How Leading Organizations Grow Better Leaders with Assessments

Growing confidence in decision-making

Organizations across industries are tackling the same fundamental challenge: how to grow and place leaders with confidence, using objective evidence rather than instinct or precedent. These real customer examples demonstrate how assessments can anchor leadership strategy and deliver measurable enterprise value.

Seeing leaders clearly

A consistent theme among organizations striving to strengthen leadership quality is that traditional signals (CVs, tenure, manager nominations) were not sufficient to predict who would truly excel in leadership roles. In these examples, assessments created a shared, evidence-based language for leadership that both HR and business leaders could trust.

With a skills-based, assessment-led approach, General Mills, a multinational food manufacturer, created function-specific “talent profiles” that clearly defined the leadership behaviors and expectations required within different business areas.

The Royal Navy rolled out assessments to 350+ leaders to understand not only what senior officers had achieved, but how they think, how they behave, and what drives them.

A global financial services company assessed more than 10,000 leaders through a 360 program, comparing leaders’ self-perception with how they were experienced by others.

Across these cases, one common thread emerged, assessment insights surfaced patterns that could drive meaningful change. For example, identifying motivational and behavioral dynamics-critical within a high-stakes, hierarchical system such as the military, or highlighting blind spots between leaders and their teams, giving HR a far richer and more objective view than subjective performance ratings alone.

Measuring real leader impact

Another clear theme is the shift from “insightful reports” to demonstrable business impact.​ At Sonic Automotive, one of the largest car retailers in the U.S., assessment insights were first used to strengthen hiring decisions, contributing to measurable improvements in car sales and customer satisfaction. That same data is now being leveraged to identify leadership potential and target development investment more precisely.

In its 360 programs, the global bank gained clarity on what employees truly value in their leaders, identifying the leadership traits that directly influence engagement and performance. This two-way feedback increased transparency, closed perception gaps, and strengthened employee experience.

For HR, this level of evidence strengthens the investment case and demonstrates that the function plays a central role in enabling skills transformation, not simply supporting it.

Driving leadership development

Hiring the right leaders is only one part of the equation; the real value of assessment data is unlocked when insights are reused to accelerate development.​

Interestingly, at General Mills, participation was employee-driven, empowering individuals to take ownership of their development by understanding their strengths and gaps against the skills that matter most. This enabled skills-based mobility, allowing employees to explore cross-functional opportunities based on how their capabilities aligned with different talent profiles. Aggregated assessment data also informs L&D priorities and workforce planning decisions at scale.

Assessment data enabled Sonic to position development as an investment in potential rather than remediation. Leadership academies were implemented at multiple levels, with participants selected based on demonstrated capability and cultural alignment identified through assessment. For the global bank, real-time dashboards surfaced team strengths and gaps, enabling highly targeted leadership development aligned to tangible growth outcomes.

Across all three, the consistent message to leaders is clear: assessments are there to support growth, not simply to evaluate. That positioning increases buy-in and ensures leadership development feels relevant, practical, and designed to drive meaningful performance improvement.

“By using SHL’s assessments, we have more informed succession and development plans with a pool of talent that can move into other roles.”

Captain Mike Young, Leadership and Assessment
Development Advisor, The Royal Navy

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Building more inclusive future‑ready pipelines

Finally, these organizations are leveraging assessments to build leadership pipelines that are better equipped for future demands. WES, an executive search organization specializing in diversity and inclusion, uses assessments to prioritize skills and potential over career history alone, helping non-traditional profiles surface in succession and mobility conversations.

The Royal Navy reduces the risk associated with critical promotions by grounding decisions in objective data on motivation and behavior, strengthening succession and development planning at senior levels. Sonic Automotive built future-ready leadership by moving beyond the traditional career ladder, opening cross-functional pathways and implementing structured development programs that create leaders from within. Today, 85–90% of their general managers are promoted internally.

By focusing on durable skills, behaviors, and learning agility, these organizations are preparing leaders to thrive in a landscape defined by constant change and AI-driven transformation.

If you want to move from intuition to impact in your own leadership strategy and use assessment insights to drive development, explore our Enterprise Leader Development solution.