Frequently Asked Questions
Taking the Assessment
Understanding My Results
So, what is this test going to tell me?
The Knowledge for Leaders assessment will help you identify your
strengths as well as any needs - areas
in which you might need further development in your leadership skills.
This assessment measures what you know about effective leadership
in several important areas using multiple-choice questions. It tests
the following task areas:
Coaching
and Counseling
Communicating
Effectively
Influence
and Negotiation
Managing
Change
Performance
Management
Setting
Goals and Standards
Managing
Conflict
Problem
Solving and Decision Making
You'll
be able to see, in black and white, whether you know the most effective
leadership behaviors in these critical skill areas.
This assessment is very important in helping you build on your identified
strengths and allowing you to focus your development efforts on those
areas where you have the greatest need.
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Is there only one right answer to each question?
Generally, yes, there is one best answer to each question. You should
choose the response you believe to be the best answer. In a very few
questions, we have decided to accept more than one response as a correct
answer, so if you have a tough time choosing between two answers,
choose the one answer you believe to be the best answer of the four
responses given.
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Is there any penalty for guessing?
No, there is no penalty for guessing. If you do not respond to a question,
that response is counted as an incorrect answer. So, if you must guess
an answer, you will do no worse than if you left that answer blank.
Remember, however, that this assessment is designed to identify your
training needs. Guessing the correct answer does you no good if you
still aren't sure of the correct answer once this assessment is over.
Answer each question to the best of your ability, choosing the response
that you believe to be the best of the four given.
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What if I don't understand a question?
If you have difficulty reading or understanding a question, feel free
to ask your test administrator or another person to help you understand
what the question is asking. This assessment is not a test of your
reading ability. This test is only designed to test whether you know
the most effective leadership behaviors.
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Should I answer based on what I'd really do, or what I think I should
do?
You should give the answer that you believe to be the best response.
Sometimes, the answer you give may be different than what you actually
do now on the job. Or sometimes the answer you believe to be correct
is not the way your organization requires you to behave. In any case,
give the answer that you believe to be the best one, regardless of
what you may actually do on the job.
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Is this an open-book test?
Can I use my leadership notes from previous classes?
The purpose of this assessment is to help identify any
training needs you might have, as well as to highlight any areas of
strong knowledge you already have. This assessment should measure
what you know when you're on the job, working under ordinary circumstances.
By using books or other references, or asking co-workers
what they think, you won't get
the true benefit of this assessment. This is not a test you
must either pass or fail. It is merely a way of measuring what you
know, and what you need to know to be most effective on the job.
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When will I get my results?
If you are taking Knowledge for Leaders as a written test, your answer
sheet must be returned to Edge Training Systems for scoring.
If you are taking this assessment as part of a group in your organization,
you might be asked to return your answer sheet to a test administrator
who will then forward the collected answer sheets to Edge for scoring.
The assessment results are then returned to this test administrator
for distribution to all the participants.
If
you are taking Knowledge for Leaders as an on-line assessment, your
answers will be automatically submitted to Edge Training
Systems. The results will either be e-mailed to you once
processed, or in some cases, they are sent to a test administrator
for your company for distribution. We usually
score all the assessments we receive within 24 hours and return them
immediately.
Once
you receive your results it is critical that you attend an
interpretation meeting to understand the importance of your results.
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Where did these tasks come from?
The term "leadership" encompasses quite a number of tasks, skills,
and behaviors which are important in dealing with those you supervise
in a workplace.
In developing Knowledge for Leaders, we identified the most critically
important skill areas, and grouped these skills into the tasks we
assess on the Knowledge for Leaders test. The the task areas
we test are:
Coaching &
Counseling
Communicating
Effectively
Influence
& Negotiation
Managing
Change
Performance
Management
Setting Goals
& Standards
Managing
Conflict
Problem Solving & Decision
Making
Each of these task areas are made up of groups of skills and individual
behaviors. The Knowledge for Leaders assessment asks multiple-choice
questions to measure whether you know the most effective behaviors
within each task area.
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How is my percentage correct score figured?
Each task has a specific number of questions. Your percentage correct
score is determined by dividing the number of questions you answered
correctly on each task by the total number of questions for each task.
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What's a percentile score?
Many people get confused between "percentage correct" and "percentile."
Your percentile score is a number that shows the percentage of people
you scored as well as or better than on this assessment. For example,
a percentile rank score of 69.8 shows that you scored as well as or
better than 69.8% of the others taking the assessment.
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What is the group score?
If you took this assessment as part of a group, you will see on your
report a bar graph showing the group's range of scores and the group
average score. This shows how your score compares to others in your
group.
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My results don't show a group score. Why not?
Although you may
have taken the assessment as part of a group in your organization,
in some cases, they are not scored as a group. The group score
reflects the range of scores and average of the participants that
were scored when your assessment was scored.
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For some tasks I show a "Strength" and for others I show "Need" or
"Okay." How
are these levels established?
If your percentage correct score is greater than a specific standard
(usually 85%) then that task will show a "Strength." Tasks scoring
below a specific standard (usually 70%) will show "Need." Any scores
in between these marks show "Okay."
These specific standards are customizable and your organization may
set the standards at a different level. Your report should indicate
what standards were used in the preparation of the report. Just look
in the definitions section at the lower left of your scoring sheet
to see the standards used for your report.
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Okay, I've taken the test and gotten my results. What do I do now?
You should create an action plan to build on your strengths and develop
any areas of need. Use the form on the back of your scoring report
to start. Use this web site, SmartForce and other available resources, to develop
your skills further. Review and update your action plan on a regular
basis. Make sure you involve your manager/supervisor to gain
buy-in to your actions.
