Korn Ferry Four Dimensional Executive Assessment
Korn FerryFour DimensionalExecutive AssessmentResearch guide andtechnical manual
Korn Ferry Four Dimensional Executive AssessmentResearch guide and technical manual Korn Ferry 2015. All rights reserved.No part of this work may be copied or transferred to any otherexpression or form without a license from Korn Ferry.For the sake of linguistic simplicity in this product, where themasculine form is used, the feminine form should always beunderstood to be included.www.kornferry.comKorn Ferry Four Dimensional Executive AssessmentResearch guide and technical manualVersion 15.1a—01/2016
AuthorJames L. LewisContributorsMaynard GoffJeff JonesSarah HezlettKing Y. TangGuangrong DaiSusan D’MelloLauren HenryDavid ZesJeffrey FetzerChelsy XiePaul Scheer
Table of contentsSection 1: Introduction to Korn Ferry’s Four Dimensions of Leadership and Talent . 1Purpose of Technical Manual . 2Korn Ferry’s Four Dimensions of Leadership and Talent: A brief and general overview . 3Competencies . 3Experiences . 3Traits . 3Drivers . 4How to use Korn Ferry’s Four Dimensional Executive Assessment . 4Section 2: The scientific foundation for Korn Ferry’s Four Dimensional Executive Assessment . 5Measures in the workplace . 6The moderated desirability of assessment scores and profiles . 6Descriptive utility always . 7Describing, fitting, and succeeding . 7Traits . 8Agility . 8Social leadership . 13Energy . 18Competencies . 23A subset of 15 . 23Self-efficacy for competencies . 25Thought competencies . 27Results competencies . 29People competencies . 30Self competencies . 32Drivers . 34What are drivers? . 35The benefits of assessing drivers . 35Taxonomy of drivers . 36Descriptions and known correlates of specific drivers . 38Balance . 38Collaboration . 39Structure . 39Power . 40Challenge . 41Independence . 41Organizational culture . 42Origin and functionality of organizational culture . 42What is organizational culture? . 43Where does organizational culture come from? . 44How does culture impact performance? . 44Is a strong culture always beneficial? . 45The role of leaders . 46Assessing organizational culture in executive search . 48Collaborative . 48Innovative . 48Competitive . 48Regulatory . 48Cultural features are not mutually exclusive . 49The benefits of assessing organizational culture in executive search . 50iii Korn Ferry 2015. All rights reserved.
Section 3: Measurement methods . 52Datasets and measurement . 53Traits measurement calibration sample . 53Traits and drivers correlational analyses sample, drivers measurement calibration sample . 53Competencies measurement calibration and correlational analyses sample . 54Measurement models . 54Addressing the problem of faking . 54Forced-choice IRT models . 55KF4D-Exec IRT model . 55Results, IRT parameters and reliabilities . 57Traits . 57Drivers . 59Competencies . 59Construct correlations . 59Section 4: Empirical findings . 62Associations with outcomes . 63Role variability . 63Measuring the nature of leadership roles . 66Average assessment scores across work-analysis variables . 72Trait, driver, and competency associations with outcomes . 74Traits, work engagement, and organizational commitment . 74Agility traits . 74Social leadership traits . 77Energy traits . 80Competencies, work engagement, and organizational commitment . 82Thought competencies . 82Results competencies . 85People competencies . 87Self competencies . 89Drivers, work engagement, and organizational commitment . 92Multivariate considerations . 95Profile models . 96Latent profiles on all KF4D measures . 96Class 1 – Rational Independent Strategists . 97Class 2 – Assertive Persuasive Flexible Managers . 98Class 3 – Detail-Oriented Empathetic Structured Experts . 99Class 4 – Inspirational Tactical Managers . 100Class 5 – Inspirational Transformational Architects . 101Class 6 – Rational Structured Expert Builders . 102Class 7 – Curious Rational Innovative Introverts . 103Class 8 – Sociable Structured Balanced Collaborators . 104Class-based fit impressions . 105A second model . 108Relationships between culture and drivers . 111iv Korn Ferry 2015. All rights reserved.
