Leadership assessment in higher education has often emphasized individual, leader-centric measures rather than collective, process-based leadership learning. As leadership educators increasingly adopt process-based approaches, many existing assessment strategies remain difficult to implement at scale.
This teaching tool essay describes a dynamic leadership assessment platform embedded in the Leadership Studies Minor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and explains how it supports process-based adaptive leadership learning.
Leadership educators may choose to use this tool because it allows for near-real-time feedback, repeated assessment, and curricular integration to support the process-based development of adaptive leadership behavior, self-efficacy, and self-awareness.
This essay offers a concrete, scalable teaching tool for assessing process-based approaches to adaptive leadership learning in higher education. The tool can be implemented at no cost by programs using publicly available scales or by contacting UTK Leadership Studies.
Introduction
How can leadership educators make assessment a more meaningful part of undergraduate leadership learning at scale? One promising approach is to embed assessment directly into the learning experience. This teaching tool essay describes a dynamic leadership assessment platform that provides students with near-real-time feedback and can be integrated across leadership learning contexts. These tools are especially useful in programs that aim to build the group-level social capital needed to address complex adaptive challenges in civic and organizational contexts (By, 2021; Day, 2025; Orsini & Sunderman, 2024; Sunderman & Orsini, 2024).
Dynamic leadership assessment refers to repeated, curriculum embedded assessment that provides near-real-time feedback to students and instructors. By bringing assessment closer to the moments in which leadership is learned and practiced, the approach supports reflection on changes in leadership behavior, self-efficacy, and self-awareness within leadership process and practice contexts over time. Students receive timely feedback that can inform action, while instructors use aggregate data to adjust teaching and coaching strategies. In undergraduate contexts, process-based and adaptive approaches to collective leadership often appear in programs emphasizing group-level leadership learning (Martin, Weng, & Kliewer, 2022; Soria & Kliewer, 2024), fostering civility (Noble & New, 2024); collective capacity for leadership in the civic arena (Kniffin, 2025) civic and community engagement (Soria, Nobbe, & Fink, 2013, 2015), and community-engaged scholarship (Kliewer & Priest, 2016).
Process-based approaches understand leadership as something that emerges through interaction and shared work rather than as something possessed by an individual (Carroll, Levy, & Richmond, 2008; Crevani & Endrissat, 2016; Gjerald, Kars-Unluoglu, Zabicka-Wlodarczyk, & Lupina-Wegener, 2025; Raelin et al., 2025; Shams & Linsky, 2026). From this perspective, leadership learning is inherently relational and unfolds over time as groups work through complex challenges (Alvehus & Crevani, 2022).
This essay describes the design of a dynamic leadership assessment tool and explains how it is deployed within the Leadership Studies Minor (LSM) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). It first outlines the conceptual foundations for dynamic, process-based leadership assessment, then outlines the assessment tool and its implementation across the LSM curriculum, and concludes with implications and recommendations for leadership educators.
Conceptual foundations for dynamic leadership assessment
Leader and leadership development is a widely recognized aim in higher education, yet assessment remains uneven across theoretical traditions (Day, 2025; Martin et al., 2022; Sunderman & Orsini, 2024). Most assessment approaches focus on individual traits, behaviors, and perceptions, relying on self-report survey data (Brown, 2022; Day, 2025). While these approaches illuminate important perceptions of leadership, they may obscure leadership as an emergent, relational process (Soria & Kliewer, 2024).
This limitation is especially relevant for programs that seek to build collective capacity and social capital rather than individual human capital alone (Day, 2025). The teaching tool described here builds on established assessment traditions while extending them toward process-based and group-level leadership learning (Martin et al., 2022). The intent is not to replace individual leader-centric assessment, but to complement it with tools better suited to process-based and group-level leadership practice (Martin et al., 2022; Soria & Kliewer, 2024).
Adaptive leadership offers a useful bridge between process-based leadership theory and assessment practice (Drath et al., 2008; Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009; Raelin et al., 2025; Rahman, Beamish, & Althaus, 2026). Although adaptive leadership is often seen as difficult to measure due to its relational, processual, and context-dependent nature, recent work suggests that theory-aligned instruments can assess adaptive leadership behavior, self-efficacy, and self-awareness when grounded in practice contexts (Hogarth, Lejarraga, & Soyer, 2015; Larsson & Alvehus, 2023; Shams, Dailey, & Steffensmeier, 2024a; Shams, Steffensmeier, & Wefald, 2024b). These developments support the feasibility of assessing process-based leadership learning in applied settings at scale.
The teaching tool: dynamic leadership assessment in practice
This section describes the dynamic leadership assessment tool and explains how the tool is deployed in the context of the Leadership Studies Minor (LSM) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK).
Description of dynamic leadership assessment tool
The dynamic leadership assessment tool is built from three adaptive leadership measures: Adaptive Leadership Behavior (ALB), Adaptive Leadership Self-Efficacy (ALSE), and Adaptive Leadership Self-Awareness (ALSA), which assess adaptive leadership behavior, self-efficacy, and self-awareness, respectively (Shams et al., 2024a, b). The student outcomes from completing this assessment are a measure of adaptive leadership behavior, self-efficacy, and self-awareness in relation to the mean average of the larger dataset. Students and instructors are able to design custom and personalized leadership learning and development. See appendix for scales. The assessment process is administered through Qualtrics, and Tableau is used to generate automated visual reports for students and instructors. After completing the assessment, students receive individualized reports summarizing their ALB, ALSE, and ALSA scores. At the end of each assessment phase, instructors receive aggregate reports showing class-level patterns across the three measures. The assessment process unfolds in five phases and is presented in Table 1.
