Leadership assessment interviews: getting honest feedback from your team

Executive overview

Most feedback conversations default to polite diplomacy and miss the truth. Leadership assessment interviews, drawn from the work of Fernando Flores, create a structured invitation for genuine feedback across peers, superiors, and subordinates.

Ask for honesty explicitly, start with strengths, then probe weaknesses without deflecting.

How to run a leadership assessment interview

  • Frame the ask: state you're committed to growing and need honest, not diplomatic, feedback
  • Request perceptions beyond the individual — ask what others think of you, not just their own view
  • Start with strengths: probe what you're great at and fully receive it without deflecting or false modesty
  • Accept strengths as real perception, not objective truth, but take them in seriously
  • Flip to weaknesses: ask what you're terrible at, what needs work, what you can't be counted on for
  • Actively create psychological safety so the other person feels safe being direct

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