What the Controller / Assertive Quadrant Tells You About a Candidate
The Controller / Assertive Quadrant is one of four basic drives behind every behavioral profile. This is the one built around persuading people and getting things done. It predicts the work somebody will enjoy for years. That is a different question from whether they can do it well.
What Is the Controller / Assertive Quadrant?
It is one of four behavioral quadrants, and the drive underneath it is always the same: a comfort and interest in persuading others and getting things done.
People strong here are usually comfortable being in charge, working rapidly to their own plan, and competing against others.
What the Controller / Assertive Quadrant is not
It does not measure whether somebody can sell, manage people, win or get things done. A person strong here is still likely to be good at all four. Strong in a quadrant means comfortable and interested, rather than necessarily competent.
What this quadrant helps you evaluate before you hire
Ask a candidate to describe a time somebody on their team missed a deadline. A strong Controller/Assertive type usually describes confronting it. Listen for whether the confrontation was about the work or about the person.
Why the Controller / Assertive Quadrant Matters in Hiring
The seventeen individual aptitude traits get you to specific predictions.
With that many readings, though, an overall picture is easy to lose. A quadrant gives you the general shape first, and the detail becomes much easier to place afterwards.
Fit Predicts Endurance
This quadrant predicts the type of work somebody is most suited to and will most enjoy doing. It predicts the behavior you can expect as well.
Strengths Arrive With Weaknesses
The rule that a person's greatest strengths are also their greatest weaknesses applies here. What makes this type effective is what makes them hard to manage.
Opposites Make Better Teams
Business partners and subordinates work well together when their quadrants are opposite. One is strong exactly where the other is weak, so the team gets stronger.
How the Controller / Assertive Quadrant Shows Up at Work
This quadrant has a consistent signature, and it shows in small things.
Watch how somebody runs a meeting. Watch what annoys them, and what they need to hear before they agree. Other testing companies name the same quadrant differently.
| Also known as | Driver, Persuasive, Choleric or Director |
| Essence | Commanding, persuading and competitive |
| Appears | Efficient, impatient and extroverted |
| Openness | Independent and assertive |
| Action | Quick and determined |
| Fears | Failure |
| Under pressure | Confronts |
| Wants | Immediate results |
| Decisions | Definite |
| Annoyed by | Hesitation and incompetence |
| Security comes from | Taking charge and being in control |
| Relate to them by | Getting to your points quickly and responding quickly |
| In a team | Wants to run the meeting and make the decisions |
Where this profile is usually weak
The same tendencies that make this type effective come with a consistent set of blind spots. Plan to manage these rather than correct them.
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The Traits Behind the Controller / Assertive Quadrant
Each quadrant is built from several individual traits.
Those traits appear on their own charts in the report, color coded to match the quadrant diagram. Four of them feed this one.
Assertiveness
Comfort expressing an opinion boldly, persisting and speaking up. In selling, it becomes the willingness to ask for the business.
Competitive
The inner drive to prevail and to win. Low scorers care more about the process than about the final result.
Self-Esteem
A subjective sense of personal worth. It is distinct from self confidence, which is a belief in one's own ability.
Confront People
Willingness to face an interpersonal situation directly rather than put it off until somebody else is forced to handle it.
The Behavioral Quadrants
The parent reading, explaining how all four drives fit together and why the quadrants are always read against each other.
Supporter / Empathy Quadrant
The diagonal opposite of this one, built on empathy, patience, appreciation and listening rather than on personal drive and control.
Best Practice: Read the quadrant first and the four traits second. The quadrant tells you the overall shape of the person, and the traits tell you which part of it is actually driving.
How to Read a Controller / Assertive Quadrant Score
The SL Behavioral Assessment carries the fullest version of the quadrant section.
Read the range first, then the mechanics underneath it.
Low Range
Journey Over Destination
More interested in the journey than the destination, and usually quiet and uninvolved during meetings.
Medium Range
Neither Drawn Nor Averse
Neither interested nor disinterested in leading, persuading, being in charge or pushing hard for speed.
High Range
Leads and Pushes
Likes leading, persuading and being in charge, with plenty of confidence, determination and visible impatience.
What to Do Based on the Range
Find drive elsewhere. Do not expect this person to push a stalled decision along. Give that job to somebody else on the team.
Check the other three. Nothing here will drive their behavior strongly, so let the other three quadrants decide what kind of work actually suits.
Manage the blind spot. Expect results and expect impatience. Pair this person with somebody patient before that impatience starts quietly costing you good people.
Quadrant scores are relative to each other rather than absolute. A quadrant can read zero and still show some of its related traits as high as thirty on their own charts.
Which Assessments Report the Controller / Assertive Quadrant
Both Behavioral Assessments place candidates into the quadrants.
They do not carry the same four traits underneath this one.
Individual Contributor (IC) Behavioral Assessment Test
Built for individual contributors and support staff. It carries Assertiveness, Self-Esteem and Confront People, so the quadrant reads on three traits rather than four.
Sales & Leadership (SL) Behavioral Assessment
Built for sales, leadership and supervisory hiring. It carries all four traits including Competitive, which makes it the fuller reading for those roles.
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Where a Controller / Assertive Profile Fits Best
These are the kinds of work a person strong in this quadrant tends to enjoy for a long time.
They also tend to do it well.
Leading teams
Managing projects
Managing sales people
Managing supervisors
Running multi-employee businesses
Persuasive selling
Closing sales
High pressure sales
Representing people in court
If any of these situations sound familiar, this assessment is for you
Frequently Asked Questions
It is one of the four behavioral quadrants the assessments report. It covers a comfort and interest in persuading others and getting things done, and it predicts the kind of work somebody will enjoy for a long time.
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