New Executive Professional Readiness Assessment

Why It's Important and What It Measures

Promoting an individual contributor or middle manager from within your organization to senior management can be incredibly rewarding. It’s an exciting opportunity to motivate talent, send a message that fosters loyalty, harness their untapped potential, and bring fresh ideas and energy to the leadership table.

While the hard functional skills required to lead a department are typically apparent with internal candidates, how that new leader will integrate and contribute to the senior leadership team is often a wildcard concern.

TechCXO’s New Executive Professional Readiness is a quick assessment that measures this risk and helps determine the degree to which a new leader's capacity, mindset, communication skills, and situational experience are sufficient to successfully navigate and flourish as a highly effective addition to the leadership team. Specifically, it provides insights into the new executive's ability to manage stressful dynamics, embrace change, communicate effectively, and make positive contributions to improving the culture of the leadership team and positive impacts on the company.

While there are a multitude of factors to consider when selecting a candidate, TechCXO has created this particular assessment because our clients resoundingly report that the combination of 1) interpersonal skills, 2) emotional intelligence and 3) best practices fluency continue to be THE biggest understated risks when replacing an executive. Our Clients’ leadership teams highly value this assessment when determining what investments they may need to make to ensure the new executive’s success.

The questions below should be answered by those existing leaders most familiar with the new executive through the interview process or previous experiences. The assessment should take no longer than 5-10 minutes to complete. Upon completion of the assessment, TechCXO will compile the results and provide a findings report with insights and recommendations.

Question Title

* 1. BEST PRACTICE AWARENESS - How well-versed is this new leader in the best practice processes, systems, and frameworks for his/her functional role and for our industry?

1 - Not Prepared - Best practices identification will likely require extensive research in order to modernize and positively impact our processes, systems, and/or frameworks.

2 - Somewhat Prepared

3 - Moderately Prepared

4 - Very Prepared

5 - Completely Prepared - This executive has a complete understanding of best practices for his or her industry and function.

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* 2. CHANGE INDOCTRINATION - How much experience does this new executive have in overcoming change resistance?

1 - No Experience - Little demonstrated skillful navigation of change resistance and influencing others to embrace change. The new executive will require heavy support in ushering the changes needed to modernize processes and how we work.

2 - Limited Experience

3 - Some Experience

4 - Considerable Experience

5 - Extensive Experience - Demonstrated skillful navigation of change resistance and influencing others to embrace change, as well as a track record of experience required to remove barriers and modernize the processes and methodologies in their functional area.

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* 3. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE - When facing pressure created by another leader’s negative emotions and behavior, how does the new executive manage their own emotions and respond to adversity?

1 - Reacts Emotionally (either aggressively or shuts down completely), unproductively.

2 - Considerably Emotional

3 - Somewhat Emotional but recovers quickly to productivity

4 - Limited Emotion and manages adversity fairly well

5 - Thoughtfully and unemotionally responds in a highly productive manner

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* 4. THINKING AGILITY - How effective is the new executive at communicating effectively when 'thinking on one's feet' is critical?

1 - Ineffective - Executive struggles to find clarity and speak with confidence when called upon, especially when pressure is present and/or a response is expected quickly.

2 - Somewhat effective

3 - Moderately effective

4 - Very effective

5 - Extremely effective - Executive has a long track record of confidently and clearly articulating their thoughts, maintaining a solid balance of visionary, strategic, and tactical thinking, regardless of the situation.

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* 5. URGENCY - How urgently must this new executive become a fully functional and productive member of this leadership team?

1 - Extremely urgent - The new executive must be fully productive in their role immediately, or the company and leadership team will suffer in our ability to progress our strategic initiatives and meet our current objectives.

2 - Very urgent

3 - Moderately urgent

4 - Somewhat urgent

5 - Not urgent - We have plenty of time (at least 6 months) for this executive to settle in, adjust to the new pressures and complexities of their role, determine which best practices to incorporate, and have an impact

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* 6. Thank you for completing the assessment. Please let us know where you would like the confidential results to be sent.

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New Executive Professional Readiness Assessment

Why It's Important and What It Measures

Question Title

* 1. BEST PRACTICE AWARENESS - How well-versed is this new leader in the best practice processes, systems, and frameworks for his/her functional role and for our industry?

Question Title

* 2. CHANGE INDOCTRINATION - How much experience does this new executive have in overcoming change resistance?

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* 3. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE - When facing pressure created by another leader’s negative emotions and behavior, how does the new executive manage their own emotions and respond to adversity?

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* 4. THINKING AGILITY - How effective is the new executive at communicating effectively when 'thinking on one's feet' is critical?

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* 5. URGENCY - How urgently must this new executive become a fully functional and productive member of this leadership team?

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* 6. Thank you for completing the assessment. Please let us know where you would like the confidential results to be sent.

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* 7. Please add the full name of the new executive being assessed.

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* 8. Feel free to share 1 or 2 additional focus areas that you feel could be potential readiness risks for this particular newly promoted executive.