ASSESSINGLEADERS AND MANAGERS

From learning and talent management perspective

• Establish baseline competency of leaders and managers (and other employees as well) – their readiness and fit for purpose – weaknesses and strengths – including getting managers ready to be leaders

• Identify competency gaps for personal development plan, career development, workforce planning including resourcing/recruitment and talent management

• Form part of learning needs analysis• Identify talents for talent pipeline and succession planning

WHY ASSESSMENT

The main purpose of assessments is to bring contexts into leadership and management development programme so that it can be targeted for fit-for-purpose.To meet this purpose organisations can use assessments to:

The true value of assessment is in helping the organisation notably HR to create an implementation plan.They are able to prioritise capabilities and see the relationships between different elements in the workforce strategy: talent acquisition, learning and development, rewards and new ways of working.That way they know what they are acquiring, designing, developing and investing.

VALUE OF ASSESSMENTS IN LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT

ASSESSMENTS IN THE TALENT MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK

Source: Bersin’s Talent Management Framework – think about where management assessments can play a vital role within each individual components

• Scoping LAMDP learning and development needs to go back to organisational context.

• Leaders and managers in media and financial are different from the ones in the health and IT sectors

• Leadership and management skills during boom time are different from downturn

• Leadership and management skills in global organisations are different in a local environment

• Tailor the LAMDP to organisational contexts• Learning and development objectives must capture the

LAMDP needs within their own organisational contexts

CONTEXUALISATION OF ASSESSMENTS

WHERE DO LEADERSHIP AND MANAGERMENT ASSESSMENTS FIT INTO THE ADDIE MODEL WITHIN

LEARNING AND TALENT DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK?

Analyse

Design

DevelopImplement

EvaluateWithin the ADDIE Model, assessments sit primarily within the Analyse stage

Within Learning Needs Analysis assessments can be used for the following purposes: • Performance competency framework (if you have one) -

focusing on what ALL LEADERS AND MANAGERS MUST KNOW, PRACTICE AND BEHAVE regardless of their level, field and service

• Check problems faced by organisation which are related to people e.g. grievance, lawsuits, staff motivation, attrition rate – the whole working environment (which is the main responsibility of leaders and managers)

• Identify required competencies and urgency for job types and tasks – e.g. skill sets for planning managers might be different for IT managers

• Prepare leaders and managers for new competencies

ANALYSE/SCOPE THE REQUIREMENTS

There are many assessment tools that can be used to measure whether your managers and leaders are competent enough to manage:• Change/transformation• IT• Media• People• Finance• Suppliers• Partners

ASSESSMENT TOOLS TO EVALUATE MANAGEMENT COMPETENCIES

The main elements with all these assessments are to assess their:• Cognitive knowledge• Decision making• Skills• Behaviour

• Clear purpose and objectives of assessment• Target audience• Standards to measure fit-for-purpose• Background stories of each participants so that assessments

can be personalised• Assessment tools: projects, role play, psychometric, numerical,

IT, process thinking etc• Most assessment tools involve: questions and answers,

observations, portfolio and case studies• Assessors and validators• Online or face-to-face classrooms• Process in which data from the assessments can feed into

organisational, team and individual learning and development plans

SETTING UP ASSESSMENTS

Your assessment of managers and leaders may involve looking that their projects including any job assignment, secondment and other initiatives they have done For exampleIf you set innovative as being one of your core competencies for managers you can check their projects and pro-active actions such as setting up mentoring scheme SUCCESSFULLYNote: Activities alone are NOT EVIDENCE THAT YOUR MANAGERS ARE INNOVATIVE

PROJECTS AND ROLE PLAY

There are many psychometric assessments out there such as MBTI and IBM Kenexa.