Target scores and interpretation . 113Target scores on KF4D trait and driver measures . 113Analytic strategy . 113Agility results . 115Social leadership results . 117Energy results . 119Trait higher-order factors results . 121Drivers results . 123Interpreting final equations . 126What makes for a target or typical score? . 127Agility results . 128Social leadership results . 135Energy results . 141Trait higher-order factors results . 146Drivers results . 149Target score vector distance tests . 166Adverse impact analyses . 167Data sources . 168Analytic strategy . 169Competencies results . 169Higher-order trait composites results . 172Traits results . 174Drivers results . 177Section 5: Summary . 179Summary and limitations . 180Intended use . 180References . 181Appendices . 203A. Acronyms . 204B. List of Figures and Tables . 205C. Table ACORR and TCORR-IRTL . 211v Korn Ferry 2015. All rights reserved.
Section 1Introduction to Korn Ferry’s FourDimensions of Leadership and Talent1 Korn Ferry 2015. All rights reserved.
Korn Ferry’s Four Dimensional Executive Assessment Research guide and technical manualThrough decades of experience and insight gleaned from more than 2.5 million assessments, Korn Ferry hasidentified four key dimensions that impact and govern leaders’ job performance. These include Competencies,Experiences, Traits, and Drivers. In addition to predicting differences in performance, these four areas arecorrelated with critical organizational outcomes, including engagement, commitment, retention, productivity,leadership effectiveness, and leadership potential (Crandell, Hazucha, & Orr, 2015).Competencies and Experiences describe “what you do”; Drivers and Traits capture “who you are.” The fourdimensions influence one another and interact within each person. Assessed together, they provide a rich, robustpicture of executive talent, providing deeper insight into which individuals will succeed in which senior leadershiproles.Purpose of technical manualThis manual provides a detailed technical description of Korn Ferry’s Four Dimensional Executive Assessment(KF4D-Exec), an assessment developed for supplemental use in selecting leaders for upper-level managementand executive roles. In addition to describing the content of the assessment, we delve deeply into its psychometricproperties. We describe and validate Korn Ferry’s point of view on supplementary use of psychometric-basedassessments in recruitment and placement situations, beginning with an overview concerning the use ofassessments in organizations. We continue by more specifically explicating our substantive orientation in terms ofmeasuring and employing personality measures (Traits), skill and behavioral measures (Competencies), andmotives/values measures (Drivers) for supplemental use in executive level leadership development and selection.We subsequently turn to a discussion of the nature of executive job roles and organizational contexts, withparticular attention to identifying key variables in these areas that are expected to interact with and moderate thedesirability of psychological profiles in a way that facilitates identifying candidates’ “fit” for particular roles. Later wedescribe and report on our own empirical studies designed to validate measures and underscore their descriptiveand predictive utility in leadership selection. Before discussing these topics, we provide a succinct overview ofKorn Ferry’s Four Dimensions of Leadership and Talent.2 Korn Ferry 2015. All rights reserved.
