The evidence behind
every assessment.

Social desirability bias

Self-report instruments are vulnerable to social desirability bias: the tendency to answer in ways that present the respondent favourably. Paulhus described this as a central measurement problem. The effect can become stronger at work when people believe their answers may influence how they are managed.

A conventional response is to add lie scales or impression-management subscales and attempt to detect desirable responding after it occurs. Ones, Viswesvaran and Reiss found that social desirability scales did not provide a simple correction for personality measurement and job-performance prediction.

How we use it

Calibrate addresses the problem at item level. Forced-choice preference items present options intended to be equally acceptable. Situational judgement items describe different behavioural tendencies rather than an obvious good answer and bad answer.

For constructs where direct self-description is especially weak, including coachability, conflict behaviour, emotional regulation and management practice, the assessments use concrete workplace situations. McDaniel and colleagues found situational judgement tests to have useful criterion-related validity across employment settings.

Why this approach

Lie scales treat favourable responding as a detection problem. Calibrate treats it as a design problem. If an item does not advertise the preferred response, there is less value in performing for the questionnaire.

Conditional measurement

Traditional personality assessment often treats constructs as stable traits. Mischel challenged the assumption that behaviour remains highly consistent across situations. Mischel and Shoda later proposed the cognitive-affective processing system model, including if-then behavioural signatures: patterns that are stable because they are contingent on recognisable situations.

The implication is not that behaviour is random. A useful description should say when a tendency appears, in response to what, and under which conditions it changes.

How we use it

The assessments map conditional patterns rather than collapsing every response into one global trait score. Coachability is considered by source, type of feedback and delivery context. Leadership practice is compared across management situations. Negotiation behaviour is examined separately when value, boundaries or recovery are at stake.

Why this approach

A single score often tells a manager too little. Knowing that someone accepts technical correction from a peer but becomes defensive when behavioural feedback is delivered publicly gives the manager something concrete to change.

Self-Determination Theory

Self-Determination Theory, developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, is one of the most extensively studied frameworks of human motivation. It identifies three basic psychological needs. Autonomy is the experience of acting with volition rather than being controlled. Competence is the experience of effectiveness and mastery. Relatedness is the experience of connection, belonging and significance with others.

When these needs are supported, research associates them with stronger intrinsic motivation, more effective self-regulation and better wellbeing. When they are frustrated, motivation moves towards external pressure and engagement becomes harder to sustain. Gagné and Deci applied the framework directly to work motivation and distinguished autonomous motivation from controlled motivation.

How we use it

Personal Working Style translates these needs into observable management preferences: public or private recognition, authority or peer recognition, mastery or variety, autonomy or structure, social connection, instruction detail, check-in frequency and the need to understand why a task matters.

Why this approach

The framework has a substantial research base, makes testable predictions and translates into practical choices a manager can make about goals, autonomy, feedback and connection.

Feedback orientation

Linderbaum and Levy developed and validated the Feedback Orientation Scale, modelling feedback receptivity through perceived utility, accountability to act, awareness of how others see the person, and confidence in responding effectively.

Direct self-assessment of coachability is weak because most people describe themselves as open to useful feedback. The meaningful variation appears when feedback is uncomfortable, public, behavioural, unexpected or delivered by a particular person.

How we use it

The assessment uses scenarios in which a manager, peer or customer gives a particular kind of feedback in a particular way. The pattern identifies the conditions under which the person is receptive, defensive, likely to act, or likely to withdraw.

Why this approach

A unitary coachability score hides the distinction between welcoming technical correction from a colleague and resisting behavioural feedback from a manager. The conditional pattern is more useful for development.

Engagement trajectory and friction

Macey and Schneider distinguished state engagement, trait engagement and behavioural engagement. State engagement is dynamic and responsive to workplace conditions. Hobfoll’s Conservation of Resources theory proposes that stress develops when people experience a net loss of valued resources.

Small recurring losses can compound: unclear expectations, scheduling friction, inadequate tools, interpersonal strain or repeated effort that goes unrecognised. No single problem has to be severe for the direction of travel to become important.

How we use it

The assessment considers current engagement, direction of travel and the recurring frictions associated with change. This helps distinguish a temporary poor week from a pattern of declining capacity or commitment.

Why this approach

A snapshot shows where someone is. A trajectory shows where they may be heading. A friction map identifies what may be driving the change and where an early response is possible.

Emotional labour and recovery

Hochschild defined emotional labour as the management of feeling to create an observable display as part of paid work. Surface acting changes the outward expression without changing the internal state. Deep acting attempts to generate the required emotion internally. Diefendorff and colleagues also described naturally felt emotion.

Grandey linked regulation strategy with emotional exhaustion and service delivery. Hülsheger and Schewe’s meta-analysis found surface acting reliably associated with impaired wellbeing, while deep acting had a weaker and sometimes favourable relationship with performance and wellbeing.

How we use it

Personal Working Style uses this research to inform management support. It considers recovery time after demanding interactions, task variety, signs of depletion, and whether emotional performance feels natural or continuously effortful.

