Reflective readiness tool
Leadership Transition Readiness Check
For leaders moving into greater responsibility or settling into a recently expanded role. Twelve original questions explore three research-grounded parts of the transition: adjusting to the role, changing how you define your contribution, and renegotiating the role with the people around you.
Use this if a promotion, expanded scope, or a consequential leadership decision has outpaced the habits that used to work.
Read the management skills guide for your next leadership role
This is a reflective readiness signal, not a validated psychometric test, diagnosis, hiring screen or pass/fail verdict. One difficult area does not mean you are “not ready.”
Your answers stay in this browser session during normal use. Nothing is sent to analytics. After seeing your result, you may separately choose to contribute a de-identified response to the optional research pilot.
Evidence, methodology and limits
Version 2.1 uses the three inquiry streams identified in Jiang, Agolli & Harold’s systematic review of 136 leader-transition studies: role adjustment, identity transformation and social construction. Each domain has four original prompts. Item wording was checked against additional research on role ambiguity, leadership identity, managing through others, delegation, team leadership and social feedback, and against recurring non-identifiable patterns from executive coaching practice. The result compares domains within your own response pattern rather than using normative cutoffs. No proprietary assessment items were copied. The interpretations are developmental heuristics, not validated psychometric scores or predictors of future performance.
Sources and related reading
- Jiang, Agolli & Harold (2025) — Leader Role Transition: a systematic review of 136 studies
- Tubre & Collins (2000) — meta-analysis of role ambiguity and job performance
- Daire & Gilson (2014) — leadership identity, managing through others and role transition
- Bolander, Holmberg & Fellbom (2019) — identity work of first-time managers
- Isopahkala-Bouret (2008) — transformative learning in specialist-to-manager transitions
- Kirschner & Terblanche (2026) — executive coaching, team leadership and social feedback
- International Coaching Federation — Code of Ethics (developmental boundary, not construct evidence)
- Related essay: Why pressure increases after a promotion
You can practice this situation in the related game. Play the game
LTRC-v2.1