Welcome to mastering assessment accuracy! Even experienced leaders fall into predictable traps when evaluating development stages.
These systematic errors can derail your leadership effectiveness, but once you recognize them, you'll assess with much greater precision.
Engagement Message
Recall a time you misjudged someone's abilities. What early clue did you overlook?
The recency effect is the most common assessment mistake. We overweight recent events and underweight long-term patterns.
One bad presentation makes you forget months of solid work. One great week makes you overlook ongoing skill gaps.
Engagement Message
Give one reason we tend to overweight recent events when judging performance.
The halo effect creates another dangerous bias. When someone excels in one area, we assume they're competent everywhere.
"Sarah's great at analysis, so she'll be perfect for client presentations." But these are completely different skill sets requiring different development approaches.
Engagement Message
Name two skills you have that are totally different from each other.
Personality bias compounds assessment errors. We mistake communication style for competence level, as we covered in our last session.
The confident-sounding beginner gets too much independence. The cautious expert gets too much direction. Both setups create problems.
Engagement Message
Which personality style do you find easier to assess accurately—bold or quiet?
Here's the speed trap: pressure to make quick assessments leads to shallow conclusions. You observe one interaction and think you understand their development stage.
But accurate assessment requires multiple data points across different situations and timeframes.
Engagement Message
What's one risk of making leadership decisions based on limited observations?
