Mindtools Leadership Skills Assessment: Skip the Total, Read the Areas

What does a leadership assessment actually measure?

A leadership self-assessment hands you a list of things leaders do and asks you to score your own habits against it. The result is a record of what you believe you do. That is worth having, because you can only work on a habit you can name. It is still one person's view, taken on one day. A leadership skills test run by an employer often adds ratings from your team, or timed exercises where someone watches you handle a problem. The Mindtools leadership skills assessment does neither. You read, you rate, you add up.

The four Mindtools leadership tests: skills quiz, Manager Skills Assessment, leadership style, and leadership motivation

Search the brand and four different tests come up. Each answers its own question, so check which one you took, or which one your manager or course leader meant when they said "do the Mindtools test."

• How Good Are Your Leadership Skills? The free quiz this page covers. You rate 18 statements from Not at all to Very often, and your answers are grouped into eight areas. It asks how good your leading is right now.
• The Manager Skills Assessment. A longer, paid tool that Mindtools sells to organizations. Mindtools says it covers 12 skills in four groups (emotional intelligence, motivating people, developing people, and setting expectations), takes under 40 minutes, and was built from surveying over 2,000 managers. It asks how well you manage, in more detail.
• What's Your Leadership Style? A quiz that sorts the way you lead, without grading it. It asks what kind of leader you are.
• The Leadership Motivation Assessment. A quiz about whether you want to lead at all. It asks why you would take the job on.

There is also a paid Leadership Skills Quick Quiz in the Mindtools store. The four questions above are easy to blur. A person can score high on skills and dread the job, or badly want to lead and still run a messy Monday meeting.

What are the most important leadership skills?

Mindtools' answer is eight skills: three personal traits and five things a leader does. The quiz is built around exactly that list. It splits them into two groups. The first is three personal traits: self-confidence, a positive attitude and outlook, and emotional intelligence. The second is five behaviors taken from transformational leadership, a model that political scientist James MacGregor Burns described in 1978 and psychologist Bernard Bass later turned into something you could measure. The five are giving people a compelling picture of the future, motivating them to deliver it, being a good role model, managing performance well, and giving people support and stimulation. The model's bet is that people work harder for a leader who gives them a reason than for one who hands out rewards and penalties. It fits most team leads well. It fits less well in jobs where the leader's main work is keeping a steady operation running, which is closer to management, and the quiz does not separate the two.

The Mindtools leadership skills assessment measures how often you use eight leadership habits, in your own view:

• Self-confidence
• Positive attitude and outlook
• Emotional intelligence
• Providing a compelling vision
• Motivating people to deliver the vision
• Being a good role model
• Managing performance effectively
• Providing support and stimulation

The 8 areas in the 'How Good Are Your Leadership Skills?' quiz

Every statement belongs to one area, and your score in each area is just the sum of its statements. Here is how the 18 split, by statement number:

• Self-confidence: statements 2 and 8.
• Positive attitude and outlook: statements 10 and 17.
• Emotional intelligence: statements 5 and 15.
• Providing a compelling vision: statements 6 and 14.
• Motivating people to deliver the vision: statements 9 and 12.
• Being a good role model: statements 4 and 11.
• Managing performance effectively: statements 3 and 13.
• Providing support and stimulation: statements 1, 7, 16, and 18.

Two things follow from that split. First, seven of the eight areas rest on only two statements, so a single answer can move an area from weak to strong. Treat an area score as a hint to look closer. Second, support and stimulation gets four statements, twice the weight of any other area. Someone who coaches their team well can post a healthy total while scoring low on vision, and the total will hide it. Mindtools adds everything into one number between 18 and 90, which is why reading the areas one by one matters more than reading the total.

Sample statements from the Mindtools leadership quiz, and the area each scores

These are paraphrased, not quoted, to show the style. Each is rated from Not at all to Very often.

• I tell my team where we are heading and why it matters. Scores providing a compelling vision.
• I stay calm and upbeat when a project goes wrong. Scores positive attitude and outlook.
• I agree clear goals with each person and check how they are going. Scores managing performance effectively.
• I notice how people feel and change how I talk to them. Scores emotional intelligence.

What are the 5 traits of being a good leader?

On the same page, Mindtools lists five traits of a good leader: creating a vision of the future, working well with a team, enabling the team's success, being flexible, and carrying expert power, credibility, trust, and authenticity. Most of them map onto the quiz. Vision is its own area. Working well with a team and enabling its success show up in motivating people, managing performance, and support and stimulation. Credibility and authenticity sit closest to being a good role model and self-confidence. Flexibility is the odd one out: no area scores it directly. If adapting to change is the part of leading you find hardest, this quiz will not tell you much about it.

