. But therein lies the problem. What current manager, employee, or outside hire has the potential to become a great leader?

Unfortunately, the answer isn’t always in front of you. Yet that’s what makes a leadership assessment test so valuable to business owners. By analyzing current or future managers' leadership skills and potential, individuals can improve on individual weaknesses and build a foundation around strengths. It’s a win-win scenario that’s low-cost, highly effective, and works for businesses of many sizes.

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So, if you’re ready to embrace the next generation of managers at your business or transform one into a leader, find out how leadership assessment tests can help.

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Why You Need a Leadership Assessment Test

On the surface, a leadership assessment test may seem like it has little value. If you’re a business owner, your savviness in the hiring process can help you find the perfect candidate, right? In a perfect world, sure. But in most cases, unconscious bias and favoritism can obscure whether an applicant, candidate, or current employee is the perfect person for the job.

And that’s just what leadership assessment tests or leadership assessment tools aim to fix. By eliminating bias and providing factual evidence on an individual's leadership qualities, assessments can help upper management assess the potential of a particular applicant while also offering a number of other benefits.

If you’re wondering if a leadership assessment test is the right move in your hiring process, here are some of its advantages.

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Leadership Development Plan

Driven individuals may devise a leadership development plan on their own, but in most cases, the company must implement it. At its root, a leadership development plan is a rubric detailing how a company should create leaders or push people toward a leadership position every step of the way.

From hiring and recruiting to onboarding to grooming for the future, a leadership development program is the cornerstone of any company that wants to improve its culture from the top down. The only barrier to entry is deciding who has leadership potential — something that leadership assessment tests can solve.

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Self-Awareness

A good leader is self-aware. They understand their leadership competencies, weaknesses, and strengths. Through this combination of awareness, managers know areas for improvement and how they can use their strengths to develop the ideal leadership style and skills within an organization.

Self-awareness isn’t an innate skill in most employees, regardless of whether they’re in a leadership role. Through a leadership or personality assessment test, both employee and employer can discover whether an individual has the leadership capabilities to succeed, including self-awareness.

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Develop Leadership Strengths and Improve Leadership Weaknesses

Every person has inherent strengths and weaknesses, but it's not easy to realize them through self-assessment. Managers often suffer from “blinders” in real-life scenarios, rendering them incapable or unwilling to see faults.

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Leadership assessment tools ask the right questions to determine management and leadership effectiveness, strengths, and weaknesses. While the organization still has the duty to cultivate strengths and shore up weaknesses, determining each is the first step toward success and change.

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Specific Scenarios

Whether a business is weathering a storm or expanding rapidly, the need for leadership and management is always on the front line. Recessions, cost-cutting measures, growth — all of these require different mindsets — yet not every manager is apt to handle every scenario.

If time is essential, you need the right person for the job. A leadership assessment tool or test can discover potential candidates, especially in times of crisis.

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Grow a Career Advancement Program

If you have a leadership development plan in place, you’re already headed in the right direction. The only major issue is retaining leaders once you’ve administered a leadership assessment test and invested time and money in their success and development.

A leadership assessment test can help you decide which managers are worth retaining in your leadership circle and formulate the best leadership or management training programs to help the individual(s) succeed.

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The 6 Best Leadership Assessment Tests and Tools

The best leadership assessment tests have high standards of reliability, objectivity, and a lack of bias, but unfortunately, that doesn’t narrow the scope of how many tests you have to choose from.

Despite the sheer number of options available, these industry-standard leadership assessment tools and tests have well-documented results that many companies around the globe count on. With a combination of accuracy, validity, scalability, and more, these tools should give you valid, accurate findings.

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1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Price: $59.95 for lifetime access

Although not a specific leadership skills assessment, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has been a preferred personality type assessment by managers, potential hires, and team members since 1962. The test assesses how a person interacts with others, rational vs. emotional decision-making, perception vs. judging, and sensing or intuition.

The 90-question test takes around 30 minutes. Once completed, it provides you with one of 16 letter combinations that determine your personality traits and type.

While it may not provide the same insight as leadership-specific tests, the MBTI provides the taker and administrator with vital information on prospective leaders’ strengths, weaknesses, and characteristics. From there, companies can turn their findings into action — whether that’s hiring someone task-oriented or appointing someone to implement transactional or transformational leadership styles.

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2. Saville Assessment

Price: Varies

Also known as the Saville Wave, the Saville Assessment has gained traction as one of the top leadership assessment tests in the industry. It consists of two sections: a personality test and an aptitude test.

Built on 15 years of research, the Saville questionnaire uses a multipronged approach to help companies decide whether to hire an individual or whether they’re a strong candidate for management.

While the personality test focuses on a person’s shortcomings, strengths, and cultural fit, the aptitude portion tests the spatial, linguistic, problem-solving, numerical, error correction, and mechanical skills necessary for leadership or a specific job.

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3. DISC Assessment (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness)

Price: $37

Like the Myers-Briggs test, the DISC assessment is a popular personality and leadership assessment test, but with one major change. The DISC assessment assumes that different work environments can bring out varying personality traits within an individual.

This psychometric-based test studies each individual to determine their dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness in the workplace. It enables the test taker to ascertain how they approach leadership by determining their motivators, personality type, and interaction with others.

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4. CliftonStrengths

Price: $12.99 to $59.99

Originally known as the Gallup StrengthsFinder, CliftonStrengths is perhaps the most comprehensive personality and leadership assessment tool. Comprised of 34 themes divided into four categories, the test enables individuals to learn their strengths, cultivate them, and maximize their potential as leaders or managers. The four sections of CliftonStrengths include execution, influence, relationship-building/teamwork, and strategic thinking.

While organizations can use the test for external hires, it’s typically more useful for internal promotions due to the subject matter of this leadership skills test — but feel free to make your own decisions.

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5. SurveySparrow 360 Degree Feedback

Price: Free with a 14-day trial

If you want to stray from the traditional leadership assessment tests, SurveySparrow’s 360 Degree Feedback software is an interesting option. Intended to provide companies with insight based on employee responses and feedback to questions, the 360 Degree Feedback software discovers strengths and weaknesses — but it also adds hidden strengths and blind spots — two features routinely overlooked by other leadership assessment tests.

With these results, companies can determine who’s a great fit for a managerial promotion, as well as some insight into a manager’s view of themselves — whether for better or worse. If other leadership assessment tests aren’t providing the information you need, this one is a viable alternative.

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6. Enneagram

Price: Free on several websites

Comprised of nine personality types divided into nine subtypes, Enneagram gives you 81 different categories to discern a person’s personality traits, behavior, and, ultimately, their ability to lead.

Compared to other leadership assessments, the Enneagram is rather complex. Eighty-one different personality types may require managers and business owners to dig deeper to interpret the results. However, if you need a little extra insight into a person’s leadership ability, the Enneagram is the great equalizer.

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After a Leadership Assessment Test, the Human Touch Matters Most

Leadership assessment tools provide a base-level idea of an individual's capabilities. But beyond that, the human touch — and emotional intelligence — are what separates managers from future leaders, especially in terms of company culture, morale, and employee engagement.

Intuition or that certain “feeling” or “inkling” is tantamount to success when you’re a business owner appointing your next leader. Yet this alone doesn’t always equate to success. Beyond internal mechanisms, leadership training is an ideal method to support and build your leaders for tomorrow.

If you can find the right leadership, investing in that person is just providing the final push in the right direction. Perhaps leaders aren’t born every day, but with the right skills and training, they can surely be forged.