Korn Ferry’s Four Dimensional Executive Assessment Research guide and technical manualKorn Ferry’s Four Dimensions of Leadership and Talent:A brief and general overviewCompetenciesCompetencies are observable skills and behaviors required for success at work (Lombardo & Eichinger, 2009).They provide a snapshot of a person’s level of proficiency on work-related skills, revealing what the person iscapable of doing now. Competency models have become a popular and effective tool for aligning andimplementing HR and business initiatives. From the proliferation of models, what competencies truly matter?Based on a review of the literature, consideration of key business trends, and insights from our data, Korn Ferryhas identified and organized critical leadership competencies. The Korn Ferry Leadership Architect library iscomprised of 4 factors, 12 clusters, and 38 competencies (Korn Ferry, 2014a). Depending on the leadership level,third-party-rated proficiency with these competencies accounts for between 43% and 64% of total job performance(Barnfield, Dai, Jouve, Orr, Sneltjes, & Storfer, 2014). KF4D-Exec measures 15 of the 38 competencies in ourframework. These 15 competencies and their ties to executive success are reviewed in detail later in this manual.ExperiencesExperiences are the roles and assignments comprising a person’s career history. They sum up major work-relatedevents and accomplishments, highlighting what an individual has had the opportunity to do and learn. Highlydevelopmental assignments take people out of their comfort zone and involve high visibility, a risk of failure,ambiguity, and a broad scope of responsibility. Examples include managing a turnaround, taking a globalassignment, or managing a crisis.Experiences distinguish leaders. Compared with leaders at other levels, CEOs are more likely to have completeddevelopmental experiences in financial management, strategy development, and external relations (Sevy, Swisher,& Orr, 2014). The experiences of exceptional CEOs even stand out. In a recent study, the top 20% of CEOs onKorn Ferry leadership simulations were those who had greater experience in growing businesses, managingcrises, developing strategies, and managing finances (Crandell et al., 2015).Within the context of executive search, information on candidates’ rich and varied experience is gathered byKorn Ferry’s expert Search Partners, rather than measured with KF4D-Exec. Measures of experience are part ofother Korn Ferry assessments, including the Korn Ferry Assessment of Leadership Potential (Korn Ferry, 2015).TraitsTraits are a person’s natural tendencies and abilities, including personality traits and intellectual capacity. Traitsguide an individual’s behavior, but can at times be difficult to observe. In addition, although traits reflect stableaspects of “who people are,” they can change slowly over time as people take on new challenges. For example, anintrovert who wants to build networks or exert more influence may consciously reach out to meet new people andmake an effort to speak out.For organizations looking to maintain a healthy supply of leaders, individuals’ traits can provide an indicator ofthose who have high potential for moving into top-level leadership roles. Personality traits and intellectual abilityare well-established correlates of leadership success (DeRue, Nahrang, Wellman, & Humphrey, 2011; Judge,Colbert, & Ilies, 2004; Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002).Korn Ferry research has found that personality profiles at progressive levels of management look substantiallydifferent. For example, for first-level supervisors, the traits that strongly correlate with engagement/performanceinclude Need for achievement, Curiosity, Persistence, and Adaptability. For high-level executives, success is alsotightly bound to Need for achievement and Curiosity—but top leaders also need much higher degrees of traits suchas Risk-taking and Tolerance of ambiguity. As described later in this manual, Korn Ferry has identified 14 key traitsfor executive candidates.3 Korn Ferry 2015. All rights reserved.
Korn Ferry’s Four Dimensional Executive Assessment Research guide and technical manualDriversDrivers are the deep internal values, motivations, and aspirations that influence a person’s choices. They lie at theheart of critical questions: What is important to me? What do I find rewarding? Do I want more challenge in mywork? Stability? Responsibility? Drivers capture the “will do” that creates engagement and energy for a task or role.Drivers are instrumental to cultural fit, employee engagement, and talent retention. To the extent that leaders’drivers are aligned with their roles and contexts, they will be energized by them. Drivers are essentially the pivotpoint for the other three dimensions: if driven, an individual may moderate personality traits, work to improvecompetencies, or seek out experiences to progress toward a professional goal.The Korn Ferry drivers framework is a research-based, comprehensive taxonomy of six work-related motivationaldrivers comprised of 18 sub-dimensions. These drivers are discussed in detail later in this manual.How to use Korn Ferry’s Four Dimensional Executive AssessmentKF4D-Exec is designed to be employed as part of a broader and high-touch process by which candidates arerecommended for upper-level management and/or executive role vacancies. It was not developed or intended foruse as a screening tool, but rather as a supplement to Korn Ferry’s long-standing, well-informed, andcomprehensive executive search process by which our Search Partners and Search Professionals work withclients to identify and vet candidates using their own