Leadership Selection: Adding Insight through Psychometrics
October 14, 2025
This month, we asked Ken Gray, Chartered Psychologist and our most experienced psychometrician, some common questions about psychometrics in leadership.
Q: What exactly is psychometrics in leadership assessment?
A: It’s the use of scientifically validated psychological tools to measure someone’s leadership potential, style, and effectiveness. These assessments help individuals and organisations make smarter decisions about hiring, promotion, and development by uncovering key motivators, behaviours, and competencies.
Q: What do these assessments actually measure?
A: There are a wide range of psychometric measurements available – you can measure almost any aspect of work performance. For leadership assessment, psychometrics are typically used to understand cognitive abilities, personality traits, motivations and values. However, the psychometric data is only the starting point – the real skill comes in the psychologist's judgement and experience. This is what allows us to translate numbers on a page into valuable insight into candidates.
A sample of data produced by psychometric assessment of personality
Q: Isn’t leadership more about skill than personality?
A: It’s both. Personality is the foundation—your natural tendencies. Skills shape how those traits show up in practice. For instance, a naturally warm person might be great at coaching, but without training, they may struggle to give feedback on poor performance. On the flip side, someone less naturally empathetic can still learn to coach effectively—it just takes more effort. Psychologists use personality insights to help leaders understand their habits and grow beyond them.
Q: What’s The Keil Centre’s approach to psychometrics?
A: We don’t rely on tests alone or use rigid cut-off scores. Our psychologists focus on the person behind the data. Psychometrics are tools to spark meaningful conversations—not absolute truths. We help individuals tell their leadership story by exploring both strengths and challenges, and we work collaboratively to build a fair, insightful, and professional narrative.
Q: So what is the process?
A: Our role is to support candidates do their best in the assessment, as well as gathering good quality evidence for the recruitment panel. Test takers receive clear guidance and support, including reasonable adjustments if needed. Once results are in, a Chartered Psychologist walks through them with the individual. We always include a feedback conversation with one of our psychologists to guide the individual through their results. This step is critical as it helps everyone to make sense of the data and to generate a narrative around the person’s leadership style and competence. We share feedback with recruiters through a verbal debrief and a written report. In this way, the client is paying for the psychologist’s professional and objective recommendations, not merely their ability to interpret test scores.
Q: Are there any risks in using psychometrics in selection?
A: There are risks in all selection processes and psychometrics is not immune to these. We need to be careful about ensuring we provide equal opportunity to all candidates and being alert to the risks of discriminating unfairly. We also understand that candidates can have different perception of psychometrics – and not always a positive previous experience. We keep up-to-date, we engage with research (Neurodiversity in Leadership Assessment: Q&A - The Keil Centre) and we place the individual candidate’s experience at the heart of the process.
Q: Can’t AI do all this instead?
A: AI is a fantastic tool for streamlining and personalising assessments. It can adapt questions in real time and boost efficiency. But it can’t replace human judgment, ethical oversight, or the personal connection that helps candidates reflect and grow. Psychologists bring nuance, empathy, and professionalism—things AI just can’t replicate.
To find out more about our psychometric assessments, please contact ken@keilcentre.co.uk .