What is the key difference between a manager and a leader?

Mindtools draws the line in one sentence: leaders create a vision and win support for it, and managers work to make that vision real. John Kotter's classic Harvard Business Review essay on what leaders do puts it a little differently. In his view, management is about coping with complexity and leadership is about coping with change, and organizations need both. The quiz mixes the two. Managing performance effectively is management work: clear goals, regular check-ins, and honest reviews. Providing a compelling vision is leadership work. That mix is useful if you read it on purpose. A new manager who scores high on managing performance and low on vision has learned to run the team and not yet to point it somewhere. Someone with the opposite pattern inspires people, then leaves them unsure what to do next week.

Work to Do, Build on Your Potential, Well on Your Way: what each band means

The quiz turns your total into one of three bands. Work to Do means you rarely use the behaviors it lists. Build on Your Potential means you use some of them, some of the time. Well on Your Way means you use most of them often. Mindtools shows your band on the results screen, and that screen is the one to trust. It does not print the cutoffs in the quiz text. Copies of the quiz shared online put the lines at 34 and 52 points out of 90, but treat those numbers as unofficial. If your version uses the same lines, try this sum. Not at all counts as one point and Very often as five, so answering Sometimes to all 18 statements gives 54 points, just inside the top band. In other words, you can reach Well on Your Way by doing each good habit about half the time.

So read below the band. Add up each area, then divide by its number of statements, so support and stimulation is not counted double. You now have eight averages on the same one-to-five scale. Circle the lowest two. Those are the result. If two areas tie, pick the one your team would notice first if it improved.

Use this worksheet. Score each answer 1 (Not at all) to 5 (Very often), add up the statements in each area, then divide by the number of statements.

Area

Statements

Your sum

Divide by

Your average (1 to 5)

Self-confidence

2, 8

____

2

____

Positive attitude and outlook

10, 17

____

2

____

Emotional intelligence

5, 15

____

2

____

Providing a compelling vision

6, 14

____

2

____

Motivating people to deliver the vision

9, 12

____

2

____

Being a good role model

4, 11

____

2

____

Managing performance effectively

3, 13

____

2

____

Providing support and stimulation

1, 7, 16, 18

____

4

____

What if I score low on the Mindtools leadership quiz?

A low total on a quiz you score yourself can mean two things, and just one concerns skill. It may mean you are new to leading and have not built the habits yet, which is normal in your first year with direct reports. It may also mean you judge yourself harshly. People who take their own ratings seriously often mark lower than people who skim. Neither one means you cannot lead. Use the low score the same way as any other: find the two weakest areas and start with one. A low score gives you a clear starting point, which a middling one often does not.

Are leadership self-assessments actually accurate?

Mindtools is open about the limits. Under the quiz it says: "This assessment has not been validated and is intended for illustrative purposes only." In plain terms, nobody has checked whether high scorers lead better, or whether a retake gives a similar score. Treat the score as a way to spot habits worth a closer look. It cannot tell you how well you lead.

Self-ratings in general run high for a known reason. The research term is social desirability: when you rate yourself, you drift toward the answer a good manager would give, usually without noticing. The Mindtools format makes this easy. Each statement describes a plainly good habit, so the wished-for answer is obvious. You are free to mark Often on every line, and nothing costs you anything when you do. Most of us also rate our intentions. We remember the week we held every one-to-one and forget the month we cancelled half of them.

What if my self-assessment doesn't match how others see me?

Mindtools names this as the widest gap in leadership self-assessment: the space between your own view and the way others experience you. A gap is common. It does not mean you fooled yourself, and it does not mean your team is right about everything either. Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall argue in Harvard Business Review that a colleague's score reflects their own standards as much as your behavior. What helps is detail. Take the statements behind your two lowest areas and ask three people who watch you work most weeks to rate you on just those. Where your number and theirs differ by two points or more, ask each person for one example. The examples are what you act on. If you want to do this in a more formal way, the federal government's personnel office explains how its leadership development assessments gather ratings from a leader's supervisor, peers, and direct reports, while our 360 personality assessment guide covers setting one up yourself.

