What is Leadership Skills Test

Leadership skills test is a test that tests the individual on his/her leadership skills. There are many skills that a leader needs to possess along with the right qualifications and knowledge. All these skills are required in the leader so that he/she does justice to the job. The leader needs to be well versed with the leadership principles. All the people who apply for the position are assessed on all the parameters of a good leader and the best amongst them is chosen for the job. The following is the leadership skills list, based on which the individuals are assessed

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• Relationship Skills
• Business Communication Skills
• Forecasting Skills
• Decision Making Skills
• Planning Skills
• Goal Setting Skills
• Listening Skills
• Team Building Skills
• Persuasion Skills
• Employee Motivation Skills
• People Handling Skills
• Mentoring Skills

These are the skills that a leader has to possess and a leadership skills test needs to assess an individual on all these skills.

Leadership Skills Assessment Test

Every organization has its own leadership skills assessment tests. Some of these tests are written tests while some are practical or situational tests. The written tests include questions about all these aspects. Some of the tests can also include essay type question answers in order to understand how much the individuals know about the skills. Answering these questions correctly is not expected. What matters is how much the individual knows about the subject. However, in order to know more about the individual's capacities, it is necessary to test him/her in a different form too. This involves presenting the individual with a situation and asking him/her how will he/she tackle it. Based on these tests, the management will not only be able to decide the right person for the job, they will also be able to plan the course of leadership development for the chosen person.

Another way of testing leadership techniques is role playing. For this kind of a test, the management of the organization can give the group of people a current problem faced by the organization or a fictitious problem. The individuals are asked to lead the groups and find the solutions to the problem together. These tests help the management understand almost all the leadership skills possessed by the individual. As leadership is about behavior rather than talk, role plays are better in assessment of the leadership qualities in the individuals. The organization will have different skill tests for different levels of management as there are different skills required in the leader at every different level of management. For example, the leadership skills for managers will be different from the leadership skills of a supervisor.

If your organization does not have a leadership skills assessment test, you can either make one or ask the individual to take up one of the several leadership skills test free on the Internet. These free tests are good for self assessment too.

Some people say that a person is a born leader and that he/she cannot be taught leadership skills. However, if you inculcate the leadership qualities in children, you can expect them to become good leaders once they grow up. In order to accomplish this, several schools conduct tests to assess the leadership skills for kids. Once the areas of improvements are identified, it becomes easy for the parents and the teachers to develop the kids.

I hope this article has helped you to know why are leadership skills test important and how are they conducted. In order to hire the best people to lead, it is necessary to conduct these tests to ascertain their leadership traits. These tests assist the management in assessing the employees and choosing the right one for the job.

Explaining and understanding the nature of good leadership is probably easier than practising it. Good leadership requires deep human qualities, beyond conventional notions of authority.

In the modern age good leaders are an enabling force, helping people and organizations to perform and develop, which implies that a sophisticated alignment be achieved - of people's needs, and the aims of the organization.

The traditional concept of a leader being the directing chief at the top of a hierachy is nowadays a very incomplete appreciation of what true leadership must be.

Effective leadership does not necessarily require great technical or intellectual capacity. These attributes might help, but they are not pivotal.

Good leadership in the modern age more importantly requires attitudes and behaviours which characterise and relate to humanity.

Leadership is centrally concerned with people. Of course leadership involves decisions and actions relating to all sorts of other things, but leadership is special compared to any other role because of its unique responsibility for people - i.e., the followers of the leader - in whatever context leadership is seen to operate.

Many capabilities in life are a matter of acquiring skills and knowledge and then applying them in a reliable way. Leadership is quite different. Good leadership demands emotional strengths and behavioral characteristics which can draw deeply on a leader's mental and spiritual reserves.

The leadership role is an inevitable reflection of people's needs and challenges in modern life. Leadership is therefore a profound concept, with increasingly complex implications, driven by an increasingly complex and fast-changing world.

Leadership and management are commonly seen as the same thing, which they are not. Leadership is also misunderstood to mean directing and instructing people and making important decisions on behalf of an organization. Effective leadership is much more than these.

Good leaders are followed chiefly because people trust and respect them, rather than the skills they possess. Leadership is about behavior first, skills second.

This is a simple way to see how leadership is different to management:

Management is mostly about processes.

Leadership is mostly about behavior.

We could extend this to say:

Management relies heavily on tangible measurable capabilities such as effective planning; the use of organizational systems; and the use of appropriate communications methods.

Leadership involves many management skills, but generally as a secondary or background function of true leadership. Leadership instead relies most strongly on less tangible and less measurable things like trust, inspiration, attitude, decision-making, and personal character. These are not processes or skills or even necessarily the result of experience. They are facets of humanity, and are enabled mainly by the leader's character and especially his/her emotional reserves.

Another way to see leadership compared with management, is that leadership does not crucially depend on the type of management methods and processes a leaders uses; leadership instead primarily depends on the ways in which the leader uses management methods and processes.

Good leadership depends on attitudinal qualities, not management processes.

Humanity is a way to describe these qualities, because this reflects the leader's vital relationship with people.

Qualities critical for a leader's relationship with his/her people are quite different to conventional skills and processes:

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• integrity
• honesty
• humility
• courage
• commitment
• sincerity
• passion
• confidence
• positivity
• wisdom
• determination
• compassion
• sensitivity