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Kaiser, R.B. (2006, August). Leadership versatility: Capturing tensions and trade-offs in executive assessment. In M. Dickey (chair) Integrative Models and Methods for Assessing Executive Effectiveness, symposium presented at the annual conference of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans, LA.
From many years of consulting to executives, we have concluded that their most fundamental developmental need is lopsidedness - emphasizing one performance dimension to the neglect of another, complementary dimension. We have elaborated this idea in a conceptual model of versatility that reflects the tensions and tradeoffs that make senior leadership a balancing act. Perhaps the two most fundamental pairs of complementary performance dimensions are forceful and enabling (the interpersonal, “how” of leadership) and strategic and operational (the organizational, “what” of leadership). To assess versatility in these terms required an innovation in how performance is evaluated. We will describe this new method that goes beyond the linear, “1-to-5” rating scale and lengthy lists of competencies. We will also present results from a program of research that illustrate why traditional assessment tools can not represent versatility and how this new approach accounts for over half of what it means to be an effective executive.
Filed under: Conference Presentations