Mindtools leadership skills assessment vs five other leadership tests

Mindtools free quiz

Mindtools Manager Skills Assessment

leadership-tools.com (25 items)

MTD LeaderDNA (96 items)

Hogan or DDI

Pigment

Cost

Free

Paid, sold to employers

Free

Free

Paid by employers, priced on quote

$79.99, one time

Length

18 statements, a few minutes

12 skills, under 40 minutes

25 statements

96 questions

About 30 minutes for a Hogan inventory; DDI simulations can run hours

120 questions, under 20 minutes

Format

Rate yourself, Not at all to Very often

Questionnaire on 12 skills in four groups

Rate yourself on a scale

Rate yourself on a scale

Personality inventory (Hogan) or a staged work problem with an assessor (DDI)

Forced choice between two reasonable options

Validation

Mindtools says it is not validated

Built from a survey of 2,000+ managers, per Mindtools

No validation data we could find

No validation data we could find

Long published research records

Person-environment fit research; outcome study not yet done

Output

A total, one of three bands, and article links

A report on the 12 skills

A score and a written plan

A report with development suggestions

A report, usually with a coach debrief

36 pages on working style and matching role types

The quiz is short, free, and specific enough to point at a habit. That makes it a good fit for some readers and a poor one for others.

A good fit: your first years leading people

If you have had direct reports for less than two years, the eight areas give you a checklist you probably never got in training. Take it once now and once in a month, and you have a cheap way to see whether a new habit is sticking. It also works as a prompt before a conversation with your own manager: bring your two lowest areas and ask what they see. Team leads without the title, such as a senior engineer who runs a project, get the same value.

A poor fit: hiring, promotion files, and career direction

Mindtools itself says the quiz is for illustration, so it should never decide who gets hired or promoted. It is also the wrong tool if your real question is bigger than how you lead. If you are wondering whether to keep managing, move back to hands-on work, or change the kind of team you lead, a leadership quiz grades your current job and stops there. For that question you need to see how you work. Our leadership skills assessment tools page and our look at the leadership personality assessment cover the tools organizations use for hiring and development.

How is this different from a formal leadership assessment like DDI or Hogan?

The free Mindtools quiz costs nothing, and you do not need an account to take it. Some of the articles it links to afterward sit behind a Mindtools membership. The Manager Skills Assessment is a paid product sold to organizations, so most people take it through work. Hogan and DDI sit a level further up. Employers buy them, usually for senior roles, and a certified coach usually goes over the results with you in a debrief session. Hogan's tools are personality inventories built on long research records, and DDI is known for simulations, where you handle a staged workplace problem while an assessor watches. They cost far more and take far longer. They also look at something the Mindtools quiz never can: how you behave when someone else is watching, set against a large group of other leaders. If your employer offers one, take it. If not, the free quiz plus ratings from three colleagues gets you a surprising share of the way.

How can you improve your leadership skills after the quiz?

Pick the lower of your two weakest areas and turn it into one habit someone else could see you doing. Keep it small enough to do every week. A few examples:

• Providing a compelling vision: open each weekly team meeting by saying, in two sentences, where the team is heading this quarter and why.
• Managing performance effectively: agree one clear goal with each person and check it every two weeks, in writing.
• Providing support and stimulation: hold a 15-minute talk with each person every fortnight about their work and their growth, not their task list.
• Being a good role model: choose one standard you ask of the team, such as replying within a day, and meet it yourself every time for a month.
• Emotional intelligence: before each hard conversation, write down what the other person is likely worried about.

Tell one person on your team what you are working on and ask them to say when they notice it, or when they don't. Leave the other areas alone for now. Trying to fix all eight at once is how nothing changes.

How often should I retake the Mindtools leadership assessment?

Take the quiz again after a month or so of practicing the habit. Take it at a similar point in your week, since a rough Friday will pull every score down. Compare the two areas you worked on, not the total. If they rose and the colleagues you asked agree, move to the next area. If your score rose and theirs did not, keep the habit going and ask for examples again. Taking it more often than monthly is not much use: you start to remember your answers, and habits take weeks to show.

Beyond the Mindtools quiz: finding the work that suits you

Some people finish the quiz with a bigger question than which habit to build. They lead well enough, and it wears on them. Or they score well and still wonder whether managing is the right path at all. A leadership quiz cannot help there, because it grades one job. That question gets a full treatment on our career change self-assessment page.

If you are asking whether to keep managing, start with how you prefer to work. Pigment asks 120 paired questions, and each pair sets two sensible habits against each other, so you have to pick the one you actually lean toward. That keeps everyone from scoring high on everything. A manager learns whether they draw energy from coordinating people or from deep solo work, whether they decide fast or after gathering views, and how much structure they want around them. Bring the 36-page report to your next talk with your own boss, and use its role types to test the options you are weighing: stay, step back to hands-on work, or lead a different team. Nothing in it is pass or fail. Some readers find they are strong leaders who would be happier leading a different kind of team. Others find they would rather be the expert the team relies on. Either answer is worth having before your next move. For more on this, see the Career Test guide.

Learn How You Work Before You Decide Where to Lead

The Mindtools quiz shows how you rate your leading. Pigment maps your working patterns and matching roles. $79.99 for under 20 minutes of questions.

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