References:

Schmidt & Hunter (1998): Structured interviews and observed behavior are the strongest predictors of performance.

Goleman (2000): Emotional intelligence and related behavioral patterns explain up to 90% of performance differences at the top-management level.

Hogan & Kaiser (2005): More than 60% of management derailments stem from problematic leadership behavior – not from a lack of expertise.

Kaiser, Hogan & Craig (2008): Sustainable leadership success is directly linked to observable behavior in handling power, conflict, and change.

CEB/Gartner (2019): 62% of HR leaders state that current assessment methods do not accurately predict on-the-job success.

McKinsey (2020): Companies focusing on leadership behavior are 2.4× more likely to financially outperform peers.

Gallup (2020): Managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement.

Fløvik et al. (2020): Empowering Leadership wirkt präventiv gegen psychische Belastungen – ein Indikator für nachhaltige Wirkung.

Harvard Business Review (2021): Personality assessments explain only 9–15% of leadership performance variance, while behavioral indicators correlate much more strongly with actual outcomes.

SHRM (2021): The cost of replacing an employee equals 50–75% of annual salary (some estimates go up to 200% for senior roles).

Gallup (2022): Employees who feel poorly managed are 2.3× more likely to be actively disengaged.

Frontiers in Psychology (2022): Situational leadership behavior increases satisfaction and performance.

PwC (2022): 55% of CEOs believe that leadership gaps are a major threat to growth.

PMC (2023): Offenes Kommunikationsverhalten erhöht wahrgenommene Kompetenz von Führungskräften.

Deloitte (2023 Human Capital Report): Companies with strong leadership pipelines are 1.8× more likely to be innovation leaders.

DDI Global Leadership Forecast (2023): Poor leadership increases voluntary turnover risk by up to 5×.

New Level Work (2024): ROI from leadership development ranges between $3 and $11 per $1 invested.

Heimann et al. (2025): Strukturierte Interviews prognostizieren Einkommen, Effektivität und Wohlbefinden zuverlässig.

Meta-Analysen: Strukturierte Interviews erreichen Validitätswerte bis 0,44 – deutlich über unstrukturierten Formaten.

Behavior Description & Situational Interviews: Gute Prädiktoren für durchschnittliche und maximale Leistung.

Conclusion:
Behavior is measurable – and those who understand behavior can predict success, avoid mis-hires, and achieve sustainable impact.
The AM Academy takes this a step further: by integrating Socionics – a model that reveals information processing and interaction patterns – we can also explain why people act the way they do.
This provides not only a precise picture of observable behavior but also of the underlying motivation and decision-making logic.
The combination of behavioral diagnostics and Socionics is unique in the executive search and advisory market – delivering a higher level of predictive certainty than traditional methods.

Scientific Foundation

Our methodology builds on robust insights from behavioral and organizational research. A broad body of studies and meta-analyses confirms: behavior is a key predictor of leadership success and team stability.

Three pillars of the AM Academy

Our methodology rests on three interconnected pillars:

Behavioral and organizational research: Studies consistently show that structured behavioral observation provides the highest predictive validity in personnel selection – outperforming both interviews and self-report questionnaires.

Socionics: Developed as a model of information processing and social interaction. It reveals which motives, preferences, and interaction patterns drive observable behavior.

Practice-based insights: With over a decade of Executive Search & Advisory experience, we have seen consistently that candidates who demonstrate stable behavioral patterns in assessments perform more reliably in practice.