What Are Lectical Assessments?
Unlike surveys that only summarise others’ subjective opinions, Lectical Assessments objectively measure peoples’ ability to reason their way through complex organisational challenges. In short, LecticalAssessments measure the kind of reasoning skills that are most important to organisations in the21st century.
Why use Lectical Assessments?
Put simply, Lectical Assessments directly measure the best predictor of workplace performance andleadership effectiveness – real-world reasoning skills.
How can Lectical Assessments be used?
Lectical Assessments can be used across the employee lifecycle including:
• Recruitment (front-line through to executive): The assessments enhance placement decisions by comparing the complexity of roles to the complexity of applicants’ reasoning.
• Organisational Design: The Lectical Scale can be used to identify the reasoning skills required at different organisational layers and for specific roles.
• Leadership Development: The assessments can support an increase in leadership effectiveness byaccurately identifying leaders’ growth needs in addition to providing learning suggestions.
• Learning and Development: The assessments can identify growth needs and be used to support ongoing development.
• Talent Management and Succession Planning: The assessments can identify people who are ready toprogress to more senior roles based on their current reasoning and growth trajectory.
• Team Effectiveness: The assessments can identify potential misalignment and dysfunction betweenleaders and direct reports based on their reasoning skills.
What is it like to take a Lectical Assessment?
Taking a Lectical Assessment is typically an enjoyable experience - many test takers say that it feels similar to journaling. When taking an assessment, test takers are provided with a complex organisational dilemma; examples include leading a culture transformation, or navigating a difficult interpersonal challenge. Test takers respond to reflective questions attached to each dilemma which are then scored by highly qualified Lectical Analysts to determine the level of reasoning. This allows Lectica(TM) to provide rich feedback that can be used to foster growth for 12+ months.
Who uses Lectical Assessments?
Lectica applies stringent standards to ensure appropriate use of their assessments. Consultants and coaches who use Lectical Assessments must complete at least several months of training before gaining accreditation. Many of them continue to gain mastery through extended mentoring by one of Lectica’s Certified Master Lectical Consultants. In short, those who use Lectical Assessments are well trained in the application of developmental assessments to provide clients with a high-quality service aligned with desired business outcomes.
How have Lectical Assessment been validated?
Lectical Assessments are amongst the strongest and most accurate measures of reasoning currently available. Lectical Assessments are based on over 120 years of theory, research and practice in cognitive development. Multiple studies have shown that Lectical Assessments:
• Actually, measure the reasoning skills that they claim to.
• Can be used to measure growth over time.
• Predict the outcomes that matter most in the workplace.
• Can be used to support transformational learning.
· Provide scores that are precise and make distinctions between different test takers’ growth needs.
Why Not Use Another Development Measure Instead?
There are a number of other development assessments available on the market (often called“vertical development”) however some of them:
• Are supported by limited scientific validation.
• Are subjective self or peer rated surveys.
• Have not consistently been shown to measure increasingly complex abilities
• Are being used by consultants and coaches with limited training.
Decision Making - The essence of modern leadership
Less than 1% of senior leaders are currently capable of executing the task demands of their roles to maximum effect.
Do you want to double the amount of leadership learning your leaders achieve in a single year?
Are you tired of investing in behavioural diagnostics and assessments that:
Only measure opinions and not performance,
Have very little evidence of creating leadership development & growth,
Show little or no improvement in leaders capacity over time,
Have no viable way of measuring their ROI;
Are benchmarked against completely subjective norms.
THE LEADERSHIP DECISION MAKING ASSESSMENT - LDMA
Introducing LDMA (Lectical® Decision-Making Assessment). A highly validated leadership diagnostic created at Harvard University. Statistically proven to double the amount of leadership development and learning when used in conjunction with leadership development programs or coaching over a single year.
Performance based
Contextually relevant
Completely objective
Proven to foster growth and development
Clearly measurable ROI
Created from the latest research in adult development at Harvard University and validated in highly complex and volatile environments by the United States intelligence community such as the CIA and NSA. The LDMA is the next generation in performance based leadership assessment to meet the increasing demands of global complexity.
During the last 20 years, scholars and practitioners in many disciplines have identified a growing gap between the complexity of the workplace and the capabilities of leaders. This gap has contributed to what we refer to as a complexity crisis, in which leaders are forced repeatedly to make decisions without an adequate understanding of their ramifications. The LDMA was created primarily to help fill this gap, but is also used to learn more about the nature of the gap itself and its root causes.
The LDMA is a learning tool that supports the development of leaders' decision-making skills. It presents a scenario of real-world workplace dilemmas, followed by questions that ask leaders to discuss the nature of the problems, describe solutions, compare these solutions, and describe ideal decision-making processes for real-life situations.
The LDMA was originally used specifically as a leadership development tool, but now is finding remarkable success in the following applications.
Leadership development
Work force planning
Succession planning
Talent identification
Leadership Assessment
Role calibration and design
Hiring and recruitment
Leadership program architecture
About lectical Levels and the LDMA
What does the LDMA measure?
The LDMA focuses on three aspects of decision making:
Collaborative Capacity: the ability to bring together diverse perspectives to develop inclusive, innovative, and effective solutions.
Contextual Thinking: the ability to consider problems in terms of the broader systems and contexts in which they are embedded.
Cognitive Complexity: the ability to think well about complex issues.
These three broad skills are represented in 8 scales, including
Developmental level,
Perspective-taking skill,
Perspective-seeking skill,
Perspective coordination,
Collaborative capacity,
Contextual thinking,
Cognitive coherence, and
Decision-making process.
When the LDMA is embedded in leadership programs as a learning tool, it measurably and statically proven to double (on average) the amount of skill development in participants.
Importantly, this development leads to improved decison-making on the ground and predicts similar improvements in the performance of peers and subordinates, while providing a personalised road map of ongoing development for each individual. To find out more about how LECTICA assessments can help you bridge the complexity gap and increase your organisational performance, contact us to talk to one our experienced consultants today.