Assessing and Developing Versatile Leaders for a VUCA World

Practice Area Division(s): Industrial/Organizational

Topic: Testing, Measurement, and Psychometrics

Session Type: Breakout

Things are so tumultuous in today’s fast-paced operating environment that the business world has adopted the U.S. Army War College’s description of the modern battlefield: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. While that may exaggerate the case somewhat, it is no exaggeration that companies need versatile leaders who can read and respond to rapidly changing conditions like never before. In this session, the presenter will describe an approach to executive assessment and development that has been refined over the last 25 years through an iterative cycle of application and research and that is perfectly suited to the times. The focal point is helping executives become more versatile leaders, and it is driven by advances in three inter-related areas: the practice of leadership, the assessment of leadership, and the development of leadership. To that end, the following will be presented:

a new model that portrays versatility as a mastery of opposites and represents the tensions and tradeoffs that make leadership a balancing act;
a new tool for assessing versatility in these terms that includes innovative features in measurement and design that have been patented; and
an associated method for learning and development that combines the outer work of behavior change with the inner work of mindset change and integrates techniques from behavioral, cognitive-emotional, and performance psychology.

Presenter: Robert Kaiser, Kaiser Leadership Solutions