Vision, delegation, motivation, situational leadership, decisions, 1:1s, OKRs.
Before starting, we run a 1-minute tech check — microphone, ambient noise, connection. If your setup isn't good enough, the test is fully refunded.
Prove in 15 minutes that you actually know how to lead: 1:1s, OKRs, situational leadership, tough calls — an AI examiner surfaces what your LinkedIn profile can't.
The Plume Leadership & Management badge puts you through a 15-minute oral exam with an AI examiner that probes your real management practice: how you structure weekly 1:1s, how you shift your style between a junior and an autonomous senior using the Hersey-Blanchard situational model, how you connect OKRs to individual goals so your team knows what to work on Monday morning without micromanagement, how you handle underperformance, and how you carry unpopular decisions like reorgs or layoffs without burning team trust. The eight exam threads were calibrated by HR practitioners and experienced managers — not abstract textbook questions, but live pressure-tests on situations you've actually navigated.
What makes this badge credible where a self-declared LinkedIn skill isn't is the audit trail. Your oral transcript is scored by Claude Opus across five weighted dimensions — situational depth, decision quality, relational intelligence, methods and tools fluency, and strategic vision — producing a 0-to-100 score and a level (Novice to Expert). Recruiters can listen to your audio or read the dimension-by-dimension report: they hear how you reason, not just what title you held. That's a different category of evidence.
This badge is built for anyone who manages people or wants to credibly claim they can: team leads, engineering managers, product managers stepping up, founders scaling past 20 people, interim managers bidding for a new engagement, or HR professionals who want to validate their own leadership practice beyond their certifications. If you've led humans — or you're about to — this badge makes that legible to the people who need to believe it.
Here are the concrete dimensions the AI examines during the 15-minute oral.
Consciously shifting between directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating styles based on each team member's competence and commitment — with real examples of adapting to juniors versus autonomous seniors.
Running weekly 1:1s that go beyond project status: two-way feedback, career development conversations, early signals of disengagement, and keeping the space psychologically safe for candid exchanges.
Cascading company OKRs into individual goals so that an IC knows exactly what to prioritize without being micromanaged — whether using Lattice, 15Five, Linear, Notion, or a simple shared doc.
Structuring a performance conversation using facts, impact, and expected behavior; documenting without bureaucratizing; distinguishing a temporary dip from a structural mismatch, and knowing when to escalate.
Announcing a reorg, a layoff, or a strategic pivot in a way that preserves team trust: timing the message, choosing what to be transparent about, building the narrative, and handling emotional reactions in the room.
Delivering feedback using SBI (Situation-Behavior-Impact) or COIN, reading group dynamics, de-escalating open conflicts, and building the psychological safety that makes a team willing to surface problems early.
Crafting and communicating a team vision anchored in company strategy, identifying high-potential contributors, building individual development plans, and thinking about succession before it's urgent.
Navigating the contrast between Netflix's radical transparency, holacracy, servant leadership, and the return-to-office mandates at Amazon and Meta — and articulating how your own practice has evolved in response.
Final scoring is performed by Claude (Anthropic), which reads back the full transcript and applies this weighted criteria grid.
Ability to tell precise management stories with full context, decision rationale, action taken, and a measurable outcome — rather than generic answers about what one 'should' do in theory.
Soundness of the managerial choices described: owning hard tradeoffs, managing under uncertainty, holding a difficult position while remaining open to team input, and knowing when to reverse course.
Evidence of active listening, calibrated empathy, conflict navigation, and trust-building in the management relationships described — neither naive nor authoritarian, but situationally grounded.
Concrete use of recognized frameworks (Hersey-Blanchard, OKRs, SBI feedback, individual development plans) and real tools (Lattice, 15Five, Notion) with honest critical perspective on their limits.
Ability to connect daily operational decisions to a medium-term team or company direction, and to explain how that vision shapes weekly priorities and the conversations you have with your team.
A Plume session takes about 20 minutes, from tech check to badge delivery.
The AI verifies that your mic is working, your connection is stable, and you're in a quiet space. No data is processed until you explicitly confirm you're ready to start the exam.
The AI examiner asks you to introduce yourself briefly and describe your most recent or most complex management experience: team size, industry, duration, and what made that role genuinely challenging.
Six to seven substantive questions on your actual practice: your 1:1 structure, a real underperformance conversation, an unpopular decision, your OKR approach, how you adapt your style across seniority levels, and your read on today's management models. The AI follows up if an answer stays too abstract.
