There is no question that businesses understand the importance of having an effective and well-trained executive team. According to recent data, U.S. companies spend approximately $166 billion on leadership training efforts.
Leadership skills training can equip your managerial and supervisory staff to effectively lead their teams, optimize productivity, and achieve organizational objectives. However, developing an effective leadership skills training program can be quite challenging. This difficulty is due to several factors.
The most substantial hurdle to developing quality leadership upskilling programs is benchmarking. It is very difficult to gauge the soft skills of an executive team both before and after training. As a result, companies often resort to guesswork when selecting which skills to address during training initiatives. Using this method can severely impact the efficacy of training.
Another problem with this approach is that businesses do not know if the training content increases leadership soft skills. Instead, they simply administer the training and hope to see some benefits down the line.
Fortunately, you can upskill your executive team by leveraging leadership soft skills tests. You can administer skills tests before creating training programs to identify areas of need and use skills tests after training to measure your program’s efficacy.
While there are many such skills tests available, we recommend that you consider the following options:
Team Management
Team Management is an effective skills test for leaders in all phases of their professional journeys. It can serve middle managers, line supervisors, and top-level executives.
The team management skills test covers many general management-related topics, such as delegating tasks, coordinating people, effective communication, resolving issues, and establishing rapport.
Like most skills tests, the Team Management test includes various question formats, such as true/false, multiple-choice, and select-all-that-apply. It includes 40 questions.
By administering this skills test to your executive team, you can better understand each individual’s proficiencies and shortcomings. You can use this information to reevaluate each team member’s position within the organization and put them in the best possible position to be successful.
For instance, an executive who is extremely proficient at coordinating people and delegating tasks would be adept at managing back-office processes. Conversely, the executive who excels at establishing rapport and handling issues might be more suited for a customer-facing role.
Emotional Intelligence
The Emotional Intelligence skills test is one of the most popular and widely used leadership soft skills tests. This popularity is no surprise as high emotional intelligence drives a wide range of positive performance outcomes. For instance, managers with exceptional emotional intelligence levels outperformed annual revenue targets by approximately 15-20%, according to a study conducted by PepsiCo.
Our Emotional Intelligence skills test covers several topics to gauge the test taker’s emotional intelligence. The topics covered in this test include social intelligence, using emotions productively, mastering emotions, empathy, awareness of emotions, and interpersonal relationships.
Executive team members who possess a high level of emotional intelligence will be able to help your organization meet its financial and productivity goals.
Change Management
The Change Management skills test covers embedding change, general terminology, leading change, process management, change management theory, and challenges associated with implementing organizational changes. This skills test will reveal which executive team members can masterfully manage major organizational changes to facilitate a seamless transition.
Change management has become a particularly valuable skill in the latest phase of the digital revolution. Like many other organizations, your company will likely invest in hyper-automation and digital transformation initiatives. You must ensure that your executive team possesses the skills necessary to oversee these initiatives.
Remote Leadership Skills
If your business has adopted a remote or hybrid business model, you must ensure that your executive team possesses remote leadership skills. You can measure these abilities using the Remote Leadership skills test.
Our Remote Leadership skills test covers emotional intelligence, goal setting, remote coaching, learning barriers, and continuous improvement. You can use this skills test to upskill your executive team to more effectively manage remote employees.
This test will allow you to capitalize on the benefits of offering remote work opportunities while simultaneously minimizing the learning curve associated with this major transition. Many modern job candidates demand access to positions that allow for occasional or prolonged remote work. Our test will help ensure that your management team has the skills to provide these desired opportunities.
How to Access Effective Leadership Soft Skills Tests
Our online assessment library includes all of the skills tests mentioned above and many others. You can also create your own customized skills tests using thousands of questions created by subject matter experts.
Do you want to partner with a leading provider of leadership soft skills tests? Contact us to request a demo.