An external Lead Assessor is likely to have the advantage of greater assessment experience and the kind of perspective that arises from having conducted assessments across a broad spectrum of organizations and group dynamics. He or she also has the advantage of an arm’s-length distance that helps to ensure objectivity and can help ward off challenges to the validity of the assessed results. Nevertheless, an external Lead is obliged to establish both credibility and trustworthiness with the organization’s management structure, the assessment team, and assessment participants. (An organization should try to select an external Lead that feels comfortable with the organization’s characteristics and culture.) He or she also needs to know how to gather knowledge of an organization quickly from the organization members on the team.
A Lead Assessor from inside the organization has the advantage of intimately understanding the organization’s operations. The internal Lead Assessor knows or can easily identify the key players who can ensure a successful assessment, what politics are likely to affect the assessment’s conduct, and how to apply or tailor the assessment method to make it most useful to the organization.
However, an internal Lead Assessor may not realize the potential for bias that comes with inside knowledge, as well as the possibility of pressure or even subtle threats about how he or she might be treated if the organization is unhappy with the assessment’s outcome.
It is extremely difficult for an internal Lead Assessor to be objective because his or her salary may depend on the senior manager that he or she is assessing. In some cases, difficult issues have to be discussed with the president of the organization, and that is easier to do if one’s job is not on the line.
The risks of an internal Lead Assessor are easily illustrated. For example:
An assessment team had come to consensus, and the internal Lead was to present the agreed findings. When he had to present the findings in front of the organization’s president, however, he felt compelled to sugarcoat the results. In fact, he gave a report that substantially contradicted the projected results on the screen in front of him. The result was that the president never received the hard message he needed to hear, and process improvement at his company was set back indefinitely.