Performance Management & AccountabilityHold the bar without crushing the person: the performance conversations most managers avoid.
Twenty-four items — six performance situations, one evidence question and 17 behavioural statements — measure whether you set goals that fit the work, hold accountability for results and conduct, have candid conversations and diagnose underperformance. Four banded competencies and a growth plan come back.
The easy move drops the standard or crushes the person
The six situations are the performance moments managers postpone. You are setting a goal for a capable person on familiar work, and then for genuinely novel work nobody has done before. A team member is underperforming against clear expectations and you want to hold the bar without destroying morale. A long-serving, well-liked colleague must be told their performance no longer meets what the role now requires. The options include the top-down stretch target, the loose do-your-best goal, the deliberately easy win — and the goal-setting the evidence supports for each kind of work.
Options are weighted against public performance-management research: goal-setting theory and its moderators including learning versus outcome goals, feedback that is prompt, private and behaviour-specific, accountability for both outcomes and how they are achieved, candour with care in hard conversations, and diagnosing whether underperformance is motivation, obstacle or skill before reaching for formal process. Each weight carries a written rationale. The bank is original AssessAll work; no appraisal vendor's framework or vocabulary is named. The 17 behavioural statements ask what you actually do when someone falls short, and reverse-keyed items catch the respondent who agrees with every fair-minded line.
The report bands Goal-Setting & Performance, Accountability & Ownership, Difficult Conversations and Coaching & Development beneath a 0–100 score, each with a coaching interpretation for the review you have coming. A narrative generated from your own responses says which performance habit you hold and which you drop under discomfort. The growth plan is built from the lowest competencies and proposes specific practices — a goal-type decision for each piece of work, a private behaviour-specific feedback structure, a diagnosis step before any formal process — and the item review explains every weight.
What you walk away with
Goal-Setting & Performance, Accountability & Ownership, Difficult Conversations and Coaching & Development each land in Emerging, Developing, Strong or Exceptional beneath your 0–100 score. The radar shows the familiar shapes — the kind manager who never holds the bar, the demanding one who never asks why.
Each band carries a coaching paragraph about what it does in practice: how Developing on Difficult Conversations opens with a long-serving colleague whose performance has slipped, what Strong on Goal-Setting & Performance sets for work nobody has done before.
Built from your lowest competencies, the plan proposes concrete disciplines — a question that distinguishes a skill gap from an obstacle, a feedback format that names behaviour and impact within the week, a goal-type choice for each kind of work — each applicable in the next one-to-one.
The item review shows your choice, the evidence-favoured option and the rationale for each weight across all 24 items. Where you set a specific stretch target for novel work, the explanation shows what goal-setting research says that does when nobody yet knows how the work is done.
What the report shows
Illustrative sample — your report is generated from your own responses.
One number, one band, and a two-sentence summary of what the band means for you — then the breakdown that explains it.
Every competency this test declares, scored from the items tagged to it — so the shape is yours, not a template.
Built for
- First-time and mid-level managers running their first performance cycles
- Team leads inheriting an underperformer nobody has addressed
- Managers of long-serving teams where standards have moved and loyalties have not
- HR business partners baselining manager capability before a performance-management redesign
The conversation you are postponing is the one this measures. See how you would run it.
Twenty-four items in about 28 minutes, then four banded competencies, a narrative and a growth plan delivered immediately.
₹999 (incl. GST) · assessment and full report, nothing further to pay
Frequently asked questions
Whether you can set the bar and hold it without killing morale: choosing goals that fit the work, holding accountability for both results and how they are achieved, having candid performance conversations and diagnosing the real cause of underperformance before reaching for process. Four competencies — Goal-Setting & Performance, Accountability & Ownership, Difficult Conversations and Coaching & Development — are measured through six situations, an evidence question and 17 behavioural statements. It suits new and mid-level managers running performance cycles.
No. Each option is weighted against published research on goal-setting, feedback, accountability and diagnosing underperformance, with a written rationale per weight. A specific stretch target scores well for familiar work and poorly for novel work, where a learning goal serves performance better, so neither the strict nor the lenient reflex reliably wins. Reverse-keyed behavioural statements make a uniformly fair-minded self-report read as inconsistent rather than as a high band.
Around 22 to 30 minutes within a 28-minute window. You receive a 0–100 score with its band, four banded competencies with coaching interpretations, a radar, a narrative generated from your own responses, a strengths-and-development summary, a growth plan built from your lowest competencies and a full item review with the evidence behind each weight. The report is complete on delivery and there is nothing further to unlock.
HR business partners use it to baseline manager capability before redesigning a performance process, so the redesign addresses the actual gap — usually candour or diagnosis rather than forms. Managers use the growth plan as the discipline list for the next cycle and retake after it to compare bands. In promotion conversations it is one input on how a candidate holds standards, best read with their team's results.
Yes. The situations are jurisdiction-neutral — goal-setting, an underperformer, a long-serving colleague — with no reference to any country's employment law, and the research base is international. Managers in India, the UK, the Gulf, Southeast Asia and North America sit identical items and receive the same report. The assessment is priced in INR and USD, and the price on this page is the whole price.
Each battery takes one management capability — delegation, coaching, conflict, influence, decision-making, change — and measures it through situational judgement scored against published evidence, with a competency profile, coaching interpretations and a prioritised growth plan. For the level-by-level readiness verdicts, see Leadership & Management Premium.
See the leadership catalogue →Methodology: Original AssessAll scenarios and items operationalising public, well-established performance-management constructs: goal-setting theory, its moderators, and learning-versus-outcome goals (Locke & Latham); Feedback Intervention Theory and prompt, private, behaviour-specific feedback (Kluger & DeNisi); accountability for both outcomes and the manner of achieving them; candour with care in hard performance conversations; and diagnosing the real cause of underperformance (motivation or obstacle versus skill) before resorting to formal process. Situational-judgement scoring is literature-keyed with a documented per-option rationale citing the evidence for each weight. Generic public constructs only; no trademarked instrument names or vendor-coined vocabulary, and no items copied or paraphrased from any branded assessment. Flagship items are tagged for optional human SME validation.