Integrity
The key competency of successful leaders
Professional expertise and experience are important prerequisites for career success. In the long term, however, the decisive question is how a person uses their abilities. Integrity, a sense of responsibility, and a constructive approach to power and influence are therefore among the most important success factors when filling specialist and leadership positions.
Schiltwald Partners supports companies in Switzerland with scientifically grounded integrity assessments to make potential visible, identify risks early, and make well-founded HR decisions.
Measure integrity instead of guessing
Integrity cannot be reliably assessed on the basis of a CV, references, or interviews alone. Many relevant personality traits are only partially visible in day-to-day work and only become apparent through systematic assessment.
As part of our assessments, we therefore capture, among other things:
Personality structure and value orientation
Sense of responsibility and self-regulation
Social skills and capacity for empathy
Handling of power, influence, and conflict
Risk behaviour and compliance with rules
Potentially counterproductive behaviours
In doing so, we combine various scientifically grounded methods and always consider the interplay of different personality traits and behavioural indicators.
The Dark Triad of personality
A particular focus of our integrity assessment is the analysis of the so-called Dark Triad of personality: in moderate forms, these traits can be associated with assertiveness, resilience, or strategic thinking. In pronounced forms, however, they can indicate problematic behavioural patterns.
Narcissism
Inflated self-image, strong need for recognition and status.
Machiavellianism
Pronounced strategic influence and a willingness to instrumentalise other people for one’s own goals.
Subclinical psychopathy
Low empathy, reduced impulse control, and increased risk-taking.
These traits are not inherently negative.
Early detection of behaviour that harms the organisation
At Schiltwald Partners, the analysis of the Dark Triad is never conducted in isolation. Only the combination with additional methods such as structured interviews, personality questionnaires, performance assessment, work samples and case studies, and behavioural observations enables robust conclusions about potential risks.
This makes it possible to identify indications of potential behaviours such as abuse of power, manipulation of employees, lack of compliance, destructive leadership behaviour, increased propensity for conflict, breaches of trust, reputational damage, or economically harmful decisions.
Especially for leadership, trust, and key positions, this risk assessment is an essential component of a professional suitability assessment.