Authorship and Technical Contribution

AUTHORS AND TECHNICAL CONTRIBUTION

The leadership framework and associated assessment tools described on this site were developed collaboratively over several decades of applied research, professional practice and organisational consulting.

Michael Lock

Michael Lock was one of the two principal contributors to the development of the leadership framework presented here.

Trained as both an occupational and an educational psychologist, his professional work focused on the assessment and development of leaders operating in complex organisational environments.

Across his career, he worked extensively in the design and development of assessment centres for managers and senior professionals. A central feature of this work was the exploration of the distinction between leadership preference and leadership effectiveness, which became foundational to the Leadership Judgement Indicator series and the wider family of judgement-based leadership instruments.

His contribution lay primarily in the articulation of the theoretical model, the design of scenario-based assessment methods, and the integration of psychological and organisational perspectives within a coherent judgement-based framework.

Bob Wheeler

Bob Wheeler was the other principal contributor to the development of the leadership framework.

Following graduation in law from the University of Cambridge and qualification as a barrister, he pursued a career in human resources, holding a range of increasingly senior leadership roles in industry.

In 1990 he established an independent management consultancy, through which he worked with organisations undergoing structural change and performance transformation. His professional interests included leadership development, negotiation and coaching.

Bob’s contribution lay primarily in the translation of leadership theory into organisational practice. He played a central role in refining the underlying decision logic, honing the algorithmic structure, and ensuring that the framework and its associated tools remained grounded in the realities of managerial decision making.

Technical Direction

Nick Burnard

Nick Burnard joined Bob and Michael following an invitation to design and implement the computerised scoring and report-generation systems for the original Leadership Judgement Indicator.

With formal training in systems analysis, he worked across application development and IT infrastructure management within manufacturing and telecommunications environments. His professional experience spanned many years.

At the time of development, he was operating his own IT solutions company, specialising in hosted applications, system architecture and internet-based delivery platforms.

Nick was responsible for translating the conceptual and psychometric specifications of the leadership assessments into secure, scalable and reliable technical systems. His work enabled the early deployment of automated testing applications and web-based assessment delivery, which were integral to the practical implementation of the Leadership Judgement tools.