CPI 260 leadership personality assessment

Going beyond the surface

The CPI 260, drawn from the California Psychological Inventory and published by The Myers-Briggs Company, captures the nuances and subtleties that define character. It does more than reveal how someone perceives themselves. It provides insight into how others perceive them and judge their leadership style, a view of leadership ability that few personality instruments offer.

It is also resistant to faking. The questions are not overtly related to the qualities they measure, which keeps results honest and can surface aspects of personality that are hidden even from the person completing it.

Tailored for senior leadership

Senior leaders have usually met personality assessments before and may be skeptical about their usefulness. The CPI 260 earns its place because it highlights discrepancies between your self-perception and how others perceive you. Validated against a group of high-performing senior managers, it shows what your peers are likely to think about your leadership style and how you rate against the competencies that matter at the top.

Three orientations, four lifestyles

Interpretation begins with three basic orientations: toward other people and interpersonal experience, toward conventional rules and values, and toward one’s inner feelings. The first two are expressed in observable behavior and together define four distinctive lifestyles, reflecting how you see yourself and how you are seen by others.

The third concerns satisfaction in living and feelings of self-realization. Those who score low tend to feel dissatisfied with their current status and that their capabilities are not being used. Those who score high tend to feel they are living up to their own capabilities and can cope well with the demands of living.

Five conceptual categories

The CPI 260 reports on twenty-six scales related to organizational behavior and leadership effectiveness:

1. Dealing with others: dominance, capacity for status, sociability, social presence, self-acceptance, independence, empathy.
2. Self-management: responsibility, social conformity, self-control, good impression, communality, well-being, tolerance.
3. Motivations and thinking style: achievement via conformance, achievement via independence, conceptual fluency.
4. Personal characteristics: insightfulness, flexibility, sensitivity.
5. Work-related measures: managerial potential, work orientation, creative temperament, leadership, amicability, law enforcement orientation.

Eighteen leadership competencies

The leadership characteristics are organized into five core performance areas:

1. Self-management: self-awareness, self-control, resilience.
2. Organizational capabilities: use of power and authority, comfort with organizational structures, responsibility and accountability, decisiveness.
3. Team building and teamwork: interpersonal skills, understanding others, capacity for collaboration, working with and through others.
4. Problem solving: creativity, handling sensitive problems, action orientation.
5. Sustaining the vision: self-confidence, managing change, influence, comfort with visibility.

You receive two reports: the Client Feedback Report and the Coaching Report for Leaders, which details practical strategies to strengthen your core strengths and address your gaps. Both are debriefed in a coaching conversation, and the competency profile becomes the spine of a development plan.