It is a truth universally acknowledged that organisations must invest in their people to enable growth.
Identifying and upskilling future leaders is central to achieving this.
According to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report, organisations that fully embrace career-driven learning – just 36% of companies – are outpacing their peers in profitability, talent retention, and leadership development. It is important to be able to identify and upskill employees who are willing to take your organisation to the next level. These employees, when given the right opportunities, will flourish in leadership roles, thus putting your company ahead of the competition.
However, there is a challenge that may be faced. Just because a person excels in their current role doesn’t mean they will be a great leader in the future. High performance in a role doesn’t automatically translate into strong leadership potential. While great managers are often good performers, the skills that make someone excel in their job, like technical expertise or individual achievement, are not the same as those required for effective leadership, such as emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, and the ability to develop others.
Organisations should evaluate leadership competencies separately from performance metrics. By doing so, they can identify leadership talent across the entire workforce, not just among high achievers, and build a stronger, more balanced leadership pipeline.
What Makes an Employee “High-Potential”?
Prior to implementing these strategies, it is imperative to understand what your organisation considers to be “high-potential”.
According to a 2024 Harvard Business Review study, most organisations identify high-potential employees by three key characteristics:
- Ability: Skills, knowledge, and potential for leadership, including vision, creativity, and learning agility.
- Drive: Motivation, ambition, and work ethic to take on more responsibility and grow within the organisation.
- Social Skills: Emotional intelligence, relationship-building, resilience under pressure, and alignment with company values.
High-potential employees are not just top performers; in fact, in some cases, they may not be high performers in their current role. These individuals are quick thinkers, problem solvers, and fast learners who do not shy away from difficult tasks. They are also strong communicators, proactive, comfortable with change, and excel when dealing with complexity and ambiguity.
Data is Essential for Identifying Leadership Qualities
Assessments allow employers to identify in their team members the qualities that are needed for leadership success. Unlike informal assessments or biased managerial decisions, these assessments are data-driven and offer insights into areas that are imperative for long-term success and organisational growth.
Here’s how organisations can get the most out of the various types of assessments to identify future leaders:
1. Critical Thinking Assessments
These assessments evaluate an employee’s ability to:
- Analyse data
- Solve problems
- Critical thinking skills
Leadership roles often require that the person be able to manage the unknown, be able to make good decisions and be at the forefront of cutting-edge technology. Cognitive assessments measure whether a person is able to think critically and under pressure.
2. Personality and Behavioural Assessments
Understanding how someone behaves under pressure, works with others, or makes decisions is a key element in leadership development.
Popular tools assess:
- Emotional intelligence
- Risk tolerance
- Communication style
- Resilience
- Leadership motivation
These insights help businesses identify who can lead with empathy, stay calm under pressure, and build high-functioning teams.
3. Leadership Competency Assessments
Leadership-focused tools measure specific competencies relevant to your organisation, such as:
- Strategic vision
- Influence and negotiation
- People management
- Ethical judgment
- Change management
By comparing employee results to industry benchmarks or internal success profiles, companies can better predict who is likely to succeed in leadership roles.
Why Smaller Organisations Can’t Afford to Get Talent Decisions Wrong
The Case for Assessment-Driven Talent Identification
In large organisations, a poor leadership decision can often be absorbed. In smaller businesses, the ripple effects are far more immediate, impacting culture, revenue, productivity, morale, and attrition. That’s why incorporating assessments into your HR and talent strategies isn’t just beneficial – it’s vital.
Here’s how assessments deliver outsized value in smaller teams:
1. Objective Decision-Making
In leaner teams, subjectivity in hiring or promotion decisions can lead to costly misalignment. Assessments provide a consistent, bias-resistant framework that ensures talent decisions are based on skills, potential, and fit, not assumptions.
2. Stronger Succession Planning
Leadership gaps in smaller organisations can cause serious disruption. Assessments help identify who’s ready to step up and who’s aligned with the company’s values and strategic direction, allowing you to plan ahead, not react in crisis.