Why this approach

The purpose is not to judge whether someone can display the required emotion once. It is to understand the likely cost of sustaining that display and what support makes the work more sustainable.

Workplace wellbeing indicators

The Job Demands-Resources model proposes that strain develops when demands remain high and adequate resources are absent. Sonnentag and Fritz identified psychological detachment from work as an important recovery experience. Sleep disruption, reduced energy, difficulty disconnecting and a sense that the pace cannot be sustained can appear before clinical exhaustion.

How we use it

The assessment treats these as workplace-level signals. It does not diagnose burnout, depression or any health condition. Repeated measures can show whether capacity appears to be improving or deteriorating and prompt a conversation about workload, recovery and support.

Why this approach

Managers often notice depletion after behaviour or performance changes. Earlier indicators can support a lower-cost intervention before the problem becomes acute.

Psychological contract and values alignment

Rousseau described psychological contracts as the implicit expectations employees hold about what the organisation will provide in exchange for their contribution. These expectations can concern autonomy, progression, fairness, meaning and recognition as well as formal terms.

Zhao and colleagues’ meta-analysis linked psychological contract breach with lower satisfaction and commitment, stronger turnover intentions, and reduced in-role and extra-role performance.

How we use it

The assessment maps what the person values and where the gap between those values and their experience appears largest. Some gaps may be addressable through management. Others may be structural and require an honest conversation.

Why this approach

Values mismatch can be more stable than a temporary mood. Locating the mismatch helps explain where dissatisfaction may emerge and whether the organisation can realistically respond.

Self-Other Knowledge Asymmetry

Vazire’s Self-Other Knowledge Asymmetry model predicts whether the self or other people will be more accurate judges of a characteristic. The prediction depends on observability and evaluativeness. Internal states that are difficult to observe may be known better by the self. Highly evaluative characteristics can be distorted by ego-protective bias, while observable behaviour is available to others.

In Vazire’s study, participants were rated by themselves, friends and strangers, and ratings were compared with behavioural criteria. The pattern supported the proposition that accuracy is distributed differently across types of characteristic.

How we use it

Interpersonal Impact concentrates on observable and evaluative dimensions including warmth, directness, assertiveness, emotional control and likely interpersonal impact. These are areas where the gap between intention and experience can create practical friction.

Why this approach

The model predicts where blind spots are more likely rather than merely asserting that everyone has them.

The Johari Window

The Johari Window distinguishes information known to self and others, known to self but not others, visible to others but not self, and known to neither. It is an organising framework for interpersonal awareness, not a validated psychometric measurement model.

How we use it

The assessment uses the blind-spot idea to organise findings. Explicit self-ratings are compared with patterns in the respondent’s own scenario choices. A divergence is reported as a possible perception gap, not proof of how every other person sees them.

Why this approach

The framework gives clear language for discussing awareness while the report remains explicit that it is not collecting 360-degree ratings and cannot claim to reproduce them.

Conflict mode theory

Thomas and Kilmann modelled conflict behaviour along assertiveness and cooperativeness. Their interaction produces competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating modes. The forced-choice MODE instrument was developed to reduce socially desirable responding.

How we use it

The assessment uses the underlying two-dimensional model to construct disagreement scenarios. It does not reproduce the Thomas-Kilmann instrument. Scenario patterns are compared with the person’s self-description to identify possible differences between preferred identity and likely behaviour.

Why this approach

Assertiveness and cooperativeness provide a parsimonious, behaviourally distinct framework. They are more useful than labelling conflict as simply good or bad.

Self-monitoring

Snyder described self-monitoring as the extent to which people observe and regulate expressive behaviour and self-presentation. Higher self-monitors attend closely to situational cues and adapt. Lower self-monitors behave more consistently from internal states and dispositions. Neither position is inherently superior.

How we use it

The assessment compares reported attention to impact with flexibility shown across scenarios. Awareness without adaptation, adaptation without explicit awareness, and consistency across situations have different development implications.

Why this approach

A perception gap has different meaning depending on whether the person notices social signals and whether they can or choose to alter behaviour.

Negotiation judgement in context

Negotiation performance is not one stable quality. Thompson’s review showed that judgement and outcomes depend on information, task structure, the other party and the negotiator’s understanding of the situation. Curhan, Elfenbein and Xu demonstrated that people value more than economic outcome: feelings about the process, relationship and self also matter.

This is especially relevant in luxury service, where protecting value and preserving the relationship are simultaneous requirements rather than alternatives.

How we use it

Negotiation Style presents recognisable client situations rather than asking whether someone is a good negotiator. It separates objection diagnosis, boundaries, value communication, concession behaviour, buying hesitation and recovery after a service failure.

Why this approach

A person may protect price but damage the relationship, preserve warmth but concede without purpose, or solve the immediate objection without learning what produced it. The report retains these distinctions.