Dynamic leadership assessment cycle: five-phase implementation process
| Phase | Description |
|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Assessment administration. Students complete a self-report assessment composed of ALB, ALSE, and ALSA items at designated points in the curriculum |
| Phase 2 | Automated feedback. Students receive individualized score reports by email shortly after completing the assessment. Instructors receive class-level aggregate reports at the close of each assessment phase |
| Phase 3 | Guided reflection and coaching. Students use their reports in individual reflection, small-group discussion, leadership coaching activities, and group process learning consistent with case-in-point/intentional emergence teaching methods (Kliewer, 2025; Kliewer & Priest, 2019; Werner & Weng, 2024). Instructors use the results to adjust individual and group-level learning plans. Mixed-methods data collection helps improve student outcomes by matching quantitative self-report data with qualitative observed adaptive leadership behaviors |
| Phase 4 | Instructional adjustment and qualitative observation. Students and faculty are encouraged to make data-informed adjustments to instruction and personal leadership learning and development objectives. Qualitative and quantitative data serve as evidence to make informed teaching and learning adjustments that meet student needs |
| Phase 5 | Reassessment. The cycle is repeated across the curriculum so that students and instructors can track development over time and connect feedback to subsequent learning experiences. Repeated assessment, in a moment of time through the curriculum, is a scalable way to track the process in which students develop adaptive leadership behaviors, self-awareness, and self-efficacy |
These five phases position assessment as part of the learning process rather than as a separate pre- and end-point evaluation. Students receive timely feedback that can be used for reflection and action, while instructors receive cohort-level evidence that can inform facilitation, coaching, and curricular adjustment. The repeated nature of this process also allows leadership development to be examined over time as a developmental process rather than inferred from a single moment of pre-/post-measurement.
Deployment across the leadership studies minor at UTK
The LSM at UTK is a 12-credit-hour curriculum designed to strengthen the collective capacity and social capital needed to make progress on complex adaptive challenges in civic and organizational contexts. Across the LSM, students address leadership problems that require collaboration, reflection, and adaptive action rather than predetermined technical solutions. Learning is structured around cycles of action and reflection, enabling students to examine how leadership emerges through interaction and process.
The LSM includes three credit-bearing courses, an elective, and concluding with a 0-credit proficiency course: LEAD 201, LEAD 349/350, LEAD 352 and LEAD 499. LEAD 201 introduces major leader and leadership theories and asks students to begin developing a personalized leadership learning plan. LEAD 349/350 focuses on adaptive leadership through a practicum experience, typically in civic and organizational settings. LEAD 352 develops leadership communication capacity by asking students to facilitate a small-group change process while receiving qualitative feedback on their adaptive leadership behaviors, self-awareness, and self-efficacy in practice (Fairhurst & Connaughton, 2014). Students typically complete the elective requirement through their major. The program concludes with LEAD 499, a 0-credit course that provides career coaching and integrates assessment results across the minor. LEAD 499 serves as a culminating reflection point in which students revisit earlier assessment results, consider patterns across the curriculum, and connect those patterns to professional development and post-graduation leadership goals.
The assessment process is deployed at multiple points across the curriculum. Assessment phases occur in LEAD 201, 352, & 499, students receive automated reports containing their individual results. Instructors receive aggregate reports at the end of each assessment phase. These reports allow instructors to adjust strategies, reflection activities, and, where relevant, community-engaged learning supports in response to observed patterns. The value of the tool lies in how quickly it closes the feedback loop. Near-real-time reporting allows instructors and students to use assessment results while learning is still unfolding, rather than after the course experience has ended.
LEAD 352 plays a distinctive role in the assessment plan because it is the point at which both quantitative and qualitative data are collected. In LEAD 352, the quantitative assessment is paired with participatory ethnographic observation designed to examine individual and group-level responses to adaptive leadership work as it unfolds in process and practice (Kliewer, 2024, 2025). Using direct observation and, in some cases, audio-visual recordings, instructors analyze how students facilitate a small-group change process and provide feedback on specific moments in which leadership communication practices appear to support adaptive leadership work. Together, these quantitative and qualitative components support formative feedback that helps students and faculty examine leadership as it unfolds in process and practice contexts.
Implications, outcomes, and recommendations for practice
The practices described in this essay extend traditional leadership assessment approaches by offering a way to assess process-based leadership learning closer to the moments when data can drive new adaptive leadership behaviors, self-efficacy, and self-awareness. The dynamic leadership assessment strategies described in this essay are appropriate for academic courses, co-curricular programs, and community leadership programs focused on increasing adaptive leadership capacity in groups of people. Leadership educators choose to use this tool if they desire to engage the “messy” complexity of leadership practice and adopt approaches better suited to group-level learning and social capital development (Soria & Kliewer, 2024). Future work should address limitations associated with self-report data, examine how instructional strategies shape assessment patterns, and explore how adaptive leadership measures function across varied institutional contexts. Along these lines leadership educators have opportunities to design mixed-methods approaches to leadership learning and development. In this case future work should be done to more closely connect quantitative self-report dynamic leadership assessment to forms of participatory rapid ethnographic assessment. Mixed-methods approaches to dynamic leadership assessment will allow students and faculty to consider if self-reported behaviors and perceptions match observable data collection in leadership learning and practice contexts.
When assessment is brought closer to leadership process and practice, it can strengthen connections among reflection, instruction, and community-engaged learning while providing a more usable basis for evaluating process-based leadership development. The dynamic assessment tool makes adaptive leadership development more visible, offering a scalable pathway beyond leader-centric assessment.
The supplementary material for this article can be found online.
