For CEO's & Founders
For Senior Leaders
For HR Leaders
For Leaders in Education
Executive & Senior Leadership
For Divisions and Functional Teams
Board Level Teams
Values Profile
Network Analysis
Behavioural Report
Energy Audit
Maturity Profile
Emotional Assessment
Cognitive Map
Team Energy Grid
Assessing leaders is now a multi-billion-dollar global industry. It started in the early 20th century, with the British and US military’s need to determine whether recruits were best suited for the Army, Navy, or Air Force. By the 1940s, the British War Office Selection Boards used psychological tests, situational exercises, and interviews to assess leadership potential in officer candidates, a method soon adopted by corporations like AT&T post-WWII looking for the right leader.
Yet, despite our advances in technology, the typical descriptive approach to leadership assessment has remained largely unchanged for 75 years. Competency models emerged in the 1990s, and emotional intelligence followed in the 2000s.
Essentially, businesses have been measuring leadership potential the same way since the 1940s – are we really going to let a 75-year-old method guide us into the future? We suggest not.
However, with AI and large language models (LLMs) transforming how we do business, it’s time for leadership assessments to undergo a similar revolution. The traditional descriptive assessments, which rely on personality types or strengths, are no longer sufficient. To move into the future, we will need to move away from out-dated notions that relied on describing a leader’s personality, typology or set of strengths. We must start assessing the sophistication of a leader’s intelligence across what are now called lines of development.
There are hundreds of different intelligences or lines of development but for impactful developmental change there are only ten that really matter in virtually all businesses in the world. One of the greatest benefits of a developmental approach is that it is much more powerful at predicting future success than descriptive assessments.
Of the ten lines of vertical development, six are invisible to the naked eye:
The six inner lines of development are:
1. Physical Energy
Leadership can be demanding, both mentally and physically. But imagine having the ability to measure not only the amount of energy a leader brings to the table but also the quality of that energy. Using advanced tools like Heart Rate Variability (HRV) technology, it’s possible to gain clear, objective insights into how effectively leaders manage and replenish their energy—whether they’re running on full charge or burning out. This gives leaders actionable data to optimise performance.
2. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is a critical factor in navigating today’s complex organisational landscapes. By assessing 12 distinct levels of emotional and social intelligence, leaders can gain more nuanced insights into their ability to recognise and manage emotions, maintain resilience, and create meaningful relationships. This gives leaders a real advantage when it comes to leading with empathy and in a more social savvy way.
3. Cognitive Sophistication
As AI technology continues to advance, leaders face a new type of competition—not just from peers, but from highly capable AI systems. While AI can excel at processing data, human leaders must outperform in areas where AI falls short, such as creativity and cognitive flexibility. Consider that AI tools like ChatGPT boast a verbal IQ of 120 , whereas the average IQ in the UK is 99. To stay ahead, leaders must think beyond data and embrace more creative and sophisticated ways of interpreting the world, integrating flexibility and innovation into their decision-making.
4. Values
In a rapidly digital world, understanding a leader’s core values becomes even more essential. Values alignment can be the difference between a team that thrives and one that struggles to find cohesion. As organisations increasingly collaborate with AI systems, the importance of aligning human motivations and what truly drives leaders with organisational goals will be crucial to building cultures of success that last. Leaders who understand their core motivations and those of whom they work with are therefore better equipped to steer their teams toward shared, long-term success.
5. Ego Maturity
Identity is an increasingly tricky issue in a modern business. Understanding identity, who we are and how that evolves is key to building engaged, future-ready teams and leaders. Assessing a leader’s maturity level offers critical insights into how they handle complexity and adapt to change. With 12 levels of ego maturity to consider, leaders can identify areas for personal growth, which becomes invaluable in succession planning and navigating today’s fast-changing work environments.
6. Ethics
For the first time, in 2023, more leaders were ousted for ethical lapses than for poor financial performance. Understanding how to develop ethical leadership is a business imperative. As the landscape of business shifts, ensuring that leaders operate with a strong ethical framework will be vital, not just to prevent scandals, but to inspire trust and sustainable success internally and externally. Assessing leaders’ ethical development will soon become as important as measuring financial performance. At Complete we’re building this assessment out to help get ahead of this new line of development for leaders to better support the development of the people we work with.
There are also four external lines of development which can be visibly observed.
7. Behaviour
Behaviours are the final common pathway to results. While the development of inner sophistication is vital if it doesn’t result in any changes in behaviour then the results will never improve. Therefore, any development needs to be able to be mapped onto observable behaviours. By assessing the 11 Key leadership behaviours and their sophistication across the 6 levels, leaders can understand where they excel and where development is needed to help drive better outcomes.
8. Networks
Success doesn’t happen in isolation. In a world where AI systems are interconnected and we become more connected to them via our networks understanding how leaders interact within personal and professional networks is critical. Big data analytics can reveal who leaders are connected to, why those connections matter and how those relationships contribute to and possibly hinder the organisation’s goals. By going through a process of Network Analysis you can very quickly gain deep insights into the unseen forces that are driving your organisations success or failures.
9. Impact
Effective collaboration is the key to future success. Leaders don’t work in isolation.
So, understanding a leader’s ability to collaborate and influence is a key indicator to leadership effectiveness. A sophisticated leader will have a positive impact with their networks being able to better mobilise resource and achieve commercial objectives. By measuring the impact of these leaders on both their best and worst days offers a critical insight into how they lead the way for their organisation and teams through that complexity.
10. Team Development
But leadership doesn’t end with the individual, it extends to the team. How sophisticated is the team of people who are surrounding the leadership. By understanding how a team operates and where it stands on the path towards greater cohesion and performance will allow leaders to better operate and create lasting success. But knowing how to measure that is key. The Team Development Index can quantify all ten levels of sophistication that the team operates from and give you the roadmap to success.
Developmental leadership assessments aren’t just an upgrade, they are a fundamental shift in how we evaluate and develop talent and leadership. By focusing on more of the ten lines of development, organisations can empower their leaders with the skills and sophistication required to thrive in an interconnected complex world. Especially with the ever-growing influence of an AI powered world accelerating rapidly towards us.
Rather than simply identifying where leaders stand or what skills they possess from descriptive assessments, the developmental approach goes further. It creates a roadmap for future growth, resilience, and success.
The critical question is: are your current leadership assessments giving you the whole view talent’s potential, or just a snapshot? Wouldn’t you prefer a more complete view?
The future of leadership requires more than just measuring performance, it demands the development of evolving intelligence, emotional resilience, ethical strength, and the ability to lead with real impact.
The question is no longer whether your leaders are suitable for the work required today, but whether they are capable to leading into the future. How will your organisation ensure it has a more complete view of its leaders? What lines of development will help you most?
View our Complete assessments here.
Explore how insights from the lines of development have transformed these businesses, their leaders, teams and results by viewing our case studies.
