The Royal Navy Modernizes Leadership Development and Selection with SHL

Critical Mobility Decisions Require Objective Approach

The Royal Navy and Royal Marines work 24/7 across the globe to maintain peace, protect the UK’s freedom and safeguard global trade.

Having served for over 30 years, Captain (Dr) Mike Young MBE is the Royal Navy’s leadership assessment and development advisor—conducting psychometric assessments of senior officers, providing coaching and designing appropriate professional development interventions for them.

The Royal Navy had a unique challenge when it came to its senior leaders, as Mike explains, “A key difference between the military and a civilian organization is the amount of movement and realignment—typically a senior leader only remains in the same role for around 3 years.”

Until recently, the Royal Navy had relied almost exclusively upon annual appraisal reports to determine which officers should be put forward for appointments and promotion.

However, this subjective approach had drawbacks Mike says, “The appraisal system works well at conveying satisfaction with an individual’s performance but isn’t very helpful when differentiating between who is better suited to certain appointments, and in what areas an individual’s signature strengths might lie.”

About The Royal Navy

Industry
Military

Company Size
32,000+

Region
UK

By using SHL’s assessments, we have more informed succession and development plans with a pool of talent that can move into other roles.

Captain Mike Young, Leadership and Assessment Development Advisor, The Royal Navy

SHL Effectively Differentiates Talent Through Leadership Assessment

The First Sea Lord—Head of the Royal Navy, along with the heads of the Army and Royal Air Force were committed to modernize the promotion system so that it fairly maximized everyone’s potential and considered emotional intelligence integrity and behaviors equally alongside objective delivery.

Having conducted extensive research within the Royal Navy uncovering how motivations are more important than either cognitive ability or personality traits in predicting leader performance—Mike knew psychometric assessments could provide an ‘additional lens’ in this quest for modernization.

SHL were chosen to deliver the assessments, as Mike explains, “I knew SHL products and service to be very accurate and reliable from numerous previous leadership research projects and they were able to fully demonstrate that capability during a tender process.”

The Royal Navy selected the Occupational Personality Questionnaire for general understanding of occupationally relevant personality characteristics, the Motivational Questionnaire to understand detailed aspects of motivation, and Verify Interactive G+ to measure the general cognitive ability of its senior leaders.

Mitigating Risk and Aiding Mobility with Data-Driven Decision-Making

Mike quickly rolled out SHL’s assessments to 350+ senior leaders and immediately saw the benefits they provided, as he says, “For the first time, we could present the appointing board with a comprehensive picture of an individual based on data about competencies important to the role. It gave us confidence that we were making the most informed decisions possible.”

This deeper understanding of their senior staff offered huge advantages says Mike, “By using SHL’s assessments we have more informed succession and development plans with a pool of talent that can move into other roles, which is critical to success—especially as there’s often requirements to move people really quickly.”

He continues, “It also helps mitigate risk—for example when the board are considering promoting someone faster than usual, they have psychometric data available to provide that additional comparative lens alongside the annual appraisal and course reports.”

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Captain Mike Young, Leadership and Assessment Development Advisor, The Royal Navy

Naval Officers Steer Professional Development in the Right Direction

SHL also supported Mike in developing a bespoke Royal Navy Leadership Development report which is fed by the three SHL assessments. These were mapped against the leadership competencies that have demonstrated over the past 20 years to be relevant in the Royal Navy.

Mike illustrates the benefits these offer personnel. “The reports developed with SHL enable individuals to reflect on their own behaviors and provide insights into what motivates them. We can empower leaders with the knowledge to shape their own success by highlighting what areas they might wish to develop in order to give them the right skills to move upwards.”

Organization-Wide Insights Helping Secure Future Success

On a broader level, the Royal Navy now have the ability to track trends over time, as Mike explains, “What we can do in a heartbeat, that we couldn't do before, is track what's going on year by year—as people leave and others join, we can see if things like average general intelligence or motivations of senior naval staff have changed. We can also compare groups and individuals, at different levels in the organization.”

Such has been the success of this enhanced assessment approach, that the Royal Navy and Royal Marines have extended it to all commanding officers and Mike has Navy Board approval to expand the use for talent spotting further down the organization, as he says, “The aim is to give everybody at any rank the opportunity to get this additional lens on their own, leadership relevant, characteristics, such that they can make a more informed choice about their own development.”

By continuing to innovate and invest in the most important part of their organization—the people—the Royal Navy can be confident the future is in safe hands.

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