Personality assessments in leader selection have a pragmatic purpose: to predict leadership performance, not to solve the metaphysical question of whether candidates truly mean what they say, or whether scores reflect a leader’s “true self.” As long as the test predicts performance, the question of honesty has less relevance.
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Research shows that the most accurate criticism would come from a leader’s direct reports, because they have the closest knowledge of the leader’s performance.
Because of the abstract nature of leadership, charisma often ends up being a convenient proxy for it, especially in the absence of other clear indicators. However, it is a poor proxy, and we ignore the true, objective indicators of leadership talent and performance at our peril.
Although these [psychometric] tests may often seem too abstract to relate to everyday work problems, they are without doubt the best single predictor of job performance, and they remain a useful indicator of leadership potential even when other tools and data are taken into account.
Intelligence tests are also worse predictors of leadership than employee performance is, partly because there is less variability in intelligence scores at higher levels on the organizational ladder.
As this book has tried to show, organizations can take concrete steps both to improve the performance of their leaders and to increase the representation of women in leadership. They can stop interpreting displays of overconfidence, narcissism, psychopathy, and charisma as signs of leadership potential. They can also acknowledge the importance of EQ, which should be a core competency in any data-driven model of leadership potential. Paying more attention to EQ would augment both the quality of leaders and the number of female leaders, increasing the overall levels of personal effectiveness, self-awareness, and transformational leadership in organizations.