Assessment Tools

Self-awareness is at the core of leadership development.

Knowing the latest theories and learning all the right management skills is surely a part of becoming a great leader. But it is not enough. The best, most successful leaders know themselves: their core values, preferred style, skills and abilities, likes and dislikes. They know their strengths and weaknesses. And they are keen observers of how their actions impact others, able to adapt in order to maximize their effectiveness. Armed with such self knowledge, they are able to target their development needs and strategies in order to increase their effectiveness, improve working relationships, and achieve even greater success and satisfaction.

At CBL Associates, we use a variety of assessment instruments—which can be used at the individual, team, and organization-wide level—to help our clients increase their self-awareness. We select the tool that provides the most valuable insight based on the client situation. Using the assessment results as a starting point, we develop measurable action plans for developing highlighted areas in order to create more powerful leaders and increase organizational effectiveness.

Some of the Assessments used by CBL Associates include:

Index for Emotional Intelligence (IEI)

"...in navigating our lives, it is our fears and envies, our rages and depressions, our worries and anxieties that steer us day to day. Even the most academically brilliant among us are vulnerable to being undone by unruly emotions... Emotional Intelligence is our capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships." — Daniel Goleman

Research has shown that the most successful leaders are those with the highest level of emotional intelligence.

The IEI measures self-awareness and control, empathy, social expertness, personal influence, and mastery of purpose and vision. Each of these factors is assessed by the individual subject of the survey and by selected colleagues, superiors, subordinates and others. When done as a multi-rater instrument, it provides information about how the subject sees himself as well as how others see him, providing rich information from which to create a developmental action plan. Successful implementation of the action plan results in the leader's ability to forge more effective relationships with peers, subordinates, superiors and outside contacts. As a result, the client is able to increase trust, improve collaboration, improve morale, decrease turnover and generate greater, higher quality results.

Making the business case for Emotional Intelligence.

TTI Success Insights™ Management–Staff Version (DISC)

This assessment measures HOW a person acts. It assesses a person's individual strengths and potential derailing shadow behaviors and provides an action plan for improving communication thereby increasing productivity and overall organizational effectiveness. It is a powerful management, leadership, communication, and screening and hiring tool.

TTI Success Insight™ PIAV Version (Personal Interests, Attitudes, and Values)

The Personal Interests, Attitudes and Value™ assessment measures WHY a person acts a certain way. It identifies a person's driving values, behaviors, and motivators providing insight into what gives passion and purpose to their life. It helps clients gain understanding as to why they behave in the manner they do, why they engage in certain activities and avoid others, and why some activities give them pleasure and fulfillment while others cause stress and conflict. Such knowledge helps clients anticipate future actions and adapt in order to be more fulfilled and successful in their own careers and to successfully motivate others. The PIAV is especially powerful when coupled with the DISC assessment to provide answers to both how and why a person communicates, leads, manages, or acts as they do.

TTI Personal Talent Skills Inventor™ (PTSI)

The PTSI assessment measures WHAT a person will do or how he or she processes information. It is a mathematically accurate assessment able to predict a person's potential for performance/actions. It also provides a detailed description of the specific skills and talents on which a person tends to focus. This tool is especially powerful when coaching around strengths and areas for development.

The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI)

The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) is one of the most trusted leadership tools of its generation. Developed by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, this instrument approaches leadership as a measurable, learnable, and teachable set of behaviors. This 360° leadership assessment tool helps individuals and organizations measure their leadership competencies, while guiding them through the process of applying Kouzes and Posner's acclaimed Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® Model to real-life organizational challenges. Feedback reports provide insight into the client's own perception of strengths and weaknesses as well as those of his peers, superior(s) and subordinates. The resulting action plan creates a roadmap for increasing the skill level and frequency of demonstration of critical leadership and management practices.

CommScan

Do you sense that things aren't going as well as you'd like across your organization, but you're not sure why or where to begin?

CommScan is a comprehensive organizational diagnostic and reporting tool that helps clients identify areas where they can achieve greater results through better communication. Through one-on-one interviews, focus groups and an on-line survey, a general profile of the organization's overall communication strategies and proficiencies is displayed, showing areas of strength and weakness, and where intervention will produce the greatest opportunity for improvement.

CommScan audits and assesses communication at the individual, team, and organizational level. It looks at communication from a variety of perspectives – from the abstract ideas of culture and leadership style to the more specific issues of management, performance, technology, accountability, teamwork, and more.

CommScan produces a comprehensive, in-depth report that identifies what to start, what to stop, and what to continue doing. The results of the scan become the foundation upon which business leaders can set priorities and develop a strategy for improving communication in order to maximize their bottom line.

StressMap

The StressMap is a self assessment tool that helps the user identify specific sources of stress, explore their personal responses to them and suggests effective strategies for increasing resilience, enhancing overall well being and improving performance.

Based on years of research and use, StressMap is statistically reliable and valid and provides a cost-effective means of tracking and continually improving stress management over time.