Accelerate Transformation with Organizational Decision Analytics
Part II Paradox Mastery Enhances Leader & Employee Development
“Harrison Assessments analytics and practical reporting tools facilitate EX initiatives across the talent cycle including learning and development. For leadership and high potential development, career and succession planning, the predictive Organizational Analytics Paradox Mastery data, along with Engagement and Competencies data, is superb for identifying developmental needs, as well as high potential and succession-ready candidates. Harrison’s Organizational Analytics provides global, best-in-class, predictive analytics to enable your organization to accelerate transformation and achieve a high performing talent trajectory!”
The pandemic in all its ramifications has caused organizations worldwide to rethink their human resources, talent management, organizational and learning development processes to address business needs more effectively. Competition for talent has intensified with the great resignation caused by women leaving the workforce to focus on family, as well as employees of all backgrounds leaving due to stress, burnout, and changed personal career priorities. There is no one reason, but a plethora of personal needs that have influenced employees’ decisions. What can organizations do to help employees and leaders address the vast array of concerns?
In Part I of this series we reviewed research emphasizing the need for increased focus on employee experience, leadership and career development, engagement and retention, DEI and talent sourcing challenges. The surveys revealed that these trends require agile solutions incorporating predictive behavioral analytics, enabling cultural transformation, and focusing on the individual employee.
–Josh Bersin 2021 Definitive Guide: Employee Experience EX
Josh Bersin’s 2021 Definitive Guide: Employee Experience (EX) confirms these ongoing trends with six key findings:
- Focus on trust, transparency, inclusion, and care.
- A supportive culture plays a big role.
- Innovation and sustainable growth depend on equitable rewards and building communities at work.
- Consistent, mission-first people investments in any business climate improve business performance.
- Employee experience (EX) excellence directly leads to business outcomes.
- HR capabilities and the right technologies are vital.
Bersin summaries the keys to an irresistible organization, “EX is about trust, transparency, caring, and empathy. It’s about leadership and culture, growth, communities, and equity. How do you enable these big strategic concepts and scale them for your workforce? The answer is HR capabilities and the right technologies.” Bersin cautions that “employee experience is an enormous field, and almost all areas of HR are part of it. It’s not a ‘process’ but a cross-functional strategy that needs to be embraced by the C-suite.” Indeed, foundational to each element of the irresistible organization are enabling technologies including predictive behavioral analytics.
Accelerate Transformation with Analytics
Also in Part I of our series we introduced Harrison Assessments comprehensive Organizational Analytics capability that facilitates analysis of data relevant to many of these human capital trends faced by organizations of all industries. Harrison provides individual engagement and competencies analytics to identify risks and practical solutions for any size organization. In this article we introduce Harrison’s new release of Paradox Mastery for employee and leader development.
What is Paradox Mastery?
–Corrine Chalmers, Coach
If you have children you know that raising them successfully to be well balanced individuals requires exhibiting tough love! This is a perfect example of a real-life paradox in which two traits may seem contradictory but really are complementary. If a parent only disciplines a child, they are likely to grow up paranoid and if the parent smothers the child with affection without disciplining, the child may quickly act out and become rebellious.
In a work setting, paradoxical behaviors are common place and affect a wide range of performance factors. Paradoxical Leadership is a concept that is well-documented in organizational literature, designed to support leaders facing competing priorities, diverse perspectives, and constrained resources. Many paradoxes are driven by leaders’ behavioral choices. The challenge is to consider both paradoxical perspectives rather than using an either/or solution. A recent article Paradoxical Leadership: Mastering Balanced Versatility for Improved Relationships & Performance! explores several common cases of both individual leader and team situations in which Paradoxical imbalances result in dysfunction and hinder performance, engagement, and desired business results.
Measuring Paradoxical Traits
Figure 1: A Paradox Example
Color range is unique for each Role/Job:
Dark green – strength
Light green – good but development beneficial
Yellow – development needed
Red – development important
Harrison Assessments is the only assessment that offers Paradox technology to measure seemingly contradictory behaviors that are actually complementary. Their proprietary assessment technology measures imbalances that contribute to derailing behaviors, as well as stress behaviors. Harrison Assessments is utilized in both personal and professional/executive coaching in addition to a wide range of solutions across the talent cycle.
Paradox Example: Frankness and Diplomacy
In the Harrison Paradox Mastery graph of Respectful Candor or Communication (Figure 1) we see that the two trait scores intersect at the dot with shaded circle representing the individual’s range of behavior within the Forthright Diplomacy quadrant. The color scheme of greens, yellow and red are specific to a given role/job selected to match the employee’s current or desired role/job.
The Frank Scale is dark green to represent the individual’s score within the dark green area ideal to performance in the role. Their Diplomatic Scale is light green representing their score within the light green area of good but for which development is beneficial for improved performance in the role. This specificity of one’s range of behavior related to a role/job (which is based on Harrison’s performance research) clarifies strengths and opportunities to develop, which facilitates the assessment debrief and coaching process.