The examiner asks what you'd do differently today looking back, and how you'd honestly place your own management maturity. This feeds the 'self-awareness' signal that Claude Opus factors into the final score.
Claude Opus reads the full transcript, generates your 0-to-100 score with a level (Novice to Expert), a dimension-by-dimension report, and your shareable badge link — delivered to your inbox within minutes of finishing.
Your score out of 100 translates into a level a recruiter can grasp at a glance.
You've managed informally or very briefly, but you don't yet have structured frameworks for 1:1s, feedback, or performance management. Your answers tend to be reactive and situational, without an explicit method or repeatable process behind them.
You've managed a team for at least a year and run structured practices: regular 1:1s, defined goals, feedback given. You handle routine situations well but feel less confident on complex cases — open conflict, a layoff, a strategic pivot forced on your team.
You have a solid, documented management practice. You consciously adapt your style to each person's maturity level (Hersey-Blanchard in practice), drive alignment through OKRs, and have navigated genuinely hard situations with demonstrable positive outcomes. You coach or mentor other managers.
You've built and transformed organizations, managed managers, and defined management frameworks at company scale. You move between models — holacracy, servant leadership, radical transparency — with grounded critical perspective earned through real experience at scale.
No degree or years of experience required to take the badge. Here are the profiles it makes the most sense for.
You manage a technical team and want to prove your leadership goes beyond delivery: 1:1 structure, career development conversations, OKR alignment — without having to explain it all over again in every job interview.
You're growing from 5 to 50 people and need a concrete signal of your management maturity to reassure investors or attract senior talent who are evaluating you as a leader before they say yes.
You're switching industries, applying for your first VP-level role, or re-entering the market after a break. The badge objectively validates your experience where a résumé alone no longer closes the credibility gap.
You advise teams and leaders, and you want a credible signal of your own management practice beyond your certifications. The badge shows you're speaking from experience, not just methodology.
You win mandates in competitive pitches where you have minutes to establish credibility. A shareable, auditable badge replaces ten minutes of warm-up conversation and lets the client focus on fit, not proof.
Where and how your Leadership & Management badge will help you day to day.
You're applying for a Head of Product or Head of Engineering role. Instead of listing 'leadership' as a skill on your LinkedIn, you share a badge link showing 78/100 at Advanced level. The recruiter listens to two minutes of your oral and immediately understands how you run your 1:1s and cascade OKRs.
Your manager wants to promote you but the executive team asks for external validation of your management capabilities. You take the badge in 15 minutes and hand over a detailed report that objectifies the promotion decision without waiting for the next annual review cycle.
A client needs your references within 48 hours. You send your shareable badge that breaks down your level across every evaluated dimension — performance management, strategic decisions, relational intelligence — a concrete proof where a CV stays abstract.
You offer fractional management services on your website or on a platform like Toptal or Contra. Embedding your Leadership & Management badge instantly differentiates your profile from competitors who only have client testimonials and a job history.
As a Head of People, you ask three finalist candidates to take the badge before the final-round interview. You compare their scores and listen to their answers on the underperformance and unpopular-decision questions — you hear the actual management posture, not the rehearsed pitch.
You retake the badge every 12-18 months to track your growth between roles. The dimension-by-dimension report becomes your personal roadmap for targeted reading (The Manager's Path, Radical Candor, An Elegant Puzzle) and development focus areas.
A few minutes to check you have everything you need.
At the end of your session you don't just get a score — here's everything that awaits you.
Walk away with a precise score from 0 to 100 and an official level (Novice to Expert) evaluated across five management dimensions — an objective measure you can cite in any professional context.
A full written report breaks down each of the five scoring axes — situational depth, decision quality, relational intelligence, methods fluency, and strategic vision — with verbatim excerpts from your oral and concrete areas to develop.
Your oral recording is stored securely and stays strictly private by default. You decide whether to share it with a recruiter as additional evidence or keep it as a personal benchmark to track your growth over time.
A unique public link lets you share your badge on LinkedIn, in a job application email, or on your personal site. Recruiters see your score, your level, and the evaluation summary — without you having to justify every bullet point on your résumé.
Discover related skills you can validate with Plume.
A 15-min oral exam with an AI, a shareable badge for your recruiters.
Choose this badge · €19.99
