Assessment Centers & Promotions

During my career many individuals, including myself, have been required to participate in an Assessment Center during the promotional process. All of a sudden a wave of panic overcomes the candidates because they are not sure how to prepare themselves for this encounter. To clear up any confusion or concern regarding an Assessment Center I would like to discuss this process with you. It will take a couple of columns but hopefully in the end you will have a more positive outlook during this phase of your promotional exercise.

Assessment Centers are not new. In 1991, the California Police Officers Association distributed a booklet entitled The Art and Craft of Assessment Centers, which stated Assessment Centers were used by the German High Command in World War I to select officers with exceptional command or military abilities. During World War II, Assessment Centers were used by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a forerunner to the CIA, to select spies. Many private corporations utilized the Assessment Center format for promoting management personnel long before it was tried by public safety organizations.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Law Enforcement began to use Assessment Centers in selecting management personnel. During this time, Paul Whisenand, Ph.D., and George Tielsch, Ph.D., were two of many advocates of the assessment approach and wrote a book called The Assessment Center Approach of the Selection of Police Personnel, which explains in detail the Assessment Center approach and all of the dimensions it evaluates.

Assessment Centers are designed to measure certain attributes or qualities of the candidate. These attributes or qualities are referred to as dimensions. The following dimensions, as listed in the CPOA book, may change with each Assessment Center and how it is organized; therefore the following common dimensions should be utilized as guidelines only:

• Oral Communications - Ability to orally communicate accurately and clearly information, ideas, tasks, directives, conditions, and needs to groups or individuals, with or without time for preparation.
• Written Communication - Ability to communicate in writing using proper grammar and syntax in an organized, accurate, and concise manner.
• Problem Analysis - Ability to identify problems, secure relevant information from both oral and written sources, identify possible causes of problems, and analyze and interpret data in complex situations involving conflicting demands, needs, or priorities.
• Judgement - Ability to evaluate courses of actions, develop alternative courses of action, and reach logical decisions based on the information at hand.
• Organizational Sensitivity - Ability to perceive the impact of a decision on the rest of the organization, awareness of the impact of outside pressures on the organization, and awareness of changing societal conditions.
• Planning and Organization - Ability to efficiently establish an appropriate course of action for self and/or others, to accomplish a specific goal, and make proper assignments of personnel and appropriate use of resources.

There may be other dimensions used along with the above, again depending on how the Assessment Center is developed and by whom. These other dimensions may include:

• Initiative - Desire to actively influence events rather than passively accepting them, self-starting, and takes action beyond what is necessarily called for.
• Interpersonal Relations - Ability to perceive and react to the needs of others, paying attention to others’ feelings ,and ideas, accepting what others have to say, and perceiving the impact of self on others.
• Independence - Ability to act based on your own convictions rather than through a desire to please others.
• Development of Subordinates - Ability to maximize human potential of subordinates through training and developmental activities.
• Persuasiveness - Ability to organize and present material in a convincing manner to gain agreement or acceptance.
• Delegation - Ability to use subordinates effectively and to understand where a decision can best be made.
• Listening Skill - Ability to extract important information in oral communications and to convey the impression that one is interested in what others have to say.
• Decisiveness - Readiness to make decisions, render judgements, take action, or commit one's self to a course of action.
• Leadership - It is very difficult to describe this term but it involves a number of attributes, usually measured in management Assessment Centers, and has been described as autocratic, democratic, dynamic, inspirational, and telepathic. It is viewed both as passive and active. Leadership involves the ability to communicate; to be independent; to make decisions; to plan and organize the work of one's self and others; to analyze problems; to take risks; to be self-starting, flexible, and sensitive to others.

The authors of the CPOA book state, "...any effort to measure leadership as an independent dimension will probably be inadequate and misleading." (I agree with this evaluation.)

Once inside the Assessment Center, you will be observed by a group of raters who will score your performance. Typically the candidate's score is rated on a scale between 5 (as the highest) and 1 (as the lowest). A score of 5 indicates the candidate is Strong in that category. A score of 4 indicates the candidate is More Than Adequate in that category. A score of 3 indicates that the candidate is Adequate or Acceptable in that category. A score of 2 indicates that the candidate is Less Than Adequate in that category, and a score of 1 indicates the candidate is Weak in that category.