Listening and objection diagnosis

Active empathic listening combines sensing, processing and responding. Drollinger, Comer and Warrington developed and validated a measure for this form of listening in a sales context. The model is relevant because an objection cannot be addressed accurately until the employee distinguishes the stated concern from the underlying concern.

How we use it

Scenarios distinguish immediate rebuttal from clarification, acknowledgement, diagnosis and response. The scoring does not reward agreement with every request. It looks for evidence that the employee identifies what problem they are actually solving.

Why this approach

A polished answer to the wrong concern is commercially weak. Listening is treated as part of judgement, not as a preference for being agreeable.

Service recovery and perceived justice

Research shows that customers evaluate more than final compensation. Tax, Brown and Chandrashekaran found that distributive, procedural and interactional justice all contribute to evaluations of complaint handling. Smith, Bolton and Wagner showed that the type and magnitude of failure affect which recovery response is appropriate.

How we use it

Service-recovery scenarios examine acknowledgement, ownership, diagnosis, proportionality, authority and follow-through. A larger concession is not automatically a better response. The response must fit the failure and protect both the client relationship and organisational boundaries.

Why this approach

Recovery is a combined judgement about outcome, process and treatment. Measuring only willingness to compensate would miss the parts that often determine whether trust is restored.

Negotiation self-concept and calibration

Self-evaluation is least reliable when the quality is socially desirable and difficult to benchmark. Negotiation confidence can diverge from the pattern shown in concrete choices. Confidence may coexist with premature concession, weak diagnosis or an authority style that increases resistance.

How we use it

The assessment compares explicit views of confidence, authority and commercial judgement with scenario responses across domains. A difference is reported as a calibration question, not proof that the person lacks the claimed quality.

Why this approach

The comparison identifies where coaching should test a belief against examples. It avoids treating confidence as a direct measure of competence.

Psychological safety, disclosure and voice

Edmondson defined team psychological safety as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. In a field study of 51 teams, psychological safety was associated with learning behaviour. Detert and Burris later found managerial openness related to employee voice, with psychological safety helping to explain the relationship.

How we use it

Leadership Practice examines what a manager does when someone brings bad news or discloses their own mistake. It looks for a response that makes future disclosure safer while still repairing the problem, learning from the cause and passing important information upward.

Why this approach

A reassuring first response is not enough if the person is excluded from the repair, the cause is ignored or the disclosure stops at the manager. The assessment separates safety to speak from quality of follow-through.

Feedback and correction

Kluger and DeNisi’s meta-analysis showed that feedback does not improve performance automatically. Its effect depends on where attention is directed. Feedback that shifts attention towards the self can impair performance, while task-focused information can support learning and action.

How we use it

The assessment looks for verification before acting on second-hand information, ownership of the concern, behavioural specificity, privacy, a clear standard, the cost of the behaviour, support, a review point and closure with the person who raised the concern.

Why this approach

This makes the assessment about management practice rather than willingness to have a difficult conversation. Opening the conversation, specifying change and closing the loop are separate behaviours.

Standards, fairness and organisational justice

Organisational justice research distinguishes distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational justice. Colquitt and colleagues’ meta-analysis connected these dimensions with satisfaction, commitment, evaluation of authority and withdrawal. Fairness depends on more than whether an outcome is equal. Process, explanation and treatment matter.

How we use it

Scenarios examine whether managers apply a standard consistently, explain its purpose, consider relevant context, make a work-related choice when an opportunity is scarce, communicate directly with the person who misses out and give an honest route to a future opportunity.

Why this approach

A manager can make a defensible decision and still create an experience of unfairness through an opaque process or poor communication. The assessment keeps outcome, process and interpersonal treatment distinct.

Goals, follow-through and underperformance

Goal-setting research shows that specific, challenging goals with appropriate feedback tend to produce better performance than vague intentions. Locke and Latham also emphasised commitment, task complexity and feedback as moderators. A repeated informal conversation without clear expectations or review conditions does not create a usable performance standard.

How we use it

Leadership Practice examines whether the manager changes the terms of the conversation when the first intervention has not worked. It looks for concrete expectations, an honest account of consequences, support, a review date, engagement with denial and an appropriate written record.

Why this approach

Patience and support remain important, but repeating the same conversation can become permission. The assessment looks for a proportionate step change rather than avoidance or premature punishment.

Planned behaviour and recalled practice

The assessment uses two sources written by the participant: responses to workplace situations and accounts of incidents from their own experience. Neither is direct observation. Scenario responses show the planned repertoire. Recalled incidents show what the person says they have done. Both remain self-report and share its limitations.

How we use it

A behaviour is described as established practice only when the planned response and recalled example agree. If only a scenario response is available, the report describes that answer without generalising it into a stable pattern. It identifies a knowing-doing gap when the participant recognises a stronger practice but does not describe using it.

Why this approach

Requiring convergence makes claims narrower and more defensible. It does not turn self-report into observed behaviour, but prevents one hypothetical answer from being presented as proof of how the manager always acts.