The Leadership Challenge vs. the LSP-R®: Better Tools for Building a Leadership Pipeline
Organizations evaluating leadership development options have many assessment tools and frameworks to consider. Two well-established options are:
- The Leadership Practices Inventory® (LPI®) — a behavioral leadership assessment centered on The Leadership Challenge’s Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership®.
- The Leadership Skills Profile – Revised® (LSP-R®) — a personality-based assessment measuring potential on 50 key leadership skills and abilities outlined in SIGMA’s Leadership Competency Framework.
Both solutions are grounded in decades of research and include a suite of supporting tools and services. This comparison reviews the frameworks, assessment methodology, scope and use cases, as well as strengths and limitations of each, helping HR professionals and people leaders determine the right fit for their organization.
Two Assessments, Two Frameworks
The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership®
The Leadership Challenge is best known for its behavioral leadership framework and corresponding assessment tool, the LPI. Based on more than 40 years of research by leadership professors James Kouzes and Barry Posner, the LPI measures Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership:
- Model the Way
- Inspire a Shared Vision
- Challenge the Process
- Enable Others to Act
- Encourage the Heart
SIGMA’s Leadership Competency Framework
SIGMA’s Leadership Competency Framework covers 50 key leadership skills and abilities, measured by the LSP-R. Drawing on more than 50 years of research pioneered by Dr. Douglas N. Jackson, the LSP-R measures competencies organized into four major categories:
Cognitive leadership skills emphasize decision-making and problem solving. Behaviors include analytical skills and technical proficiency, and the ability to demonstrate creativity and objectivity in working through problems, decisions, and risks.
Interpersonal leadership skills include working effectively and cooperatively with people and maintaining positive interpersonal relationships. Behaviors in this category include communication and negotiation skills, sensitivity to others, openness to suggestions, and the ability to manage others’ impressions.
Personal leadership qualities reflect the traits and personal characteristics that facilitate success in a leadership role. These qualities include demonstrating ambition, dependability, self-confidence, and the ability to adapt to new situations and remain composed under stress.
Senior leadership skills are crucial for day-to-day operations and steering the organization in a positive direction. These behaviors involve setting clear objectives, planning and initiating structure, communicating performance expectations and priorities, and monitoring employee and team progress toward long-term goals. Besides managing performance, behaviors in this category include the ability to attract, select, and retain top talent.
Figure 1. SIGMA’s Leadership Competency Framework
Comparing Assessments: LPI vs. LSP-R
Both the LPI and LSP-R can be administered online in 20 to 25 minutes. Each assessment is available in self-report and 360-degree formats. The LPI also offers versions for students and a self-guided development option (LPI Self Empowered™). The LSP-R is a single assessment with two role-specific reports. It provides detailed scoring and guided development through the LSP-R Focus Report, and it supports hiring and promotion decisions through the LSP-R Selection Report. Because the LSP-R measures personality-based potential rather than current behavior, the same assessment works in both professional and educational contexts — no separate student version is required. In short, the LSP-R family covers more ground with fewer assessments, meaning organizations have access to more data with fewer tests to purchase and maintain. All available versions for both assessments are summarized in the table below.
Figure 2. LPI® and LSP-R® assessment versions.
Comparing the LPI Self-Report with the LSP-R Focus Report
Both the LPI and LSP-R generate reports automatically upon completion. Key features of each report include:
Figure 3. Features of the LPI® Self Report and the LSP-R® Focus Report.
The LPI Self Report includes personalized interpretation, templates, and activities to guide reflection and goal setting. However, this version omits detailed scores for each of the 30 leadership behaviors and percentile rankings by category. The LSP-R Focus Report, an output of the LSP-R assessment, includes both the customized feedback provided by the LPI Self Report and the detailed results provided by the LPI Self assessment.
Another advantage of the LSP-R is its emphasis on development prioritization. It pinpoints the most impactful competencies and supplies templates to build a personalized plan, track progress, and adjust as needed. The LPI Self Empowered includes many small reflection and goal-setting activities, but it does not provide a single, cohesive leadership development plan for test-takers.
