Every leader should be the reflection of their values or the organization they are leading. For example, if the organization’s core values are collaboration and efficiency, no team lead should make unilateral decisions without consulting teammates and other departments.

However, we all, including leaders, are humans; we don’t always meet the set expectations. Leadership style surveys point out how effective leadership methods are and what you need to adjust.

Here’s your guide to creating your leadership style survey.

What Is a Leadership Style Survey?

A leadership style survey is an assessment of a specific individual’s leadership preferences, behaviors, and success. It looks at the approach the leaders take to communicate and solve problems.

The goal of this survey is to highlight the strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement of a leader. Based on the survey data, you should be able to answer these questions:

• How does this person lead people to achieve shared goals?
• Is this the kind of leader you envisioned for the organization?
• What are the consequences if this person continues to lead this way?

Benefits of Leadership Assessments

Leadership quizzes benefit both the organization and the leaders themselves. Here are the most common advantages:

For Organizations

• Better Organizational Performance: leadership methods can significantly impact the team’s attitude to decision-making, problem-solving, etc. If leaders are driven people with great goal-setting skills, emotional intelligence, creativity, and resilience, they would most likely be a high-performing team with a great work culture.
• Employee Engagement: Different leadership styles have different effects on employee morale, engagement, and satisfaction. Creating a leadership style quiz allows you to know how well leaders’ methods align with employees and its effect on their attitudes.
• Leadership Development: Evaluating leadership styles helps you find gaps in your organization’s leaders’ approach and what you should do to improve their effectiveness For example, you can create a leadership training program to foster team spirit and a positive and supportive work environment.

For Individuals

• Self-Awareness: people don’t always know till you tell them, this also applies to leadership styles. Leadership assessments help leaders recognize their leadership framework, and compare it to the set standard to understand the changes they need to make to become a better leader.
• Improvement Opportunity:  leadership surveys collect employees’ perspectives of the leader’s leadership approach, highlighting areas for improvement. It also helps leaders see their blind spots and leverage the survey insights to do a better job of managing people.
• Career Advancement: Understanding leadership style surveys empowers leaders to progress in their careers. It provides them with feedback on how to manage their team to deliver highly effective results. It also helps them see their leadership potential and key areas to improve.

How Surveys Can Impact Leadership Skills

Leadership assessment tools such as the leadership style survey do not just measure leadership success, they are tools to help foster personal development in leaders. Here’s how it works:

• Highlights Improvement Areas:  Leaders get valuable feedback from their employees about their positive and negative qualities.  to modify their leadership style. This pinpoints the specific areas individuals should focus on to become better leaders.
• Facilitating Dialogue: Surveys create safe and open conversations about leaders, allowing their team to openly communicate their appreciation or dissatisfaction with the leadership and suggestions for improvement.
• Supporting Leadership Development Initiatives: The insights gained from leadership style surveys can inform the design and implementation of coaching sessions, courses, and initiatives for stronger leadership skills.

Components of a Leadership Style Survey

Let’s break down the key sections to include in your leadership style survey:

• Demographics:  role, department, and tenure to determine how specific leadership approach affects different teams
• Leadership Style Categories: questions that measure overall different leadership styles, such as transformational, transactional, or laissez-faire. This gives an overview of how other talents view specific leader’s behavioral patterns, interpersonal skills, workplace ethics, and managerial style.
• Self and Peer Assessment: using personal and peer assessments helps you see a more balanced view of individual leadership styles. You can compare the results to see the gap between how leaders themselves view their approach vs how people see them. This creates self-awareness for the leaders and creates a balance between what people expect of them vs what they think people need from them.
• Open-ended question: Allow respondents to write additional comments or suggestions for areas that weren’t assessed in the survey.

How to Write Your Questions

• Stick with simple: Write clear, concise, and unbiased questions that are easy to understand. Avoid using jargon or technical terms.
• Avoiding leading or biased questions: Ensure that questions do not suggest a particular answer or bias respondents toward a certain response. For example, “Don’t you agree that a truly effective leader must be decisive and assertive, even if it means occasionally stepping on toes?”  This question already assumes a specific leadership style is superior, which would create a bias.
• Ensuring clarity and relevance: Make sure that questions are relevant to the survey’s objectives and that they provide valuable insights into leadership styles.

Test Before Launching Your Leadership Style Quiz

Testing your survey before launching helps you identify any issues with the survey design, such as unclear questions or confusing instructions. You can do this with pilot testing- distributing the survey to a small group of respondents and collecting their feedback on the clarity, relevance, and overall effectiveness of the survey.

Analyze the Survey Results

Carefully analyze the survey results to draw meaningful conclusions about individual leadership skills, strengths and weaknesses, and the required improvement. Use the insights gained to inform leadership training initiatives, refine company culture, and enhance overall performance.

Best Practices for Effective Leadership Surveys

Here are some tips to ensure your survey is an effective measurement tool:

A. Ensuring Confidentiality and Anonymity

Most people would be hesitant if their responses would not be kept anonymous. Giving an honest review of managers’ skills and processes may not be very well received especially when it’s not positive. Inform respondents that their responses will be kept confidential and anonymous.

Also, use encrypted forms like the Formplus Leadership style survey template to protect respondent data.

B. Encourage Honest Review

Create a safe and comfortable environment for respondents to review their managers and team leads. Also, let them know their opinions are valued and will be used to improve the organization.

Also, avoid framing questions in a biased or judgmental manner. If respondents can sense you want them to respond a certain way, they may respond that way to avoid conflict and not necessarily because they feel that way.

You can also offer incentives such as gift cards or raffle entries, to encourage participation.

C. Provide Clear Instructions and Support

Use simple language to ensure the survey is easy to understand for all respondents. Also, provide clear instructions for each question to guide respondents through the survey and explain any complex terms or concepts.

Free Leadership Style Survey Template

The Formplus leadership style survey template allows you to collect all the information you need to determine people’s leadership styles. You can also customize this template to fit your survey by adding new sections or editing the existing questions to collect more information about different leadership styles.

How to Create a Leadership Style Survey

Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating your leadership style survey with Formplus:

• Go to the leadership style survey template and click use template.
• Next, sign up or log in to your account and the form will open.
• Add or edit the form questions to include the leadership style information you need and click save.
• Customize the form to fit your company’s brand by adding your logo, color palette, and font.
• Share the form with respondents by embedding it to a webpage. You could also create a QR code for people to scan and fill out. You could also share the form link directly via email.

Conclusion

Leadership style surveys provide insights for both organizations and individuals about a leader’s effectiveness. They also contribute to improved organizational performance, employee engagement, and leadership development. Here’s a template to get you started.

You can also check out other workplace assessment survey templates such as the self-assessment, staff appraisal templates, and more in the template bank.