Few organizational topics generate as much debate (or consternation) as leadership. Whether the lens is performance, culture, or employee engagement, leaders set the tone. TTS’s global best-of-breed product partner, Aon Assessments, recently published their Leadership in Transition study, which analyzed more than 750,000 leadership assessments across 31 countries, providing one of the most comprehensive views to date on how organizations are rethinking leadership potential, selection, and development.
In this article, we summarize and expand on their findings.
The expanding landscape of leadership assessment
The report highlights a central shift: Leadership assessment is no longer simply about choosing the right person for the job. Instead, it has transformed into a continuous tool for shaping culture, embedding fairness, driving diversity, and ensuring a robust pipeline of leaders ready for future challenges. And, using leadership assessments in this way is on the rise.
To this point, between 2019 and 2022, leadership assessment volumes grew by 85% globally.
More tellingly, their purpose has shifted. Once heavily skewed to selection, assessment is now increasingly used for developing leaders: Development assessments have risen from 9% in 2020 to 33% in 2024.
This reflects a recognition that:
- Assessment insights extend beyond who gets hired to how leaders grow.
- Data-driven development helps retention and succession planning for leadership.
- Emerging leaders value structured, transparent development opportunities.
The untapped potential remains substantial, with the greatest growth being in junior to mid-level leadership assessments. Currently, only one eighth of all leadership assessments target senior executives. Given the stakes of these roles, IO Psychologists can expect increasing pressure to design assessment systems that extend into the executive layer.
What organizations need: The core leadership skillset
Aon’s study reveals a stable set of core leadership requirements. Across industries and geographies, the most consistently assessed skills were (in descending order):
- Drives Results (56%)
- Provides Direction (49%)
- Communicates with Impact (47%)
- Coaches for Performance (47%)
- Builds Relationships (44%)
This cluster illustrates a dual demand: hard-edged performance and people-oriented relational skills.
Overlooked skills and hidden risks in succession planning
Perhaps as interesting as the most assessed dimensions are competencies that are notroutinely assessed.
Despite widespread public commitments to inclusion, only 9% of assessment profiles explicitly measure diversity-related behaviours. Other under-assessed, yet arguably fundamental skills, include:
- Demonstrates Cross-functional Capability (2%)
- Builds Talent Pipeline (2%)
- Demonstrates Global Perspective (3%)
- Exhibits Self-Confidence (4%)
- Applies Business Acumen (4%)
- Applies Political Savvy (4%)
- Lives Organizational Values (6%)
- Acts with Humility (7%)
- Delegates Authority (9%)
While it is difficult to know for certain, such under-assessed competencies may represent “assumed skills” that are taken for granted but rarely measured.
The risk of not assessing such competencies frequently enough is that organizations may promote leaders who lack foundational competencies that are critical for sustainable leadership, long-term trust and cultural integrity.
Changing skills across leadership levels
Assessed skills differ between leadership and non-leadership roles, and within leadership levels.
While there is a strong overlap between skills assessed for both leaders and non-leaders, the emphasis differs. For instance, in leadership roles the assessment of competencies such as Providing Direction and Coaching for Performance is emphasized, while in non-leadership roles Collaboration and Generating Results are preferred.
Irrespective of role, the competencies of Communicating with Impact and Driving Results are universally valued.
Level off seniority within the leadership tier also affects the kinds of skills assessed:
- At junior levels, coaching for performance dominates, reflecting hands-on team guidance.
- At executive levels, influence and network leverage become more important. Only 15% of junior assessments include Influences Others, compared with 38% at executive level.
This may well represent a leadership developmental arc: The behaviours that help an individual succeed early in leadership may not suffice at higher levels within the organization.
Consequently, succession planning ought to anticipate these shifting requirements and design developmental experiences accordingly.
From cognitive tests to scenarios and gamification
Assessment methods and tools are also evolving. Cognitive ability tests, long the backbone of leadership evaluation, are declining in prominence. In their place, organizations are adopting:
- Scenario-Based assessments: Simulated, context-specific decision-making tasks are now used in 17% of leadership evaluations.
- Game-based assessments: Interactive, engaging tools that improve candidate experience and employer brand are now preferred in 12% of assessments.
- Personality questionnaires: Increasingly valued for insights into cultural fit and behavioural preferences related to leadership.
The participant experience data is notable. Net Promoter Scores (NPS) for leadership assessments have risen by 30 points since 2020, with game-based assessments achieving especially strong ratings (+46 vs. +11 for traditional cognitive tests).
For IO Psychologists, the implication is that delivery format and user experience also need to be considered when constructing a leadership assessment strategy.
Industry-Specific insights
The report highlights clear industry-specific patterns in leadership assessment, showing how different sectors prioritize distinct competencies. For instance, construction, insurance, and retail lean heavily on “Driving Results” as a critical competency, while healthcare and life sciences prioritize relationship-building. Sectors like industrials and manufacturing emphasize performance coaching, while food and agribusiness stress compliance through rule-following. Across industries, under-assessed areas often include broader perspectives such as political savvy, global awareness, and humility—suggesting that while technical and execution-focused skills dominate, softer and more strategic leadership capabilities are frequently overlooked.
Regional differences
Like with industry, geography and culture also shape the emphasis on different competencies that are assessed for in leadership projects.
APAC strongly favors “Providing Direction,” reflecting hierarchical leadership preferences, while Western Europe shows a similar but milder tendency. South and Latin America, along with the Middle East, prioritize relationship-building, highlighting collectivist and trust-based approaches. Northern Europe demonstrates a more balanced spread of competencies, with only a slight emphasis on results. By contrast, Southern Europe distinctly values results-driven leadership, aligning with more performance-oriented cultural expectations.
These variations underscore the need for localized assessment strategies. While the core leadership competencies may be global, differential weights placed on each reflect cultural and market realities.
Implications for IO Psychology practice
Leadership assessments are expanding in scope, sophistication, and strategic value. For IO Psychologists, several implications stand out:
Leadership assessment is a development tool.
Assessing for leadership is more than just evaluation fit-to-role. As a practice (and data source) it informs developmental interventions that build and enhance leadership capability.
Design for diversity.
Without deliberate measurement of inclusivity, humility, and values-based behaviour, organizations risk promoting leaders who perpetuate or even widen gaps. IO Psychologists can integrate these constructs into robust, bias-resistant models.
Integrating experience design.
Validity of assessments is necessary but not sufficient. Candidate engagement with assessment formats has an impact on employer brand and participant buy-in. Gamification and face-valid scenario design offer a path to combine rigour with positive experience.
Succession beyond replacement.
With clear evidence that junior and middle-tier leaders are ready earlier, succession planning should shift from emergency replacement to systematic cultivation of emerging leaders.
Final thoughts
Leadership remains the cornerstone of organizational success. But what assessment professionals measure, how they measure it, and how they ultimately put assessment data to use is and will continue to evolve rapidly.
As the Aon study makes clear, leadership assessments are reaching beyond traditional constructs and emphasizing resilience, inclusivity, and adaptability: Qualities that seem vital for future work demands.
If you would like to know more about best-of-breed leadership assessment solutions, why not speak to us at info@tts-talent.com?
Source
Aon Assessments (2025). Leadership in Transition Understanding the Leadership Pipeline through Assessment Analytics. For the full report, click here.