Leadership Assessment and Development

Every leader who is responsible for the lives of people and the fortunes of enterprises must possess certain fundamental character traits and cognitive capacities. In 2017, I searched for a tool that outlined these essential capacities. Finding none, I developed a simple five-point checklist using as resources decades of research and theory in psychoanalysis and psychology and a remarkable document based on the same principles, the Army’s Field Manual on Leader Development.

Here are the five core cognitive capacities and character traits a leader at a very high level of responsibility needs:

Trust—this includes both the ability to inspire trust and to trust others. The leader lacking in trust can’t form functional teams, is drained of energy by habitually feeling beleaguered, and consistently blames others.
Discipline/Self-control—The capacity to contain himself in the face of strong negative emotions and not resort to angry outbursts, blaming, or impulsive action.
Critical Thinking/Judgment—The capacity to anticipate far-reaching consequences of actions, to gather and synthesize opinions and data, to remember past experiences and use them to inform but not imprison current thinking.
Self-awareness—The ability to track one’s feelings and thoughts and know personal strengths and weaknesses leading to comprehensive self-knowledge and awareness of one’s effect on others.
Empathy—This is crucial for a leader to be able to communicate and care for those in his sphere of responsibility.

At Invantage Advising, we use our unique model to benefit you in the two following ways:

1. Personal Leadership Development

We guide you through a detailed self-assessment of your strengths and weaknesses in these core fundamentals and co-create a plan for leveraging your strengths and learning and developing in areas where you are relatively weak.

2. Leader Assessment for Boards, Search Committees, Venture Capitalists, Potential Partnerships

Businesses run on relationships. Before you enter a relationship with a critical leader, we can help you assess his or her strengths regarding fundamental character traits and cognitive abilities using an informed interview process.