This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Ask a manager to assess their own leadership and you get an opinion. Not because they are dishonest — because nobody ever gave them the instrument.

Why self-assessment fails

You have been told you are "strong on delivery" and "could develop your strategic side", which is two adjectives and no scale. The last feedback you received was a rating between one and five with a sentence attached. If a 360 report ever arrived, it contained thirty numbers, no explanation of how the questions were written or who was asked, and you read the highest and lowest scores and closed it. Meanwhile the company assessing you is working from a competency model, a defined library, a rating scale with validity properties, and a curriculum of ten specific things it trains leaders on. All of that exists. It is simply never shown to the person being measured.

What this course covers

Forty lessons that hand you the instruments. Your own pattern first, across five frameworks — MBTI, DISC, PAEI, Belbin's roles, the Hogan assessment which specifically shows behaviour under stress, and the Big Five. Then the scale you are measured on: what a competency is as distinct from a skill, observable behaviour as the unit, the competency pyramid, where definitions come from, the critical incident method, building a profile for the role you want rather than the one you have, the assessment tools and how valid each one actually is, the published libraries, and how competency ratings reach your pay and promotion. Then honest data: how a 360 questionnaire is designed, which behaviours get chosen, how scales and open questions are written, how assessor bias enters, how to read a report and what to look at first, and how to build one yourself in a free tool. Then the curriculum companies use on people they are developing: the ten competencies from the Gallup and Google research, strategy and performance management, the six levels of delegation, team formation and its dysfunctions, coaching and situational leadership, engagement against wellbeing, and communication. Finally the plan: the career cube and impostor syndrome, a balance wheel across capability, an individual development plan, the softer capabilities that actually gate a leadership career, money, burnout recovery, and a checklist for the top level.

A note on the perspective

Four of the five blocks were recorded for the people who build these systems rather than the people measured by them. That is the point. You are getting the designer's view: how the competency model was assembled, how the questionnaire you will be sent was written, which biases are known to be in it, and what the curriculum for high-potential managers actually contains. The final block is taught from a career coach's side, so the pronouns belong to someone else while the tools do not.

Who is teaching this

I am Mike Pritula. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all 40 lessons

• Active instructor support in the Q&A section

• A Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Working material: five personality frameworks, the competency pyramid, the critical incident method, competency profiles, 360 questionnaire design and scales, the ten leadership competencies, six levels of delegation, the balance wheel, an individual development plan

• The measurement instruments themselves rather than a description of them

Where to start

Write down the three things you would be assessed on if you were considered for the next level, in the exact words your company would use. Most people cannot. That gap is what section three closes. Enrol now and start today.