I__. - International Military Testing Association

Introduction
Leadership in Aptitude Tests and in Real-Life Situations
A. H. Melter & W. Mentges
Federal Armed Forces Central Personnel Office, K(iln,
Federal Republic of Germany
In the aptitude testing of German volunteers for officer and NC0 careers small groups
of three or four applicants are given planning tasks to work out sequences for action or
to organize items of information. The applicants have to produce an individual draft of
their task solution. They prepare and give the group a short presentation of some aspects
of the planning tasks, and they have to discuss and to decide their tasks and their
individual solutions at a round table.
Officer applicants must organize
- a leisure activity,
- a floor-plan of a supermarket,
-the land utilization and development of a small town,
- a school prize-giving day, or
- a meeting place for young people.
The rating sheet for group tasks is subdivided into four paragraphs:
- The “written plan” section for making notes on the contents, presentation, accuracy,
and lay-out.
- The “short presentation” section for making notes on comprehensibility, behavior, and
argumentation.
- The “round table discussion” section for making notes on social interactions, plans,
decisions,‘and behavior in changing situations.
- The “overall rating of the group task” section for making notes on assertiveness, social
competence and cooperation, argumentation and verbal expression, planning and
decisiveness.
The scale is defined as follows:
1 Very good, obviously positive, clearly more positive characteristics than
usually expected,
2 Good, clearly above average, more positive than negative characteristics;
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