What it is
The Open-Source Charisma Indicator (OSCI) is a structured self-report tool designed for personal development and professional reflection. It is not a clinical personality assessment or a diagnostic instrument. It will not tell you who you are. It will help you think more clearly about how you come across, where your strengths sit, and where to focus if you want to develop your personal impact.
“The OSCI is a self-report development tool. Use it as a starting point for reflection, not a fixed verdict.”
What it measures
The OSCI is built on the Charisma Quadrant framework, which defines personal charisma as the product of two dimensions: Confidence and Social Skills. The assessment measures both dimensions across eight sub-competencies using a 40-item Likert scale with reverse-scored items throughout to control for response bias.
Your result places you in one of four quadrant types. Your detailed report shows your scores across all eight sub-competencies and a personalised practice menu weighted to your two lowest-scoring areas.
Confidence
Self-Esteem & Self-Worth
Items 1–5 · Reverse: Q2, Q5
Confidence
Resilience & Composure
Items 6–10 · Reverse: Q8, Q10
Confidence
Assertiveness & Accountability
Items 11–15 · Reverse: Q13, Q15
Confidence
Growth & Adaptability
Items 16–20 · Reverse: Q19
Social Skills
Empathy & Listening
Items 21–25 · Reverse: Q22, Q25
Social Skills
Warmth & Social Courtesy
Items 26–30 · Reverse: Q28, Q30
Social Skills
Conversational Skills
Items 31–35 · Reverse: Q32, Q35
Social Skills
Emotional Control & Humility
Items 36–40 · Reverse: Q38, Q40
Scoring
Each item is rated on a five-point Likert scale from Strongly Disagree (1) to Strongly Agree (5). Reverse-scored items are recalculated as 6 minus the raw score. Dimension scores range from 20 to 100. Quadrant placement uses a 60-point midpoint threshold on each dimension. Subscale scores are expressed as percentages to allow direct comparison across competency areas.
What it is not
The OSCI is a self-report instrument. Results reflect how you see yourself at the time of taking it. They are not an objective measure of how others perceive you, and they are subject to the same self-perception bias that affects all tools of this kind.
We do not claim clinical or diagnostic validity. We do not use the word “validated” without qualification. We call the OSCI a self-report indicator, a reflective instrument, and a development tool. These are honest descriptions and they are defensible.
It is not appropriate to use the OSCI for recruitment decisions, performance management, or any evaluative process where the results could disadvantage an individual.
Where we are in development
The OSCI is in active development. We are collecting data from every assessment completion to build a formal evidence base, including subscale reliability analysis and correlation with real-world outcomes. Rolling validation is how most applied psychometric tools in the commercial training space develop. The condition is transparency about where we are in that process.
Thousands of real-world users will tell us things a pre-launch study never could. We will see whether people cluster where the model predicts. We will see whether the practice recommendations get used and whether they work. That is real-world validation and it is valuable.
If your results feel accurate, we would like to know. If something does not fit, we want to know that too.
A note for practitioners and researchers
If you are an occupational psychologist, an L&D practitioner, or a researcher with an interest in the psychometrics of charisma and personal impact, we would welcome a conversation. We are actively seeking research collaborators to contribute to formal validation work, including test-retest reliability, factor analysis, and convergent validity studies.
The OSCI framework is grounded in established research on emotional intelligence (Goleman), charismatic leadership (Antonakis, House), interpersonal competence (Riggio), and self-determination theory. The practice recommendations in the results are drawn from the evidence base in Open-Source Charisma by James G Harvey.