Ace Your Korn Ferry Leadership Assessment With Accurate Practice [KFALP, KF4D, ViaEdge]
If you are headed toward a leadership role or an executive position, you may be asked to complete one of Korn Ferry's assessments of leadership style and leadership traits.
The Korn Ferry Leadership Assessments Are:
- Korn Ferry Assessment of Leadership Potential (KFALP)
- Korn Ferry Four-Dimensional (KF4D)
- and Korn Ferry via Edge.
The Korn Ferry Leadership Assessments are known as a big challenge for both executive directors and juniors, as they are tricky, complex, and long.
What Is the Korn Ferry Leadership Assessment?
Korn Ferry's leadership assessments are three distinct but similar talent management tools, aimed at ascertaining the leadership potential of candidates for middle or senior management positions.
The assessments measure such leadership traits as strategic thinking, risk-taking, and natural leadership.
Which KF Leadership Test will you be taking?
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Korn Ferry Assessment of Leadership Potential - KFALP
The Korn Ferry Assessment of Leadership Potential (KFALP) is the most famous Korn Ferry assessment. KFALP is an unsupervised internet test you can take from any place you like. The test is not time-limited, although according to official information, it takes around 45 minutes for most of the candidates.
The Korn Ferry Leadership Assessment aims to assess whether you've got the personality traits that fit leadership positions. The KFALP is designed to identify candidates with the highest potential for becoming successful leaders.
This test highlights cognitive and learning agility as the most significant predictors of high performance in a leadership role. Other factors highly rated as necessary in successful leaders include personality motivators, self-awareness, leadership traits and skills, problem-solving skills, the propensity to avoid project derailment, and more. Here's an official Korn Ferry KFALP figure explaining their KFALP Leadership Model:
As there can be different types of leaders, the way you rank on each of these dimensions can be seen as an indication of your leadership style.
The Korn Ferry Leadership Assessment is often taken with an adapted version of the Talent Q Elements/Aspects tests. They can give your potential employers a full image of the managerial candidate's cognitive abilities, personality traits, and behavioral attitude.
If you know you are taking both KFALP and Talent-Q, you may be interested in this pack.
This part of the test aims to assess your cognitive and learning skills and includes questions like Raven's Progressive Matrices, and it often contains 23 questions within a 40-minute time limit.
The trickiest part about it is that it progressively becomes more difficult - if you choose the correct answer, the next question will be more difficult; if you choose the wrong answer, the next question will remain at the same difficulty.
If you wish to see examples of questions that simulate the Assessment of Leadership Potential, scroll down.
Korn Ferry Four-Dimensional (KF4D) Executive Assessment
Korn Ferry Four Dimensions of Leadership (KF4D) is a leadership assessment tool that measures an individual's ability to lead in four dimensions: Drivers and Traits, which aims to measure leadership potential in terms of your personality traits, what drives you to actions, etc; Competencies and Experiences, which measures your skills and expertise based on your experience.
Korn Ferry allows companies to customize their requirements for each position and use the test to assess these specific requirements. For instance, a Marketing Manager might need to demonstrate creativity and analytical skills, while a Customer Success Manager focuses on strong interpersonal skills and prioritizing. The KF4D allows companies to evaluate candidates based on the skills and traits they deem most important for each role.
According to Korn Ferry, The Four Dimensions of Leadership interact and influence one another within an individual. When assessed together, they create a comprehensive picture of an executive's talent, providing a deeper understanding of which individuals will likely succeed in senior leadership positions.
Here is a diagram of Korn Ferry's Four Dimensions of Leadership and Talent (Taken from Korn Ferry's website):
Below are sample questions for the Assessment of Leadership Potential and the KF4D,
Are you looking for more comprehensive practice?
Korn Ferry Leadership Assessment Sample Questions
It is well known that proper practice and familiarity with the test questions can significantly reduce stress and anxiety on test day and raise your chance for success. That's precisely why our experts at JobTestPrep have made a dedicated Korn Ferry free sample test for you.
Use these samples to gauge how employers may see your leadership potential and direct you toward future leadership roles.
