Prophet warning from the wilderness?
Years ago I interviewed Tom for a Sales Manager vacancy. Part of the interview process was a short Personality Profile, which, when I read it, suggested he was ‘schizophrenic’: it was an impossible profile! However, the Sales Director thought he was the best interviewee and being naïve (and new at the tests) I assumed the test was wrong. 6 months later I looked at the profile with the Detective Inspector in charge of the fraud investigation into Tom. The profile – quick though it was – was right!
Spring (including blustery gales) is that time of year when you should take the Office Procedures Manual off the shelf, dust it down and ask yourself the question – are these processes working? Check some standard People Management indicators:
- how long it takes to fill a vacancy;
- retention of staff: after 1, 2, 5 years;
- Utilization or productivity percentages;
- Customer feedback:
- Grievances about bullies?
Using these to spur you on, why not look at how objective and robust your assessment processes are to judge the attitude, knowledge and capability of your people at recruitment, promotion and when doing the job? Here are four classic options to start with:
IQ;
personality traits;
competencies and skills; and
Emotional Intelligence (EI)
IQ:
Albert Einstein had an IQ of 160; have you ever tested yourself, and got into MENSA? There is a vast array of literacy, numeracy and verbal performance ability tests available online (as well as paper based) which look at an individual’s cognitive potential. Could this be useful when working with Graduates?
Personality traits:
There are hundreds of psychometric and predictive behavioral profiling tools which highlight traits, such as preferred learning styles, approaches to management, communication or selling styles. These are available in multiple languages, and recently I was able to use one system for a global client in Italian, French and German, as well as English: brilliantly inclusive.
Competencies and skills:
After the 66th page doing an internet Google search for: ‘competencies and skills’; there is so much information that you have no excuse not to have some framework or matrix in place. It must provide a cultural fit with your business, have a few, common competencies, e.g. communication, achieving results, sales, etc., with these broken down into 3 – 4 levels appropriate to job seniority. By defining behaviours expected, you can reward staff appropriately and provide repeatable, if not predictable, performance.
Emotional Intelligence (EI):
As John Cooper, CEO of JCA Behavioural Consultants said: ‘To get and keep the ‘best of the best’, selection and retention must tap into the deeper level of attitudes and feelings – the domain of EI. Organisations really do have to assess and engage both ‘hearts’ and ‘minds’. Within customer service, getting real interpersonal ‘juice’ from relationships is critical. Customers can ‘sense’ whether someone is genuine. Similarly, if an organisation doesn’t help an employee to feel good, if there is no attitude ‘fit’, they’ll leave.” (www.jcaglobal.com).
Finally you should be aligning your brand values with the core competencies, making sure they are reflected across all People Management processes. If there is business pressure to have employees who can “hit the ground running”, then those same businesses need to respond more laterally and less rigidly to who could do the job.
Using these wide-ranging, robust assessment tools can help you stop being a ‘Prophet in the wilderness’ but a ‘Prophet in a Garden of Eden’.
Patricia
For more information on the ideas and processes raised here do contact Patricia at who specializes in Managing Change and Performance Management. Contact us on: patricia@trafalgarprople.com Tel: +44 (0)20 7565 7547 www.trafalgarpeople.com