How can you ensure that your Agile leadership assessments are objective?

"People must clearly understand the criteria, it is of utmost importance (transparency). Otherwise, they will not be fully committed to it."

Clear Criteria: Define specific and transparent criteria for Agile leadership assessments. Multiple Perspectives: Gather input from various team members and stakeholders for a well-rounded view. Data-Driven: Utilize quantifiable metrics and performance data to support assessments. Regular Calibration: Regularly calibrate assessment criteria to ensure consistency and fairness. Training Assessors: Train assessors to be objective and unbiased in their evaluations. By incorporating these practices, you can enhance the objectivity and reliability of Agile leadership assessments.

Such a topic/procedure cannot start with defining the assessment criteria. Before you jump into that, you have to know the purpose of this exercise: What are you trying to achieve with your Agile leadership assessment? And why do you think the assessment is the best way to achieve it? When you define your goals, they will lead all your process steps and decision-making moving forward (incl. the definition of the assessment criteria, i.e. you have to ensure you will measure what you need to be measured).

1) The assessment type largely depends on the Agile model you are following. 2) If SAFe model that is followed by the organization it would be Business agility which would be given prime focus . 3) If it is an individual leadership assessment then core competencies of SAFe how much adhered will be assessed. 4) Benchmark of each assessment should be that those who are experts in the field should assess the leader. 5) The most important point is that after assessment highlight improvement areas should be followed up periodically. If a leader experiences any difficulty or needs grooming then that should be provided. Followup sessions should be thorough and clear. 6) Also don't forget to celebrate milestones and achievements.

Yes - "your purpose"! That is why I said in my previous comment you should first start with defining your purpose; everything else stems from it.

If you are creating the assessment criteria and then training the assessors as well, all objectivity is lost. This is a well-known and thoroughly described conflict of interest per all the assessment/audit standards (ISO 19011, ISO 9001, A-SPICE, etc.). You are not allowed to assess/audit yourself. You have to ensure that there is independence of the assessment/audit body. Therefore, it is best to hire already trained assessors from outside the organization.

Wait, how are we supposed to "compare the results to the assessment criteria"? I thought we used the criteria to generate the results. The criteria are not another type of results that can be compared to ours. Unless I am missing something...

There are two types of feedback that need to be collected and considered: one is the results of the Agile leadership assessment we are performing (as described in this paragraph), and the other one is for the process of assessing (which is not mentioned in the paragraph). That second feedback is just as valuable and it is for us - how to improve the next time we need to do the same type of assessment.

Why does this process stops after sharing the feedback? Any assessment or other improvement step is part of a bigger process, called Continuous Improvement Process (CIP). As the name suggests, the first time we perform this process is not the last time, quite the opposite - it is just the beginning. The information we collected feeds into the next cycle of whatever process we assessed, which generates more feedback / assessment results, which then feed into the next cycle, and so on. That is the essence of PDCA/PDSA - it is a loop.