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I
want to know what the correct answers are for the KFL, so I can see
which questions I missed. Will you send me an answer key?
Sorry,
but we do not give out the correct answers.
The KFL is a valid and reliable assessment instrument, and in
order to maintain its validity, we have to maintain the security of
the answer key. If we
were to make the correct answers available to the public, then the
scores people get on the KFL would be worthless as a means of fair and
accurate leadership assessment.
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I
thought some of the questions of the KFL were pretty hard. It
was hard to choose the best answer because a couple of the answers
looked like they could have been right. Don't I at least get
partial credit for choosing the second best answer?
No,
the KFL only gives credit for correct answers.
Assessment instruments like the KFL are carefully designed to
combine easy questions, medium difficulty questions, and more
difficult questions. There
are some questions on the KFL that require you to make some tough
choices between possible answers.
There are also questions where the right answer is more obvious
to you. This mixture of
question difficulty helps make the KFL an effective assessment
instrument. However, we do in very rare instances allow more than one
answer as the correct answer.
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How
can it be that I got 88% of the questions right in a task and my
Percentile Rank (the fourth column "Percentile Rank") is
only 72.4%?
Your
percentage correct scores are simply raw scores that are calculated as
the percentage of questions you got right out of the total number of
questions. "Your Percentile Rank," indicates how well you
did compared to others who have taken the KFL.
A percentile is NOT the same thing as a percentage.
A percentile rank of 44.9 means that you did as well or better
than 44.9% of the people who have taken the KFL.
So, you can see that if you get 88% of the questions right in a
task, a percentile rank of 72.4 means that you did as well as or
better than 72.4% of the people who have taken the KFL.
It is also
possible to get the same score in the second column "Percentage
Correct," for two different tasks, but receive different
percentile ranks in the fourth column, "Percentile Rank."
For instance, you could score a 60 on both Coaching & Counseling
and Managing Change, but your percentile rank could be 55 for Coaching
& Counseling and only 49 for Managing Change.
This tells you that the questions for Coaching & Counseling
were harder for others than Managing Change.
Or conversely, others found the questions on Managing Change
easier than you did.
The
differences between percentages, raw scores, and percentile ranks can
be confusing for many people. Each of these numbers is designed to give you a different way
of measuring how well you have done on the KFL.
Be sure to ask about any scores you don't understand clearly.
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My
boss says that I'm one of the best all-around employees in our
division, yet I scored very low on the KFL. Why?
There
could be several possible reasons for this.
For example, it could be that you . . .
1)
are a poor test taker. You
might freeze up with anxiety and not remember what you really know.
2)
were not feeling well that day and didn't do well as a result.
3)
are great when communicating orally with your people and are a natural
leader, but have poor reading
skills. (The KFL does require a lot of reading.)
4)
you have development needs, but maybe your boss hasn’t leveled with
you about areas where you should
improve.
Or
there may be test scoring errors caused by mistakes in completing the
answer sheet, such as:
1)
A #3 pencil (or an ink pen) was used instead of a #2 pencil and the
electronic scoring equipment did not
"see" the marks.
2)
A question number was skipped on the answer sheet, resulting in a
series of subsequent answers that
were off by one mark.
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Everyone
knows that Martin is one of the worst supervisors we have in the
department, but he scored in the 87th percentile on the KFL.
What's going on?
What this
says is that Martin knows what to do, but doesn't do it.
Why he doesn't do what he is supposed to do may be a result of
several reasons. For example:
1)
He may not have the time to do what he knows he is supposed to do.
2)
The organizational climate may not be conducive for him to do what he
is supposed to do. For
example,
his boss may not allow him to be the kind of leader he knows he should
be.
3)
He may not want to do what he should do in the leadership part of his
job.
4)
He may be a rotten supervisor in other parts of his job that are not
measured by the KFL. He
may come
in late, leave early, and take excessive breaks.
Or he may be constantly calling in sick when there is
some suspicion that he really wasn't.
Or he might possibly turn in his reports late or sloppy.
None of
these behaviors are measured by the KFL.
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Our
group scored low on "Performance Management" but I think
that we do pretty well in this area. What's going on? (note that
variations of this question can be asked of any of the 8 tasks)
It
may be that the performance appraisal system doesn’t support what
you know you should be doing. For
example, most managers and supervisors support the need for two-way
communications between the supervisor and the employee during a
performance appraisal interview.
But if the system requires the supervisor to complete the
appraisal form in private and then get his or her boss to approve it
before the interview, then the interview is likely to be a one-way
presentation rather than a discussion.
In addition, the organization as a whole may not know it
doesn't know how to do a particular task. For example, using the same task as above, there are whole
organizations that think their way is the right way and don't know
they don't know how to conduct performance appraisal interviews.
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Our
organization scored high on the KFL as a whole. Yet in certain
areas where we have high scores I know we are not doing as well as we
should. Why?
The
KFL results tell you what you know about a specific area.
In all likelihood, there are other problems that prevent the
whole group from doing what it probably already knows how to do.
For example, it may be that the organization's managers and
supervisors don't have the time to do what needs to be done.
Many leadership tasks require the managers and supervisors to
invest significant amounts of time for preparation work, extensive
discussions with employees, and follow up.
But when managers and supervisors have schedules that are
overloaded with normal day-to-day crises, available time for the
leadership part of the job begins to suffer. Good leadership is vitally important, but it isn't normally
urgent. And when given a
choice between daily crises and the important tasks of leadership,
the crises usually take priority over leadership.
In
the space below, write down the questions you want to ask about the
KFL and share these with your KFL administrator.
Don't be afraid to ask about anything you do not understand or
want clarified.
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