The EPIC (Empathetic, Purposeful, Inspirational, and Character-driven) Leadership Assessment is designed to help you gain the self-awareness necessary to start or continue your journey towards becoming a leader that can build elite teams that Achieve The Impossible. Routinely ©
The assessment is based on the concepts discussed in the book The Green Beret Way: Leading Elite Teams in Extreme Conditions, and have their basis in the time-honored and proven leadership traits and facets espoused by the Special Operations Community.
Most personality tests can only determine if someone likes to be in charge - but nothing about whether or not they have the requisite traits required to be a great leader. The EPIC Leadership Assessment is exactly that - an assessment of an individual’s ability to lead. It does not assess your abilities or skill levels because those are areas that can be taught or mastered through the use of proper tools.
Rather, it is a candid and comprehensive 360-degree leadership assessment - meaning that after you take the assessment, you will be prompted to send the assessment to a large group of people that interact with you on a regular basis including: supervisors; peers; subordinates; family members; and friends. Getting feedback from a large group helps individuals identify unnoticed areas for improvement and address areas that we might be reluctant to recognize. Finding out what’s actually true is hard because it’s usually a bit painful confronting honest feedback, but great leaders know that the truth is more important than looking good or feeling good about themselves.
When you click the button below, you will be taken to the assessment, which will take 12 - 15 minutes to complete. It is important to answer honestly because the assessment is designed to identify areas where you may be fooling yourself. Once you’ve completed the assessment another screen will pop up with an email message you can cut and paste to as many people as you can. The email message explains the purpose of the assessment and asks the recipients to take the assessment and answer the questions about you.
The more people you are able to complete the assessment about you, the better and more accurate the results will be. You will get the results of your self-assessment immediately. But the true strength of the assessment is when the people that know you best complete it and the aggregated answers are presented alongside your self-assessment. That report is sent to you two weeks after you take the self-assessment. The answers are anonymous because they are a combined average of all the respondents.
Higher scores are better. Any personality trait or facet that is below 70% is an area for improvement. Pay particular attention to large disparities between how you rated yourself and how you were assessed by others as they always yield significant results. For instance, you may not think you are very creative and therefore score yourself lower on the scale. However, if everyone else rates you as highly creative, then you have something that really needs attention. You’ll start by asking yourself “why don’t I think I’m very creative when everyone else thinks I am?” Then ask yourself how you define creativity. You may believe that to be creative you must be a painter, writer, or artist of some type. However others may see you as the person that always comes up with new ideas, interesting solutions, or the best marketing slogans. Finally, you’ll determine what this new revelation means for you in the future and how you can use this “new-found” strength to your advantage.
Most people believe that we don’t have the power to change our personalities for the better. This is a false assumption and multiple examples of methods go back to the ancient philosophers. If you have areas for improvement, you can implement the action plan laid out in Chapter Two of The Green Beret Way. Additionally, to make the process easier by using pre-filled Advanced Franklin Grids, you can input your results into the Green Beret Way Leadership Workbook and follow the process outlined there. The workbook is the same used in the formal EPIC Leaders Development Program.
Have you ever thought about the facets of your personality that make you unique? If you don’t know your own strengths and developmental needs (areas for improvement) and you step in front of a group of highly-talented and experienced team members and expect to lead them, they will eat you on the spot. Because if you can’t even articulate what, if any, value you bring to the team then there is no way you’ll know how to employ their strengths in an effective manner.
Leaders of great teams must know how to put the skills and talents of all their team members to their best use. However, if a leader has never taken the time to understand herself, how could she possibly have the knowledge, experience, or desire to understand and fully utilize team strengths and mitigate team weaknesses?
At a more basic level, what we’re talking about is “Life 101.” It is far more difficult (and far less likely) to have a fulfilling life, to achieve your goals, and become the person that you want to be if you have never undergone a proper assessment because chances are good you'll end up in the wrong job in the wrong company and in the wrong industry. Really understanding ourselves allows us to play to our strengths rather than our weaknesses - like knowing when to delegate a task to someone else who can do it better - and actually likes doing it! A leader who knows their strengths and the areas they don’t excel in will also know the type of people to bring to the team to fill the gaps. Most importantly, it highlights areas for improvement so that you can become the best version of yourself and earn the right to lead. Passing Life 101 is a prerequisite for Elite Leadership 450.
Why do I advocate a 360-degree leadership assessment? Great leadership starts with who you are. I can teach you how to use tools for problem solving and you can become proficient by reading about techniques and then practicing them. However, the most critical part of leadership is the part that you can’t learn in books - who you are. Great leadership comes from within because we will always default to - and act in accordance with our true nature - who we are - especially when under stress and things are at their worst..
Leaders aren’t born. Leaders are made. But great leaders make themselves by becoming the leader they want to be.
The EPIC Leadership Assessment is a statistically valid instrument with very high reliability that uses multiple scientifically accepted methods to establish accuracy. In addition to using standard methodologies used by professional psychometricians, it also uses advanced techniques to ensure stability and reliability and is unique in measuring traits that have been identified over many years as being essential for leadership in the special operations community. For psychologists and psychometricians interested in comprehensive documentation of how the EPIC Leadership Assessment was created, see (URL FOR NEW DOC).
Lots of random variation can cause a tool to be unreliable, meaning it will be inconsistent and provide inaccurate results. Therefore “stability” is a major factor in establishing validity. Stability can be quantified in the form of a reliability coefficient and statistical analysis of the data used for the EPIC Leadership Assessment show the scales’ reliability is in the very good-to-excellent range, with a median coefficient alpha of .89 and a median test-retest reliability of .87.
This assessment also has internal consistency. A widely-accepted statistic to assess consistency called Cronbach’s alpha was used to test this particular assessment with good results. There is a high correlation among questions that measure the same traits and attributes and all the items on a given scale (such as integrity), measure for the same trait, despite being separately worded items.
Validity is the determination of the assessment’s ability to accurately measure traits and attributes. Evidence based scientifically accepted statistical analyses examining the validity of the tool were very favorable. The correlations among all eighteen traits show strong support for the leadership model used. That is, moderate positive correlations are observed among adjacent traits and strong negative correlations are observed between opposite traits.
The structure of the assessment conforms well to expectations, as assessed by multidimensional scaling, scale intercorrelations, and factor analysis. Correlations between the EPIC Leadership Assessment and the scales of other respected high reliability, extensively normed and validated personality assessments provide additional support for the validity of this assessment.
Create your Test Password here. Do not share this password with anyone, it gives access to your results.