Leadership
Case Library
Transform leadership with personality: find the right assessment, make better decisions about people, and shape the working world of tomorrow.
L3. Executive Search Support – CEO & Top-Level Selection
Boards face the ultimate high-stakes decision: selecting CEOs and C-suite executives whose success or failure can make or break the organization. Traditional selection processes rely heavily on impressive résumés, charismatic interviews, and board members' gut instincts, leaving critical behavioral risks unexplored.
Do these warning signs sound familiar?
Behavioral level
Organizational level
What's the real challenge here?
Primary Goal: Transform executive selection from subjective decision-making into evidence-based evaluation that predicts long-term success and cultural fit.
Why it matters: At the C-suite level, technical competence is assumed – personality, values alignment, and behavior under pressure determine success or failure. In practice, senior executive failure often stems from personality-related, not skill-based, causes.
Key questions:
How will the candidate handle board relationships and stakeholder management?
Does their leadership style match the cultural transformation needed?
What hidden derailers might emerge under extreme pressure?
How will this candidate act during organizational crises?
What does a solution look like?
Deploy behavior-based online assessment tools at the executive level that reveal the hidden factors of C-suite success:
Phase 1: Deep personality profiling
Before fit can be decided, it must be clear how the candidate functions as a person under pressure. That's why the online assessment tools begin with the personality profile:
Phase 2: Strategic leadership capacity
Only once the personality risk has been assessed can you judge whether the strategic leadership capacity is sufficient for the role:
How to spot a good online assessment tool.
I didn't check these providers & tools
on my own.
My AI colleagues Rafa and Miguel helped. We reviewed every tool for this case on what matters — what they measure, how well they fit, and how much effort implementation takes.
This guide is the result — for exactly your situation.
What our clients say
They helped me a great deal, and I can recommend them — and PEATS — with a clear conscience.
Stephan Lessig
CEO Verbera GmbH
High information density paired with real expertise — for me, the fog has lifted over what had become a confusing market of tests and analytics.
Norbert Hübner
Owner, Coaching Contor
A very interesting, engaging and competent overview of different assessment methods. It helped me get to grips with the subject and identify suitable methods — which are now in use.
Christoph Schmidt
CEO Jost von Brandis Service-Agentur GmbH (Weischer.Mediengruppe)
The selection of tests gives you a very good overview of common personnel assessments, their foundations and possible applications.
Kerstin Bötel
Projectlead Gründungswerkstatt, hannoverimpuls GmbH
They helped me a great deal, and I can recommend them — and PEATS — with a clear conscience.
Stephan Lessig
CEO Verbera GmbH
High information density paired with real expertise — for me, the fog has lifted over what had become a confusing market of tests and analytics.
Norbert Hübner
Owner, Coaching Contor
A very interesting, engaging and competent overview of different assessment methods. It helped me get to grips with the subject and identify suitable methods — which are now in use.
Christoph Schmidt
CEO Jost von Brandis Service-Agentur GmbH (Weischer.Mediengruppe)
The selection of tests gives you a very good overview of common personnel assessments, their foundations and possible applications.
Kerstin Bötel
Projectlead Gründungswerkstatt, hannoverimpuls GmbH
PEATS Guide – for anyone who wants to make the right decisions.
PEATS GUIDE · PROVIDER COMPARISON
L3 – Executive Search Support – CEO & Top-Level Selection
Which tool reliably identifies leadership risks?
A well-founded comparison instead of gut feeling.
1
8 providers compared
PROVIDER COMPARISON
Target audience, markets, references, founding year, headquarters, employee count, core competencies
2
Strengths & weaknesses at a glance
SWOT ANALYSIS
Strengths, opportunities, and limitations for all providers
3
What each tool really measures
TOOL COMPARISON
What is measured, primary application, assessment duration, and languages per tool
4
Tool profiles in detail
TOOL PROFILES
With the key measurement dimensions