pcl case study
Assessing leadership competencies at Sara Lee the issue The client was Sara Lee Corporation, a global manufacturer and marketer of high-quality, brand-name products including Ambi Pur, Douwe Egberts, Sanex, and, of course, Sara Lee. Sara Lee had rigorously developed a set of leadership competencies or ‘success factors’. They needed to find a way of assessing these success factors at their Management Development Centres.
the solution PCL ‘deconstructed’ the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) and mapped its scales on to the relevant personality aspects of Sara Lee’s leadership competencies. Using a combination of expert judgement, extensive knowledge of personality validity studies, and in-depth understanding of the HPI, we were able to determine which HPI scales related to which leadership competencies, what score level on each scale contributing to a competency would be optimum, and how the HPI scales should be blended to accurately assess the personality factors that contribute to each competency. This is a process we describe as ‘competency metrics’.
the results PCL created a tailor made report for Sara Lee with ratings for each individual of how developed each leadership competency was. Where the rating on a competency was less than ‘Highly developed’ some possible concerns were described, adding a development dimension to the report. This information was useful for both the individual taking the test and the decision makers.
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