Before You Invest in Leadership Assessments—Think Like a Baker 🍫🎂

If you’ve ever baked a chocolate cake, you know it’s all about the right ingredients working together in just the right way. The eggs, flour, sugar, cocoa powder—they each bring something essential. But on their own? Not that exciting. Who wants to eat a spoonful of baking powder?

Leadership assessments work the same way. But before you invest in them for your team, it’s critical to consider what your team actually needs. There are many different types of assessments, each serving a unique purpose. Jumping into one without first identifying your team's challenges and goals is like baking a cake without checking the recipe—it might not turn out the way you expect.

Assessments should align with your team’s needs and leadership objectives. Are you looking to improve individual self-awareness, enhance team collaboration, or evaluate overall team performance? The right mix of assessments ensures you’re gathering meaningful insights, rather than just checking a box.

To make the most of leadership assessments, it helps to break them down into three key perspectives—each playing a distinct role in your team’s growth and performance. Let’s take a closer look.

ME View: The Baking Powder

The ME view is all about emotional intelligence. It gives you knowledge of yourself—your own strengths, preferences, and tendencies—like baking powder. Baking powder has a very specific job: it helps the cake rise. But if you don’t know what it does or how to use it, your cake (or leadership style) might fall flat.

A good individual assessment helps each leader understand how they show up and contribute within the team. How can they regulate their emotions under stress or pressure? How do they interact with others? How do they adapt to different situations? Just like a baker needs to know how much baking powder to use, leaders need self-awareness to bring out their best in a team setting.

US View: The Batter

Once you mix the individual ingredients together, you’ve got cake batter—but it’s not cake yet. This is the US view, the realm of social intelligence. How do the individual ingredients (team members) interact? Does the flour balance out the sugar? Does the cocoa powder bring the richness?

Team assessments give insight into how strengths and tendencies combine. How do people communicate? What motivates them? Where might conflicts arise? This view helps a team move past misunderstandings and work together more effectively—just like balancing ingredients makes for a perfect batter.

TEAM View: The Chocolate Cake

When the batter goes in the oven, something magical happens. The ingredients transform into something greater than the sum of their parts—a rich, delicious chocolate cake. This is the TEAM view, also known as collective intelligence.

At this level, we’re not talking about individual ingredients anymore. We’re looking at the whole cake—how the team functions as a unified entity. What is the team’s overall identity? How does it perform in the broader organization? Where can it grow and improve? A strong team assessment helps identify strengths and gaps, ensuring the “cake” is not just good but exceptional.

Bringing It All Together

A successful leadership assessment strategy doesn’t stop at just knowing what kind of baking powder you are. It considers how all the ingredients mix together and, ultimately, what kind of cake the team is baking.

To maximize the ROI of your leadership assessment, consider asking yourself:

• What specific leadership or team challenges are we looking to address?

• Which areas—individual growth, team collaboration, or overall performance—need the most attention?

• What combination of assessments will provide the most valuable insights?

Just like baking a great chocolate cake, building a high-functioning team requires understanding, balance, and the right mix of elements. So before you dive into leadership assessments, make sure you’re looking at the whole recipe—not just the ingredients. Because in the end, it’s all about making something people actually want to be part of—and maybe even savor.

If you're ready to take a strategic approach to leadership development, let’s connect. Reach out to us here for a no-pressure conversation.

Let’s find the right ingredients for your team’s success.