Political Skill Inventory (PSI)
The Political Skill Inventory is an 18 item questionnaire developed by Gerald Ferris and colleagues to measure political skill at work across four dimensions: social astuteness, interpersonal influence, networking ability, and apparent sincerity.
The Political Skill Inventory, usually shortened to PSI, is the most widely used research instrument for measuring political skill in organizations. It was introduced by Gerald Ferris and six coauthors in 2005 in the Journal of Management, in an article titled Development and validation of the political skill inventory. The inventory contains 18 statements that respondents rate on an agreement scale, and it groups them into four dimensions.
Social astuteness describes how accurately a person observes others and interprets social situations. Interpersonal influence describes the ability to adapt behavior so that it produces the intended response in others. Networking ability describes skill at building and using relationships and coalitions. Apparent sincerity describes the degree to which others see a person as honest, open, and free of hidden motives.
Researchers have since translated and studied the PSI in several languages, including a Spanish version published in Anales de Psicología, and a meta analysis by Munyon, Summers, Thompson and Ferris in Personnel Psychology (2015) found that political skill predicted task performance after controlling for the Big Five personality traits and general mental ability. That result is the main reason the construct matters to leadership development: it describes a capability that adds information beyond personality.
The PSI is a self report research tool. It was designed for academic study, and like any self report scale it can be affected by how people wish to present themselves. Recent work has explored alternative formats such as situational judgment tests for this reason.
Pine Perspective builds on this research tradition. Its Influence Agility assessment organizes political skill into three dimensions, Landscape Reading, Relationship Navigation and Projected Authenticity, and pairs the self assessment with 360 feedback so that a leader can compare self perception with how colleagues experience them.
References: Ferris, G. R., Treadway, D. C., Kolodinsky, R. W., Hochwarter, W. A., Kacmar, C. J., Douglas, C., & Frink, D. D. (2005). Journal of Management, 31(1), 126 to 152. Munyon, T. P., Summers, J. K., Thompson, K. M., & Ferris, G. R. (2015). Personnel Psychology, 68, 143 to 184.