wealth of experience, insight, expertise, and relationships.KF4D-Exec and all related processes are designed to contribute to related discussions and serve as a single datapoint among many that are often otherwise qualitative and/or based on insight and conditions that KF4D-Exec wasnot designed to measure or incorporate. Ultimate decisions concerning best-fit candidates are made as a result ofdiscussions and multiple points of contact between client representatives, candidates, and Korn Ferry SearchProfessionals. We place high value and ultimately defer to the expertise and experience of our Search Partnersand related personnel. KF4D-Exec was designed for descriptive and value-added purposes to supplement theirwork and not to replace nor trump their deep professional skill, judgment, insight, and experience.In aggregate, KF4D-Exec offers both predictive and descriptive value-added utility. While predictive utility isperhaps often emphasized in applied use and in validation efforts, we emphasize and underscore the tool’sdescriptive utility as well. The use of scientifically developed measures and models for predicting success do notand should not preclude the continued use of subjectivity, traditional screening methods, and client preference inpersonnel selection, promotion, development, and/or placement decisions—even subjectivity which is informed bythe measures themselves. Given adequate measurement properties, nearly all psychometric-based assessments,regardless of whether and how they have been empirically validated for predictive use, have considerabledescriptive utility and tap constructs that may or may not be elucidated with traditional screening methods. Assuch, the added value associated with psychometric-based measures involves the results of respondent profilesand their descriptive utility as well, viz., what they suggest in terms of one’s social, cognitive, and emotionaltendencies in general, regardless of criterion-related issues and target scores that are calibrated using criterionrelated data and job spec variables.Psychometric-based assessments add demonstrable value for personnel decisions, and their continued andincreasing use among human resources departments, personnel search organizations, and personneldevelopment firms is, as such, for good reason (Tett, Jackson, & Rothstein, 1991; Scroggins, Thomas, & Morris,2008; Thomas & Scroggins, 2006; Lombardi, 2011). Nonetheless, the diverse nature of workplace roles, jobdemands, organizational and national cultures, and the challenges of applied research make identifying andemploying predictive measures for workplace success increasingly complex. As such, traditional measures andmethods will and should maintain a stable presence in the process of identifying candidates for job vacancies andpromotional opportunities—
motives/values measures (Drivers) for supplemental use in executive level leadership development and selection. We subsequently turn to a discussion of the nature of executive job roles and organizational contexts, with particular attention to identifying key variables in these
On behalf of our Board and all of our Korn Ferry colleagues, thank you for being a Korn Ferry stockholder and for your continued support of Korn Ferry. Sincerely, Christina A. Gold, Chair of the Board August 12, 2020 Korn Ferry 1900 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 2600 Los Angeles, CA 90067 (310) 552-1834 i 2020 Proxy Statement
The Korn Ferry Institute recently benchmarked 24,000 leader assessments (a subset of Korn Ferry's global database) against Korn Ferry's Inclusive Leader model. We could not ind one single leader in the top 25 percentile on all 10 competency and trait composites. When lowering the threshold to those in the top 25
Half (RHI), are utterly incongruous with Korn Ferry's newly disclosed business mix. By the end of calendar 2020, KF Digital should reach 110m of EBITDA while Korn Ferry's pure-RPO operations (excluding professional search revenue) could annualize 45m of EBITDA, amounting to over 40% of Korn Ferry's total EBITDA. Premium valuations .
Over the past decade, Korn/Ferry has committed signifi cant research resources to identifying executive and board leadership skills and competencies.1 Korn/Ferry's acquisition of Lominger International in 2006 provided us with additional research and expertise on executive competencies
Drawing on the Korn Ferry Four Dimensions of Leadership and the Korn Ferry Assessment of Leadership Potential, we analysed the traits, competencies and drivers of more than 500 digital leaders, and compared them against population norms from our 4.5 million data point assessment database to create a distinctive proile of
Drawing on the Korn Ferry Four Dimensions of Leadership and the Korn Ferry Assessment of Leadership Potential, we analysed the traits, competencies and drivers of more than 500 digital leaders, and compared them against population norms from our 4.5 million data point assessment database to create a distinctive proile of the
Drawing on the Korn Ferry Four Dimensions of Leadership and the Korn Ferry Assessment of Leadership Potential, we identiied the traits, competencies and drivers that are crucial to developing great digital leadership. Together, these characteristics describe a leader who is people-centric, not tech-centric. They're humble leaders
Drawing on the Korn Ferry Four Dimensions of Leadership and the Korn Ferry Assessment of Leadership Potential, we analysed the traits, competencies and drivers of more than 500 digital leaders, and compared them against population norms from our 4.5 million data point assessment database to create a distinctive proile of the