The sample questions below include only part of the types you may face in the Korn Ferry Leadership Assessment. If you want to practice more types of questions, you can check out our Korn Ferry Leadership Assessment PrepPack.
Leadership, Personality, and Behavioral Questions
- Job Profile Questions:
In this section of the KFALP and KF4D tests, the provider aims to gather information about your current or most recent job, work experience, and career development.
The Job Profile section consists of three parts: selecting, sorting, and ranking cards that display personality characteristics.
Let's take a look at a sample question (All of the sample questions here are taken directly from our PrepPack):
Step 1 - Selection: Sort the cards above into one of the 3 categories based on your experience at your current or previous job roles.
In the Job Profile section, the first section is the most difficult to navigate since it is the first time you will be exposed to the tabs that describe the features you need to sort (In the real test, and in our PrepPack, there will be 30 and not 8). As such, it is recommended that you approach this section with concentration and focus and notice the following tips:
- Read each tab carefully and attempt to characterise the value it refers to.
- When comparing similar statements, differentiate between personal, social, and professional skills and their importance to your position.
- Using the Korn Ferry guide, try matching the answers with the top values.
- At this stage, there is no instruction to keep an equal number of tabs between the categories, but it is recommended that you keep an even number of tabs between them.
Therefore, it is important to note that you are sorting into all categories and not just one, since you will have to balance the tabs between the categories in the next step of the test.
Step 2 - Sorting & Balancing: Balance the columns so that each has an equal amount of cards.
An organisation's management qualities depend on its context, industry, and workplace. There are, however, a number of qualities that are generally regarded as essential for effective management from the cards below:
Influence: Having the ability to inspire and motivate your team toward the achievement of a common goal is one of the most critical skills a manager can possess.
Effective communication: The ability to communicate effectively between managers and their teams is essential for effectively conveying ideas, giving feedback, and providing guidance.
Assures accountability: Managers need to organise multiple tasks, deadlines, and priorities.
Step 3 - Ranking: Inside each category, reorder the cards by their rank, from the most to the least.
After you balance the tabs between the categories, you must rank them.
In this section, the ranking depends entirely on your past experiences, business experience, and who you are. Consequently, there are no unambiguous recommendations with regard to the rating of character traits within a category.
A major aim of this stage is to test your level of decisiveness, judgment, and observation of your character traits.
We recommend replacing 2-4 tabs within each category at this stage.
- Job Analysis Questions:
This section examines your work experience and the character traits, values, and behaviours you have encountered during your current and past roles. To answer each question, you will have to rate, on 1-9 scale, the extent to which your current job involves each one of the characteristics.
Statement 1:
On this scale, the recommended range is 7–9.
Scale Values:
Need for achievement: Motivation by work or activities that allow testing of skills and abilities against an external standard. High scorers appreciate working hard, judge achievement according to the goal, and strive to meet and exceed standards. Low scorers are not motivated externally and tend not to work energetically to exceed expectations.
Persistence: A tendency toward the passionate and steadfast pursuit of personally valued long-term or lifetime goals, despite obstacles, discouragement, or distraction. High scorers are seen to push through obstacles and not give up on complex tasks. Low scorers are more likely to pull back from barriers or lower expectations for their attainment.
The left option presents a person not used to accomplishing and meeting workplace goals and whose motivation and drive could be higher.
The correct option emphasises the value of persistence and the need for achievements central to their values.
Statement 2:
On this scale, the recommended range is 7–9.
Scale Values:
Composure: How people are prone to react in stressful situations. High scorers tend to be calm, poised, and take pressure well. Low scorers are often seen as anxious, unsettled, and reacting negatively to stressful situations.
Focus: Preference for organisation, procedure, and exactitude. High scorers demand structure and tend to be seen as systematic, detail-oriented, and in control. Low scorers dislike detail and design and may be perceived as spontaneous and disorganised.
The left option presents a person who is not used to working under time constraints and who usually performs tasks that do not have to meet a specific deadline.
The correct option emphasises working through stressful situations and paying attention to details central to their values.
