The 15 Officer-Like Qualities (OLQs): What They Are and How to Develop Them

Officer-Like Qualities — commonly abbreviated as OLQs — are the framework ISSB uses to evaluate whether a candidate has the potential to function as a commissioned officer. They are not a checklist of surface behaviours. They are a model of the integrated personal qualities that effective military leadership demands.

Understanding the OLQs deeply serves two purposes: it helps you understand what the board is actually looking for, and it gives you a concrete framework for self-development in the months and years before your selection attempt.

The 15 OLQs

1. Effective Intelligence

The ability to apply your intellectual capacity practically in real, often ambiguous situations — not just academic performance. ISSB tests this through intelligence tests, group problem-solving, and the interview.

How to develop it: Engage seriously with problems outside your syllabus. Read widely. Practise reasoning through unfamiliar situations aloud or in writing.

2. Reasoning Ability

Logical analysis: identifying causes, drawing valid conclusions, and distinguishing between evidence and assumption. Tested heavily in intelligence assessments and group planning exercises.

How to develop it: Practise logical reasoning puzzles, argument analysis, and asking "why" and "what follows from this" when consuming news or making decisions.

3. Organising Ability

The capacity to plan, prioritise, and coordinate resources — people, time, and materials — toward a goal. Assessed most clearly in the Group Planning Exercise and Command Task.

How to develop it: Volunteer to organise events, projects, and group activities. Reflect on what worked and what failed in your planning.

4. Power of Expression

Clarity and confidence in communicating — both verbally and in writing. Assessed through the interview, group discussion, lecturette, and the open-ended psychological tests.

How to develop it: Practise speaking in front of others regularly. Read quality writing. Learn to state your point in one sentence before elaborating.

5. Initiative

The willingness to act in the absence of explicit instruction when action is required. Assessed across GTO tasks and the interview through questions about past behaviour.

How to develop it: Identify situations in daily life where you waited for permission when you could have acted. Practise acting on informed judgement. Report what you did afterward.

6. Self-Confidence

A realistic, positive belief in your own capabilities — distinct from arrogance or bravado. Assessed through every stream: how you hold yourself, how you respond under pressure, how you speak about your abilities.

How to develop it: Accumulate genuine competence in areas that matter to you. Self-confidence built on real achievement is stable under challenge; confidence built on image is not.

7. Speed of Decision

The ability to make a sound decision under time pressure without excessive hesitation or impulsive recklessness. Assessed through GTO physical tasks and timed exercises.

How to develop it: Practise structured decision-making: define the problem, identify options, select the best available option, act. Under pressure, the key is reducing deliberation time, not eliminating it.

8. Ability to Influence the Group

The capacity to shape the direction and energy of a team through legitimate means — argument, example, motivation — rather than positional authority or aggression. Assessed throughout GTO group tasks.

How to develop it: In group settings, focus on making your contributions useful rather than prominent. Leadership influence grows from credibility, and credibility from demonstrated competence and fairness.

9. Liveliness

Energy, enthusiasm, and vitality — an active engagement with life and work rather than passive acceptance. Assessed through overall deportment, physical tasks, and the general impression across the selection.

How to develop it: Pursue physically and intellectually demanding activities. Sleep, exercise, and eat properly — the physical substrate of liveliness is real.

10. Determination

Persistence in the face of difficulty, setback, or physical discomfort. Assessed through physical obstacles, timed tasks under stress, and interview questions about past challenges.

How to develop it: Deliberately engage with difficult, uncomfortable activities — sports, endurance challenges, demanding academic work — and practise finishing what you start.

11. Courage

Both physical courage (willingness to face physical risk) and moral courage (willingness to act on principle under social pressure). Assessed through GTO physical tasks and ethical scenarios in the interview and SRT.

How to develop it: Do not confuse courage with recklessness. Courage is action despite fear, not the absence of it. Take calculated physical risks in sport. Practise holding a position in arguments when you are right.

12. Co-operation

Working constructively within a group — contributing to team goals even when your personal preference differs. Assessed throughout GTO group tasks.

How to develop it: Practise subordinating personal preference to team objectives in low-stakes settings: group projects, sports teams, family responsibilities. Note when you resist this and examine why.

13. Sense of Responsibility

Taking ownership of outcomes — not blaming others, not deflecting accountability. Assessed through the interview, self-description test, and the way you respond when GTO tasks go wrong.

How to develop it: Hold yourself accountable for your commitments. When something under your responsibility fails, examine your role in it honestly before examining others'.

14. Stamina

Physical and mental endurance across sustained effort. The ISSB process is itself a test of stamina — five days of assessments demand consistent performance, not a single peak.

How to develop it: Build an aerobic fitness base. Practise sustained focus through long study sessions. Develop sleep discipline.

15. Social Adaptability

The ability to operate effectively across different social environments, ranks, and personalities. Assessed through group interactions, the interview, and general interpersonal behaviour throughout the selection.

How to develop it: Engage with people outside your usual social circle. Interact respectfully with people of all ages and backgrounds. Notice and manage your social discomforts.

How OLQs Are Assessed Across Streams

The board uses four streams — psychological testing, GTO tasks, interview, and general observation — to triangulate each OLQ across multiple independent data points.

• Psychologist assesses OLQs primarily through written tests (WAT, SRT, SDT, TAT) and intelligence measures.
• GTO assesses OLQs through observable behaviour in group and individual tasks.
• Interviewing Officer assesses OLQs through discussion of your background, motivations, and responses to hypothetical scenarios.
• General observation captures incidental behaviour — how you interact with peers, canteen staff, and support personnel throughout the five days.

A strong performance in one stream cannot fully compensate for a weak performance in another. Consistency across all four is what produces a confident recommendation.

The Core Principle

OLQs cannot be convincingly performed over five days. A candidate who has genuinely lived actively, taken responsibility, pushed through difficulty, and engaged with the world around them will demonstrate these qualities naturally. The ISSB process is long and multi-stream precisely because it is designed to see through short-term impression management.

The most effective preparation for the OLQ assessment is to spend the time before your selection attempt actually developing them — through sport, leadership in student or community organisations, serious reading, physical training, and honest self-reflection.