12 Paradoxes & 6500 Researched Job Success Analyses
–Mark Montgomery, CEO
Respectful Candor/Communication is one of 12 Harrison Paradoxes. There are nine roles and 6500 research position/job success analyses within the Harrison library; in addition, jobs may be customized or benchmarked. Sufficient to say, regardless of your industry, size of organization, or targeted roles/jobs, you will be able to select an appropriate role/job success template for your functions, levels, and job responsibilities/KPIs regardless of the talent application needed: hiring, individual/team development, or career/succession planning. (See examples of roles and Paradox Mastery Interpretation)
Are you thinking this sounds too good to be true? Here is what one executive shared about the use of Harrison Assessments Paradox capability: “When a team embraces Harrison Assessments’ Paradoxical Leadership process from the top-down, the results are exceptionally rewarding and contribute to a high performing team.” –Mark Montgomery, CEO
Organizational Analytics & Paradox Mastery
Harrison Assessments has taken Paradox Mastery to a whole new level of sophistication and practical application for organizations aspiring to Bersin’s irresistible organization. For an overview, this screen shot previews the comprehensive data available for any size group of employees or leaders:
Figure 2
All elements within the system are interactive to provide specific data as required to drill down to your organization’s risks and needs. When one clicks on a red area within a Paradox in Group data, a scatter chart reveals more insight:
Figure 3
By clicking on individual dots one can identify employees in need of development. If a Paradox Mastery report is desired, it can be generated from the OA screen along with other reports as required for further analysis and data presentation.
Tags can be assigned to refine your data analysis by various locations, groups, teams, generational cohorts, and so on. For leadership and high potential development, career and succession planning, the predictive Organizational Analytics Paradox Mastery data, along with Engagement and Competencies data, is superb for identifying developmental needs, as well as high potential and succession-ready candidates.
Harrison Assessments Organizational Analytics Subscription
–Mark Linenberger,
Executive Vice President
A Subscription to Harrison’s Organizational Analytics capability enables organizations to analyze Group Paradox Mastery, as well as Engagement and Competencies analytics for only $5 or less per person depending on volume. At this minimal investment per employee the return for HR/TM/OD/L&D functions is off the charts! Just imagine one analytics system to determine accurate and predictive behavioral data to:
- Assess at risk employees related to engagement fulfillment and turn over
- Determine motivational gaps on an individual basis
- Analyze common engagement factors for targeted interventions for various groups/teams
- Create career and leadership developmental programs based on specific competency needs
- Develop programs for remote learning, EQ, leadership, collaboration, or other competencies
- Assess cultural transformation programs measuring your specific cultural values
- Measure Paradox Mastery for individual, teams, and groups
- Facilitate career/succession planning with relevant competency and Paradox Mastery data
“Flexible, customizable, and predictive Harrison Assessments Organizational Analytics is not a nice to have, but an absolute need! We were able to identify at risk employees and address their engagement expectations as a result. The Paradox Mastery analytics will be tremendously helpful in our succession, high potential and coaching initiatives as well.”
–Mark Linenberger, Executive Vice President
With OA you can develop talent and organizational solutions based on predictive analytics aligned to your business goals; when presented to top management and your Board, this predictive data will be an eye-opener regarding the value proposition and ROI of your talent initiatives. Whatever your organization’s talent priority, take the initiative with Harrison’s highly predictive analytics for just $5 per employee!
Bottom Line Impact of EX & People Analytics
Bersin’s 2021 EX survey report states: it’s “the soft stuff that’s the hard stuff. EX is not about tools, processes, or efficiency, but the culture and the mission of a company and the way leaders act.” And to impact the soft stuff, organizations that measure the right analytics can dramatically improve employee experience and the bottom line through business, innovation, and people outcomes. (See Business Impact of EX Strategies Figure 4)
Figure 4
Bersin goes on to say, “The bottom line is simple. In today’s competitive and highly disruptive labor market, companies must invest in HR capabilities. That doesn’t just mean hiring a lot of people—it also means training, upskilling, and providing job rotation, mentorship, and alignment programs for every single HR professional. Everything is about EX right now. The entire pandemic response and shift to hybrid work has focused all organizations on making employees safe, productive, and aligned. And as the labor market grows, companies are bending over backwards to make work easier, better, and more attractive.”
You can make the “hard stuff” easier by having the right analytics to inform your strategies and initiatives. Bersin’s survey demonstrates that people analytics matter; high performing companies were 5.6 times more likely to use advanced people analytics and act accordingly, as well as 5.7 times more likely to use advanced learning tools. (See Critical Tech Figure 5) Harrison Assessments analytics and practical reporting tools facilitate EX initiatives across the talent cycle including learning and development.
Figure 5
Harrison Assessments Organizational Analytics provides global, best-in-class, predictive analytics to enable your organization to accelerate transformation and achieve a high performing talent trajectory!
By Sheryl Dawson, CEO
Dawson Consulting Group is a Harrison Assessments Solutions Partner.