Cognitive Questions
- Raven's Metrics Questions:
In these types of questions, you will be presented with a patterned background that has a portion of it cut out. Your task is to identify the missing cutout from a series of six possible options. It is important to note that there is only one missing piece that matches the given background.
Here are sample questions so you can see what it is all about:
Matrices Sample Question
Choose the image that completes the pattern (1= most left, 5= most right)
Feel Like You're Not Ready Yet?
Our prep pack includes tutorials and more than 50 practice tests covering the main different types of questions you’ll face in your exam.
In Addition, our prep pack includes different guides and tutorials which will provide you with all the knowledge you must know and help you study more effectively.
Korn Ferry viaEdge
The viaEDGE assessment is a personality test with a time limit of 30 minutes, that evaluates an individual's and organization's ability to learn and lead through the measurement of the factor of Learning Agility. This is achieved by examining five key aspects: self-awareness, results agility, change agility, people agility, and mental agility.
- Self-awareness pertains to one's understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses.
- Results agility refers to the ability to produce results in new and challenging situations.
- Change agility involves a willingness to experiment and adapt to change
- People agility entails the ability to communicate effectively with a diverse range of individuals.
- Mental agility refers to the ability to think creatively and unconventionally when solving problems.
Here is a diagram of Korn Ferry's Learning Agilities 5 Factors Model (Taken from Korn Ferry's website):
More Personality and Leadership Potential Tests on JobTestPrep:
Explore other assessments of personality, integrity, leadership, and culture fit:
16Personalities | Adept-15 | California Psychological Inventory | Caliper | CliftonStrengths | Cubiks PAPI | DDI Leadership Test | Hogan HDS | Hogan HPI | Kolbe | McQuaig Word Survey | MMPI | Myers-Briggs | OPQ32 | Police Psychological Exam | Predictive Index | Talogy | TTI Success Insight | WorkKeys Fit | WorkKeys Talent
FAQ
Korn Ferry is a management consulting firm and part of Hay Group. Since 2014, Talent Q tests have been administered by Korn Ferry. If so, since the term Talent Q tests mainly refer to the cognitive aptitude tests provided by Korn Ferry, while the term Korn Ferry tests refers to their behavioural and leadership tests.
Usually, it takes 3-4 weeks to see the test's results. You should return or log in to your Korn Ferry Assessment Dashboard (homepage). Any outstandingassessments are listed in Section 2 of the Dashboard. If nothing is listed here, you have completed all assessments assigned for this assessment campaign. All completed assessments are listed in Section 3 of the Dashboard.
The Korn Ferry Leadership assessments, personality tests and psychometric tests do not have a pass or fail mark. Instead, it is up to the individual employer to set the scoring criteria.
The advice that states that “there are no right or wrong answers on the personality test” is misleading and can cause test-takers to fail. An example of this can be found when answering the question: “Do you like working with people?" - If you are applying for a service position and you respond with a negative answer, you may not be considered for the job since this answer shows employers that you aren’t the right fit.
Being consistent is very important when taking a personality assessment test. On personality tests, you may be asked similar questions that are worded differently. If you answer these similar questions differently, it will be reflected in your results. For instance, it could appear to assessors as if you did not answer both questions completelyhonestly, which may result in you not getting the job. However, being consistent is not something you need to focus on, as it is not measured. It is a problem only if you significantly contradict yourself; for example, answering "agree" to "I'm never late" and "I have a tendency to be late to some meeting." At times during the test, you may encounter similar statements but not agree or disagree with all of them; in this case, it is fine to answer differently. For example, answering "agree" to both "I prefer working with people rather than working alone" and "Sometimes, I need some alone time."
Although you cannot study for a personality test, you can pass by preparing yourself beforehand, developing optimized answers. Get tips on how to take the personality test.
Similar Personality Tests
The following personality tests are often used to select leadership and senior positions:
Caliper Assessment | Free Caliper Test Sample
PI Behavioral Assessment | Free PI Behavioral Test Sample
Hogan Assessment | Free Hogan Test Sample
Aiming for a managerial position? Learn everything you need with our Leadership Assessment Test guide.