Topics & assessments ·
TUF: Making leadership culture visible – in conversation rather than on a form
Leadership culture cannot be captured with five scale points. TUF as an AI interview gives employees room to describe concrete situations – and delivers results that organisational developers can use straight away.
The problem with leadership feedback
Most leadership surveys fail not because of the method but because of the format. A five-point scale on a statement such as *Our meetings are well prepared* (sample statement – not taken from the assessment) produces a number. What it does not produce is the context. Was it the team meeting on Monday? The coordination meeting that was postponed twice? The documents that only arrived shortly beforehand?
Without context, leadership feedback remains what it usually is: polite averages that do not really help anyone move forward. Afterwards, managers know that they should “communicate better”. What exactly they should change remains open.
TUF in conversational format
TUF (a test for assessing leadership behaviour) is a validated assessment that systematically captures leadership behaviour. As an AI interview, it is not the method that changes but the format of data collection. Instead of ticking items, participants describe concrete situations in their own words.
The AI assigns these statements to the dimensions of the assessment – task orientation, employee orientation, participation, communication. Every scale score is backed up by concrete passages of text. The result is not just a number but a traceable rationale.
For organisational developers, this means that instead of an abstract 3.2 for “communication”, there is a concrete description of what was experienced as unclear and in which situation. From this, measures can be derived that actually take effect.
In practice
A typical use case: an organisation is planning a leadership development initiative and needs a baseline. Instead of a classic 360° questionnaire, it uses TUF as an AI interview. 40 employees receive a link, each invest 25–35 minutes and describe their experiences of how their team is led.
The evaluation delivers two levels: first, the scale scores per dimension. And second, the additional qualitative information – concrete examples that show where the levers lie. In many cases, these insights replace the workshop that would otherwise be needed to explore the results in more depth.
Who it is for
TUF as an AI interview is particularly suitable for: leadership development programmes that need a robust baseline, regular leadership feedback that should deliver more than averages, and organisations that want to change their leadership culture – and to do so need to understand where they stand today.
Next step
Talk to us about your specific use case. Together, we’ll work out whether TUF is the right assessment and show you what the interview looks like in practice.