A TOPHEADS leadership assessment
Nineteen questions, six dimensions, about seven minutes. Built on Hoffman & Tadelis (Journal of Political Economy, 2021), the six manager behaviours that cut team attrition, on leader–member exchange research, and on the Keller, Baek & Bidwell study of what happens to people when their manager moves. It keeps two things apart: what you give people and proof that the bond travels with you. Leaders tend to rate their relationships higher than their teams do, so the questions ask what you did, not what you believe. No flattery.
This assessment is for senior leaders who want an honest read on a question most of them never test: if you moved to another company tomorrow, would your people come with you? It is grounded in research on what managers actually do that keeps people, and on what happens to a team when its manager leaves.
Five dimensions describe what you give people. Four of them come almost directly from Hoffman and Tadelis (Journal of Political Economy, 2021), who studied more than a thousand managers at a large technology firm and six behaviours their teams rated: clear expectations, ongoing coaching, support for career development, consulting people before decisions, a positive attitude under pressure, and trust. The fifth, sponsorship, comes from research on what a manager carries away when they move: Keller, Baek and Bidwell (Organization Science) followed 77,325 employees of one company over eight years and found that when a manager moved, the people who had worked longest with that manager lost the most. Leader–member exchange research (Liden and Maslyn) adds loyalty, affect and professional respect.
A good manager and a leader people follow are not the same thing. Research on leader departures (Shapiro, Hom, Shen and Agarwal, Academy of Management Review) argues that people who identify with the leader reconsider their own position when the leader goes, while people who identify with the organization stay. So the sixth dimension asks for evidence: people who have actually followed you, former team members who still seek your advice, what keeps your team where it is, and how widely the closeness runs.
Leaders and their teams rarely see the leader’s relationships the same way. A meta-analysis of leader–observer agreement (Lee and Carpenter, The Leadership Quarterly) found the agreement only moderate, with leaders reporting more relationship-oriented behaviour than observers saw. That is why the questions ask about the last disagreement, the last career conversation and the last promotion meeting, rather than how you see yourself.
A small set of behaviours, done consistently. In the Hoffman and Tadelis study, moving a manager from the 10th to the 90th percentile on six people-management behaviours was associated with roughly 60% lower attrition in that manager’s team, and the effect was strongest for the people the company least wanted to lose. Following is the far end of the same scale: staying because of you, then leaving because of you.
More than most leaders expect. In the Keller, Baek and Bidwell study, people’s rewards fell after their manager moved, most of all for those with the longest history with that manager, and they became more likely to move to other parts of the company. Sponsorship is real, and it walks out of the door with the sponsor.
Yes, and that is its limit. Leaders tend to rate their relationship behaviours higher than their teams do, which is why most questions ask what you actually did, and why the top level requires evidence that people have followed you before. For the real answer, ask your team.
They Would Stay: the team’s reasons to stay outweigh its reasons to follow. They’d Take Your Call, Not Your Offer: respect, without the pull to follow. Some Would Follow: a real pull for some people, under the right conditions. Your Best People Would Follow: strong behaviours, with evidence the bond is with you. They’d Follow You Anywhere: strong on every dimension, with proof that it travels. That level is rare.
It is directional, not clinical. The dimensions draw on published research, but the quiz relies on your own answers and a short form. Treat the result as a mirror that names your strongest and weakest dimension, not as a verdict on your leadership.