A Leadership Development Tool

The LMX Leadership Self-Assessment

Find the personal gaps you need to overcome to build high-quality relationships with each member of your team. It is a diagnostic, not a test — there is no passing score, and the value lies entirely in the honesty of your responses.

Adapted from The Relationship Factor · Nathan Chambers, M.S., ABD

How to use this assessment. Complete it separately for each person who reports to you — LMX is a dyadic relationship, and your relationship with each individual is different. Answer about your actual behavior over the past few months, not your intentions. Your responses stay in your browser; nothing is sent or stored anywhere.

Direct report being assessed

Part One: The Four-Dimension Relationship Audit

Rate your honest agreement with each statement. 1 = Strongly Disagree · 2 = Disagree · 3 = Neutral · 4 = Agree · 5 = Strongly Agree

Part Two: The Relationship Quality Pulse

Six questions adapting the core of the LMX-7 into a self-assessment of overall relationship quality. Rate each from 1 (low) to 5 (high).

Please answer all 18 questions to see your results.

Your Results

The Four-Dimension Pattern

Part Two — Relationship Quality Pulse

How to read this

Look across your direct reports.

If you complete this for your whole team and scores cluster high for some people and low for others, you have identified your LMX differentiation. The diagnostic question is whether it tracks merit and contribution — or whether it tracks affinity, similarity to yourself, generational comfort, or simple proximity.

Look across the four dimensions.

You may score high on affect (genuine liking) but low on contribution (actual investment) — warm but not developmentally generous. Each dimension corresponds to different behaviors, and a low score on any one points to a specific area for growth.

Look at your lowest dimension.

The dimension that is lowest across most or all of your direct reports is your personal LMX gap — the relational behavior that does not come naturally to you and that you will need to develop deliberately.

From assessment to action. LMX quality is not fixed; it develops and degrades over time based on managerial behavior. Completing this assessment is a behavior, not an accomplishment — the accomplishment is improved relationship quality that produces improved performance and retention. Re-take it quarterly, track the pattern, and work deliberately on your lowest dimension.

Go deeper than the diagnostic

This tool is adapted from The Relationship Factor, which lays out the full science of leader-member exchange, generational dynamics, and human performance improvement — and how to put them to work.

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References.

Gerstner, C. R., & Day, D. V. (1997). Meta-analytic review of leader-member exchange theory: Correlates and construct issues. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(6), 827–844.

Graen, G. B., & Uhl-Bien, M. (1995). Relationship-based approach to leadership: Development of leader-member exchange (LMX) theory of leadership over 25 years. The Leadership Quarterly, 6(2), 219–247.

Liden, R. C., & Maslyn, J. M. (1998). Multidimensionality of leader-member exchange: An empirical assessment through scale development. Journal of Management, 24(1), 43–72.