A Tale of Two Approaches
At their core, the LPI and the LSP-R take different approaches to helping individuals grow as leaders:
- The Leadership Challenge emphasizes observable behaviors. The LPI asks leaders — and their colleagues in the case of 360-degree assessments — to rate how often key practices are demonstrated.
- The LSP-R is grounded in personality psychology. It identifies traits and tendencies linked to leadership potential. Instead of evaluating behaviors in the moment, it offers predictive insight about future performance and role fit, which helps leaders spot hidden talent and create development plans based on what is possible, rather than what is already present.
About Benchmarking
A differentiating feature of the LSP-R is benchmarking — tailoring the report to a subset of competencies most relevant to a role, team, or organization. Benchmarking allows teams to create their own success profile for what leadership looks like in their specific context.
Benefits of benchmarking the LSP-R include:
- Defining what leadership looks like for specific organizations, departments, or teams
- Reducing the length of the LSP-R reports to improve usability
- Focusing leadership development efforts on the competencies that matter most
- Optimizing impact and improving return on investment (ROI) for leadership development programs
To learn more about benchmarking, read Benchmarking and the LSP-R®
Workshops and Certifications: LPI vs. LSP-R
Both the LPI and the LSP-R are supported by workshops designed to help organizations facilitate meaningful leadership development experiences, and support test-takers in making the most out of their results.
- LPI workshops include short debriefs designed to help individuals interpret and apply their assessment results, as well as full-day sessions (The Leadership Challenge® and The Challenge Continues™), which help teams improve leadership effectiveness, increase engagement and performance, and retain talent. The Leadership Challenge also provides LPI Coaching Training and Practitioner, Facilitator, and Master certifications.
- LSP-R offerings include assessment debriefs to support the interpretation and application of results. Coaching Training is available to build internal coaching capacity and equip leaders with the tools and skills needed to coach direct reports, as well as customized one-on-one leadership coaching. In addition, Leadership Development Workshops can be delivered for each competency measured by the LSP-R. These 60-minute virtual sessions provide evidence-based strategies, practical tools, and a tight focus on real organizational outcomes. Workshops can be packaged as a lunch-and-learn series or assembled into a tailored development program.
Comparing Scope and Use Cases: LPI vs. LSP-R
The LPI and LSP-R can both be used to measure leadership and provide meaningful leadership development experiences. Both assessments can be used in educational and professional contexts, by individuals as well as teams. The key difference between the LPI and LSP-R is that the LPI measures behavior while the LSP-R measures leadership potential. This means that the LSP-R can be used not just to measure and develop performance, but also to identify top talent, invest in high-potential employees, and make data-driven selection decisions during hiring and promotion processes. To measure performance, the LSP-R can be supplemented by SIGMARadius, a 360-degree assessment that asks managers, peers, and direct reports to provide a holistic perspective on how an individual performs on each of the 50 leadership competencies. See the table below for a comparison of assessment scope and use cases.
Figure 4. Comparison of assessment scope and use cases, LPI vs. LSP-R.
Using Assessments for Leadership Development
To learn more about how assessments can be leveraged for leadership development, watch SIGMA’s webinar, Talent Assessments for Leadership Development: Data-Driven Strategies to Grow Exceptional Leaders. The session covers why psychometric tools work for leadership development and how to use them to build self-awareness, leverage strengths, create personalized plans, and support organization-wide growth.
How to Launch a Leadership Program with the LSP-R
Download SIGMA’s Practical Guide to Using the LSP-R® for Leadership Development
Discover how to design and implement a personalized leadership development program using the LSP-R. This practical guide outlines a step-by-step process for applying assessment results to build targeted development plans, support coaching conversations, deliver group training, and measure progress over time.
Includes:
- Leadership Competency Checklist
- LSP-R Communication Template (for Leaders)
- LSP-R Administration Guide
- LSP-R Group Debrief Kit
- Development Actions Form
- Coaching Conversation Guide
- Guided Activity: Group Leadership Training
- Leadership Progress Scorecard
- Sample Metrics for Measuring Leadership Development Progress
LSP-R® Free Trial
Is your organization new to using the LSP-R? Try the assessment for free and receive a complete Focus Report with your results, customized feedback, and templates for building a personalized development plan. Take 25 minutes and experience the impact of data-driven, personality-based leadership assessment.
➤ Start the Free Trial
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