3. Smarter Development Investments
Smaller organisations often have limited L&D budgets. Assessments ensure those resources are used strategically by tailoring development plans to each employee’s real needs, maximising ROI, and avoiding wasted time or spend.
4. Improved Retention of Key Talent
Top performers want clarity, challenge, and growth. Assessment-backed development pathways show your best people they’re seen, valued, and invested in, boosting engagement and lowering the risk of costly turnover.
Utilising Assessments Effectively in Your Organisation
For these assessments to truly be effective, organisations should treat them as a critical component of an integrated talent strategy. Here are the best practices to guide your use of assessments:
1. Ensure That Assessments Align With Organisational Goals
What does leadership look like for your organisation? Do your future leaders need to be great at wearing different hats? Critical thinkers? Thrive under pressurised decision-making?
Think also of the culture you have today, and how you want it to develop over time. Workplace personality assessments will help you identify the non-competency based traits that are desirable in those caretaking your organisation’s identity.
Once clear, select assessment tools that measure those exact qualities.
2. Combine With Other Performance Data
Assessment insights should complement – not replace – existing performance metrics such as manager feedback and employee self-evaluations. A holistic view leads to stronger, more defensible talent decisions.
3. Incorporate into a Leadership Development Program
Assessment results are most effective when they lead to action. Use these insights to shape a Leadership Development Program by providing personalised feedback, assigning targeted courses to address skill gaps, and offering mentoring or leadership opportunities. Notably, 86% of companies with structured soft-skills development programs can respond rapidly to unpredictable business environments
4. Evaluate and Iterate
The organisational landscape is ever changing – and so should your assessment approach. You should review the effectiveness of your tools to ensure that they still meet your organisation’s needs. Are they helping your team reach development milestones? Do your assessments still align with leadership success within the organisation?
How Top Companies Use Assessments
Organisations across various industries are seeing real ROI from assessment-driven strategies:
- PepsiCo implemented psychometric testing to identify future general managers and reduced external leadership hires by 40%.
- Nestlé uses a combination of 360-degree feedback, cognitive assessments, and leadership simulations to empower future leaders.
- Unilever overhauled its graduate program with AI-driven assessments, increasing diversity and hiring quality simultaneously.
How Alison Can Support Your Leadership Development Strategy
Alison’s LMS+ includes a Psychometrics Assessment Suite, which includes:
Aptitude Tests
These cover three major areas: numerical reasoning, verbal reasoning and abstract reasoning. These focus areas were designed to ensure that a person’s skills are fully evaluated: problem solving, comprehension and analytical skills.
Workplace Personality Assessments
Personality assessments make it easier to understand their behavioural traits, communication styles, and what motivates them to ensure your teams are always on top of their game.
English Language Test
For companies wanting to hire remote staff from around the world, infiltrating new markets, or managing multicultural teams, English proficiency may be a key competency to look for.
Once you’ve gathered this data, we offer a wide range of free online courses that assist leadership development at every stage – from foundational soft skills to advanced management skills. Organisations can use Alison’s LMS+ to:
- Upskill high-potential employees based on their assessment outcomes
- Offer ongoing learning pathways for emerging leaders
- Measure the team’s progress with group management tools
Our learning ecosystem works in unison with assessment frameworks, making it easy to provide personalised development at scale. Once a team member’s results are in, all you need to do is select from the course recommendations provided to create a customised learning plan for their specific needs.
Some of our most popular leadership-focused courses include:
- Leadership & Management Skills For Business – Managing Employees
- Leadership Skills and Team Management
- Employee Management for Business Managers
With Alison in your corner, you can empower your workforce with the skills and knowledge they need to turn potential into performance – even without a hefty training budget.
It is imperative that you recognise and develop future leaders. Having the right assessment tools in place is one sure way that organisations can cut through the guesswork and bias, identify hidden talent, and make calculated decisions that build long-term value.
Assessments that are paired with an accessible, skills-based learning platform like Alison become a launchpad for leadership success.
Ready to build and upskill your future leadership? Explore Alison’s LMS+ with over 5,500+ courses today and start investing in your high-potential employees.
