Leadership Assessment and Development

Catalog description

Organizations use personality and other types of assessments for a variety of purposes, including employee selection, team building, and employee development. Many assessments are well-developed with extensive research to support their use for specific purposes. These assessments can add tremendous value to organizations and individuals by providing insights related to interests, traits, and other characteristics. There are also many popular personality inventories that are used for purposes that the publisher does not intend and/or that research does not support. This course will serve two primary goals. First, by educating class participants concerning the advantages and limitations of a variety of popular personality inventories and other types of assessments, students will become educated consumers, better able to make choices for themselves and their organizations concerning appropriate assessment methodologies. Second, by completing different assessments during the course, students will gain personal insights concerning their individual strengths, talents, interests, and developmental needs. Examples of the course topics that will be addressed include: an overview of leadership competency models, including models such as Bartram's Great Eight which is used in Penn State's Leadership Assessment Center; measurement issues, including topics such as reliability and validity; strengths and limitations of different assessment techniques; multi-rater feedback, including creating and administering a short feedback survey; theories underlying different approaches to measuring personality traits and styles; how to integrate different assessment sources; setting goals; and creating a professional development plan.