CPI 260® leadership personality test
Deep and complex insights for leaders
The CPI 260 (California Psychological Inventory®) is a sophisticated personality assessment that provides deep and complex insights for use in executive recruitment and leadership development.
The CPI 260 personality assessment provides a distinctive view of people applying for or incumbent in leadership positions in organisations. Using a sophisticated technique to extract detailed insights about someone’s personality, it is able to summarise and explain how other people would see that person, and how others would judge their leadership style. In this way, it provides a unique view of leadership ability or potential that cannot be accessed by most other personality assessments.- Measures work-related characteristics, motivations and thinking styles using 26 individually researched trait measures
- Gives feedback on how the individual measures up against 18 leadership competencies, showing which are their strengths and development areas
- Looks at individual motivation and current level of satisfaction
- Reports aimed at the qualified professional (Candidate Feedback Report) give full details of all the results
- Reports aimed at the leader (Coaching Report for Leaders) give a comprehensive run-down of their performance against a series of competencies, written in the direct and accessible language of a respected peer
The CPI 260 instrument is exceptional in its refined approach to gathering information. Because of the way it is designed, it can deliver information about a person that is less obvious, or of which the respondent themselves may be unaware, ensuring that a recruiting manager or executive coach is able to really get to know their candidate or coachee. This approach also means that the tool is highly resistant to faking, as the questions are not obviously related to the qualities they measure.
We know that people in senior leadership positions have often already experienced personality assessments, and may be sceptical about their usefulness. The CPI 260 is especially resonant for people at senior levels because it can highlight contrasts between a person’s own perception of themselves, and the views of others around them. Validated against a group of high-performing senior managers, the CPI 260 gets at what a leader’s peers are likely to think about their leadership style, and how the individual rates against specific competencies known to predict leadership success.
Access to the CPI 260 questionnaire and associated products is restricted to qualified CPI practitioners. You can train to use the CPI 260 tool on our CPI 260 Certification Program or, if you hold a master's degree in psychology, you may be eligible for our psychologist access policy.