“LSA’s People Manager Assessment Center gave us the trusted insights and powerful analytics that we needed to invest in hiring, promoting, and developing our people with certainty. Having the data helped us to make the right talent decisions.”
Vice President | Fortune 500 Technology Company
People managers impact everything from profits to productivity, employee engagement, and customer loyalty. Unfortunately, 60% of new people managers underperform during their first two years, and 85% receive no training prior to switching into the role of manager. Good people managers are getting harder to find, develop, and retain.
The good news is that the significant people manager failure risks can be prevented with the help of a People Manager Assessment Center that uses proven technology and research-backed behavioral science for:
People Manager Assessment Center with 0.54 Predictive Validity
The 3-hour “day-in-the-life” assessment places people managers in a relevant simulation of their future role to measure their readiness using live role-players for a realistic simulation experience. Customized capabilities are benchmarked against a global pool of people managers in similar roles to provide additional data points for comparison.
The People Manager Assessment is for frontline people managers who lead teams of individual contributors and middle managers/directors who manage other managers. For executive leaders, please visit leadership simulation assessments for high stakes roles.
Expected Results
On average, managers and directors who follow the assessment-driven development plans:
Having assessed over 10,000 people managers in over 40 countries around the world, the manager simulation assessment is available in Bahasa, Dutch, English, French, Korean, Slovak, Spanish, and Turkish.
If you would like to use a proven People Manager Assessment Center to better identify, promote, and develop new managers, mid-level managers, and directors, please contact us.
A people manager assessment center is a research-based evaluation process that measures how effectively managers lead, communicate, coach, prioritize, and execute in realistic business situations. Instead of relying solely on interviews or personality assessments, participants complete simulations, live role plays, case studies, business exercises, and structured interviews that mirror the actual challenges of managing people and performance. This approach provides a more accurate and predictive view of manager readiness and leadership potential.
Traditional interviews often evaluate how well candidates talk about leadership, while assessment centers evaluate how they actually lead, manage, and coach. By observing managers in action during realistic workplace scenarios, organizations gain objective insight into decision making, communication style, coaching ability, emotional intelligence, accountability, and team leadership. Research consistently shows that simulation-based assessments are among the strongest predictors of future managerial success because they reduce bias and reveal real-world leadership behaviors under pressure.
People manager assessment centers evaluate the competencies most closely tied to team performance and business results. Common areas include coaching and feedback, communication, collaboration, delegation, accountability, conflict resolution, performance management, adaptability, strategic thinking, employee engagement, and execution. LSA Global customizes assessments to align with each organization’s leadership model, culture, and business priorities to ensure relevance and predictive accuracy.
Assessment centers are powerful tools for both selection and development. Organizations use the results to identify high-potential leaders, accelerate manager readiness, guide succession planning, and create personalized development plans. Participants receive actionable feedback on strengths, development priorities, and leadership blind spots so they can improve performance faster. The insights also help organizations target leadership investments where they will have the greatest business impact.
Strong people managers directly influence employee engagement, retention, productivity, customer experience, and profitability. Organizations that use people manager assessment centers often improve hiring accuracy, strengthen leadership pipelines, reduce costly promotion mistakes, and increase team performance. Research-backed assessment data helps companies make better talent decisions while building more consistent, accountable, and effective leadership across the organization.
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