Network of Leadership Scholars Leadership Assessment Resource

Dear Leadership Scholar:

The Network of Leadership Scholars (NLS), in conjunction with Mind Garden, has launched an initiative to create a central repository for leadership measures and related assessment instruments. (As you may know, Mind Garden is the publisher of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ), and a variety of other assessment instruments.) This follows up on an agenda item discussed at the annual NLS business meeting at AOM 2019 – to make high quality leadership measures more readily available.

What is the NLS Leadership Assessments Resource?
The resource is a one-stop site for the most popular, validated leadership assessment instruments, to facilitate research projects, and to make these instruments available (either for a charge, or free at the discretion of the authors) to leadership developers, trainers, consultants, and the academic and research community.

Who can post?
If you are the author of a validated assessment instrument, you can make it available on the Mind Garden website, along with any supporting materials (e.g., an instrument manual, norms, workbooks, etc.).

What are the criteria?
The criteria for inclusion in the resource are:
1. Acceptance rate <30% in Cabell’s listing (www2.cabells.com/journals)
2. 4 of the 5

A) listed in the Social and Science Citation Information (SSCI) index (http://ssci.isi-database.org/)
B) be in the top 80% of impact factor (2 or 5 year; Journal Citation Reports [JCR])
C) have more than 1 reviewer (Cabell’s often indicates number of reviewers; the journal’s website likewise will often indicate this)
D) be free to publish (not counting page fees for color; see the journal’s website for this)
E) be blind reviewed (Cabell’s often indicates blindness of review process, the journal’s website likewise will often indicate this)

What about money?
Mind Garden will set up a webpage for your instrument and supporting materials.

If you would like to make these materials available to users for free, then the page will allow users to download pdf files, and contact you with questions. Each instrument will have a webpage which will be added to the list of Mind Garden products, whether it is free or for purchase.

If you would like to charge for the use of your instrument, or have Mind Garden provide online administration, reports, sell the manual, etc., it can be arranged and Mind Garden will pay a 20% royalty. You will receive an agreement from Mind Garden that is non-exclusive so you can continue charging for use of your assessment and charge for distribution through other resources. Included with this option, Mind Garden will provide a service for handling translation agreements and review of adaptations. Any data collected by Mind Garden can be provided to you on an anonymous basis (as stated in the Mind Garden’s Privacy Policy).

Other Frequently Asked Questions

Why would we want to charge for an assessment instrument?
Your instrument is your intellectual property and it has value. You can choose to: (1) not charge anyone; or (2) charge for services such as online administration and reports but not charge for the instrument in pdf format; or (3) charge all users for all services including the instrument in pdf format for reproduction.

What is the rationale for 80-20% royalty split?
Mind Garden is a business and incurs operating expenses for personnel, maintenance of the website, and answering phone calls and inquiries about your instrument. You can opt to charge for your instrument or not. Although annual royalties paid are typically not very large, it conveys that your work has value.

Why do I need to work with Mind Garden?
Through this non-exclusive relationship with Mind Garden, you can distribute your instrument more widely than you might be able to on your own. Mind Garden can serve as an online clearinghouse for leadership and related instruments, providing easy access to users. Having a wide variety of assessment tools available in one place promotes user traffic, greater usage of the instruments, and ease of use. Offering your assessment tool via the Mind Garden website, and making an instrument Manual available, will support users of your instrument while greatly reducing the number of user questions you receive.

We welcome your interest.
For more detail and to begin the process, please contact:

Robert Most
Mind Garden President
robb@mindgarden.com
650-322-6300

Thank you,
The NLS Leadership Team (Jeremy D. Meuser, Marie T. Dasborough, Gretchen Vogelsgang-Lester, Nathan Eva, and Jarvis Smallfield)