The Leadership Self-Assessment That Doesn't Ask What You're Good At

Most leadership self-assessments ask you some version of the same question: how good are you at this?

It sounds reasonable. It isn’t. Ask a new lead how good they are at delegation and you’ll get one of two answers: a modest 6 out of politeness, or a confident 8 because nobody has told them otherwise. Neither number tells you what to do next.

So I built one that asks something else.

Want to skip straight to it? Make a copy of the template (Google Sheets). It’s free and private. The rest of this post explains why it’s built the way it is.

”I am happy with…”

Every statement in the template starts the same way: I am happy with…

…the constructive feedback I give to others
…my approach to 1:1s
…how safe my team feels to speak up, disagree and admit mistakes
…the confidence my team and I have using flow metrics to improve delivery

You’re not grading your competence. You’re rating your satisfaction. That small shift changes the conversation you have with yourself. “Am I good at hiring?” invites defensiveness. “Am I happy with how I hire?” invites honesty. You can be decent at something and still not be happy with it, and that tension is exactly where growth starts.

Private by default

The second design choice: you don’t have to share it with anyone. Not your manager, not your team, not me.

Self-assessments that end up in a performance review stop being self-assessments. They become negotiations. People round up, hide the uncomfortable scores, and learn nothing.

My suggestion is simple: fill it in alone. Then, if you want support on something, you decide to bring it to your manager. The tool starts the conversation; it doesn’t replace it.

Two questions, one gap

Satisfaction alone isn’t enough. A 4 on “Presentation” might be a burning problem or completely irrelevant, depending on your role right now.

So version 1.2 asks two questions for each of the 29 skills:

Satisfaction: how happy are you with it today? (1 to 10)
Relevance: how much does it matter for you and your team right now? (1 to 10)

The spreadsheet then calculates the Gap: Relevance minus Satisfaction. A high gap means “this matters now, and I’m not happy with it.” That’s where your energy should go.

A note on the word choice. The first draft of this column was called Importance. I changed it because importance sounds timeless, and almost everything in leadership feels important. You’d end up with 8s everywhere. Relevance is anchored in the present: you can honestly give Hiring a 3 if you aren’t hiring this quarter, without feeling like you’re dismissing it forever.

Five priorities, not twenty-nine

Nobody improves 29 things at once. The Output Graphs tab shows your Top 5 skills, sorted by gap, so the result of the exercise is a short list instead of a wall of numbers.

Next to each skill there’s a Next Step column. Write one small thing you’ll try. Not a plan, not an OKR. One thing.

Then fill it in again in a few months and compare.

What it covers

The skills are grouped into four areas:

People: feedback, 1:1s, coaching, delegation, hiring, onboarding, conflict
Team Health: health checks, psychological safety, retrospectives, celebrating successes
Delivery: mission, strategy, flow metrics, ways of working, tech debt, saying no
Self: learning, communication, assertiveness, managing up, your own energy

That last one is not a filler. A lead running on empty makes every other score worse.

Try it

Make a copy of the Leads Self Assessment (Google Sheets): it’s free, and your copy is yours.

If you use it, I’d love to hear how it went: what surprised you, what’s missing, what you’d change. You can reach me on LinkedIn. Or, as the template itself suggests, offer me a white chocolate croissant. Both work. One works better.