Please select what kind of assessments are relevant to managers in your organisations:

• Behaviour• Critical Thinking• Decision making• Negotiation• Engaging with team members, vendors You can also have verbal and non-verbal reasoning and IT assessments

PSYCHOMETRIC AND OTHER ASSESSMENTS

Green Acre Ltd is undergoing an extensive transformation. To expand their market, leaders and senior managers at Green have decided to merge with Blue Acre Ltd. to form a new company called Sky Wide Ltd.Your task as a Learning and Development professionalYou are responsible for management development programme is to make sure that all leaders and managers who will be working for Sky Wide Ltd are fit-for-purpose in taking the company to the next level.

CASE STUDY

Your working documents:• Core competency – this should be pinned down accurately as

possible it serves as a standard of competency that all leaders and managers must have

• For example: If one of the competencies is to be digital savvy then your assessment will need to align to that.

• If another competency is problem solving then your assessment will need to include problem solving element as well

• Business documents such as grievance rate, legal suits, complaints, employee surveys, financial reports, accident rates,

STEP 1

You should have a clear assessment programme to identify what competencies your managers must have in order to work for Sky Wide Ltd. Effectively. You may want to do the following:• Identify stakeholders for the assessments programmes depending

on what type of assessments. For example involve IT if it is about IT assessment or involve Resourcing person. You may hire an external assessments firm or person to ensure impartiality and objectivity

• Select assessment modalities (e.g. self-assessments, projects, role play, psychometric, interviews, presentations etc.) that can enable managers of different levels, job families and tasks to be assessed

• Both face-to-face and digital assessments may require dealing with assessments suppliers and assessors, timetable etc.

• Ensure accessibility of assessments• Communicate with participants and assessors on venue, time, date

and how to start their assessments

STEP 2: FINDING PURPOSE - LINKING COMPETENCIES WITH ASSESSMENTS

• Assessments are crucial in your People/Talent Development strategy.

• As such, ensure that you are working with reliable assessments firms/person whether in-house or external.

• Some organisations prefer to work with external assessments providers to ensure independence and impartiality

• Communicate the purpose of assessments (why), target participants (managers), accessibility of assessments and what you are going to do with the results of assessments

STEP 3: WORKING WITH EXTERNAL ASSESSMENTS PROVIDERS

• Information from the assessment programme can be used for these purposes:

Selecting the most competent managers Identifying readiness of existing managers Informing competency gaps so that decisions can be made: do we

hire new managers (recruitment), do we train them (learning and development), do we let them go (HR business partners, UNION, redundancy package, re-deployment)

STEP 4: PLANNING FOR DATA COLLECTION FROM ASSESSMENTS

• Ensure that all participants have access and information which contains what they need to do for the assessments

• Communicate with them about the next process

STEP 5: IMPLEMENTING ASSESSMENT

• Ensure that all participants have access and information which contains what they need to do for the assessments

• Communicate with them about the next process • Ensure assessors and systems are ready

STEP 6: IMPLEMENTING ASSESSMENT

1. What is assessment validation? • Involves comparing, evaluating

and reviewing assessment processes, methods and tools and the subsequent assessment decisions

• Ensures that the assessment processes, methods, tools and decisions are valid and reliable

• Assists assessors and their organisations to ensure consistent assessment to the standard required

• Can be applied to a range of assessment activities, products and processes

STEP 7: VALIDATING YOUR ASSESSMENTS

2. Your role in assessment validation may include: • Preparation• Obtaining, reading and

interpreting materials• Submitting your materials • Participating in assessment

validation activities• Discussing validation findings

Reasons for validation:• Improve assessor and facilitator’s confidence • Compare if they use the same tools collect the same types and levels of

evidence• Decide whether different assessors/facilitators interpret the same

evidence similarly• Learn how their assessment adhere to the rules of evidence and

standards Materials:• Random/selected samples of assessments & assessment tools• Evidence and assessment decisions• Benchmark against agreed standardsAnalysing and documenting validation • What has been discovered? • What are the recommendations for improvement?• What are the recommendations?• What action/s will be taken as a result of assessment validation?

STEP 7 - CONTINUED