01
Evidence needs a context
A result on its own tells you very little. The useful evidence sits in the conditions around it: the starting point, the constraints, the quality of the team and the decisions the leader personally made.
Assessment becomes more reliable when interviewers keep returning to those conditions and test what changed as a direct result of the candidate’s judgement.
02
Look for range, not one perfect example
Leadership roles rarely repeat neatly. Strong candidates can show how they adapted their approach across different stakes, levels of ambiguity and organisational settings.
Range matters because it gives a better view of how someone may respond when the next role presents a problem they have not seen before.
03
Make the trade-offs visible
Every candidate brings strengths, gaps and conditions under which they do their best work. A credible assessment does not flatten these differences into a single score.
The aim is to make the trade-offs explicit enough that decision makers can compare them against the actual role, then plan support for the person they appoint.