Enabling Innovation with the Help of Personality Trait Assessments

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Electric bulb in woman handInnovation, Innovation, Innovation. It is hard to read a newspaper or business journal without finding an article on innovation or a reference to how companies must innovate to stay competitive. But the question that few articles address is how does a company become innovative or foster a culture of innovation?

Most will agree that people are the key to innovation, which raises yet another question – how do you know if someone is innovative? There is no easy way to identify innovative people from non-innovative people. Fortunately, there are critical traits found within people who are considered innovative leaders. This creates the opportunity to utilize personality trait assessments to identify those with the most innovative potential.
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Finally, A Way to Effectively Predict Potential!

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A WIN-WIN Strategy for Leadership Development

fairHairedSyndromeOrganizations have been utilizing the 9-box approach to succession planning for many years, yet the challenge of measuring potential is often very subjective and based on who knows whom! Organizations have sought to reduce the impact of the “halo effect” or “fair-haired” syndrome by developing leadership competency models and applying them to the evaluation process. However, the challenge of actually measuring one’s potential relative to competencies generally remains subjective. Finally, there is a behavioral analytics approach that removes the subjectivity of predicting leadership potential. How is it accomplished?
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How Do You Teach Delegation?

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Delegation

One of the fundamental learning objectives in most leadership development training programs is delegation. But how exactly do you go about teaching delegation? Most emerging leaders are identified as top prospects because they excel at performing specific tasks. Their competence is what fuels their success; but when promoted, they are suppose to let go and stop doing the very tasks they have been rewarded for performing well. For some, delegating those tasks to others is is easy; and for others, it is a perpetual struggle.

The challenge for HR and training professional is determining how easily someone will learn to delegate tasks, especially under a stressful environment.

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How a Personality Trait Assessment Helps Improve Communication

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Blunt, Non-Diplomatic Communication

“According to a recent Harris Poll … a stunning majority (69%) of the managers said that they’re often uncomfortable communicating with employees. Over a third (37%) of the managers said that they’re uncomfortable having to give direct feedback about their employees’ performance if they think the employee might respond negatively to the feedback.”

Effective communication is a core trait of leadership and there is an abundance of training materials, books, and articles designed to help leaders improve critical communication skills. Although communication training is a core emphasis within almost every leadership development program, the recent Harris Poll shows that a focus on effective communication skills alone is not enough to help managers and leaders learn how to effectively communicate. What is not provided in the training is the understanding and awareness of how different people react to critical feedback.

By knowing in advance how employees are likely to respond to critical feedback, managers are better able to prepare themselves and develop a plan that allows them to effectively utilize their communication training. Personality Trait Assessments are a valuable tool that can provide managers the insight they need to feel more comfortable communicating with employees and providing critical feedback.

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Improving Accountability within the Workplace

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Accountability

Forbes Magazine published an article on Accountability titled, “7 Ways to Build Accountable Organizations”. Within the article, the author posses the question:

Where do you need to invest your time and attention to build an environment of accountability?

This is a question many organizations ask themselves and consistently struggle to find the answer. A significant reason so many organizations are struggling to answer the question on accountability is because their primary focus is on process and they do not consider job fit.

The Forbes’ article on accountability effectively covers the core procedural elements necessary to be able to monitor and report on accountability: clearly defined job roles, mutually agreed upon tasks, positive incentives, consistent reviews, etc. However, the article like many other periodicals on accountability overlooks the significance of job fit.
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Paradox Theory and Team Dynamics

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paradox theory and team management

In today’s specialized work environment, talent is not enough. Talented people must effectively work together in order for the organization to succeed. HR budgets are tight and finding the right combination of talented people who can work together day in and day out to achieve positive results is difficult. As any good sports team knows, getting the right talent on the team in the right positions working together is imperative.

Harrison Assessments Paradox Theory reveals team dynamics in a way that has never before been possible, enabling individual team members to easily identify how their own behaviors contribute or obstruct the team objectives.

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The Verbal Caustic

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verbal caustic

The Verbal Caustic- another Toxic Employee

Almost every organization has experienced some form or another of a Toxic Employee; someone who, whether consciously or subconsciously, disrupts or hinders the advancement of productivity in the workplace.

Also known as “walking liabilities”, they say things and they do things that make them a huge liability. Just because you haven’t been sued for it doesn’t mean they aren’t walking around creating liability for you.

One of those types is the VERBAL CAUSTIC.

Characteristics: Steps on others without even realizing it; blunt and caustic; laser-tongued. Thinks he/she is just being honest, does not know when he/she hurts others’ feelings or doesn’t sufficiently consider others needs while pushing for his/her own (this is certainly not always the case and is less likely).

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Mini Napoleon

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Napoleon Cartoon

Do you have a Mini Napoleon employee in your midst?

Almost every organization has experienced some form or another of a Toxic Employee; someone who, whether consciously or subconsciously, disrupts or hinders the advancement of productivity in the workplace.

Also known as “walking liabilities”, they say things and they do things that make them a huge liability. Just because you haven’t been sued for it doesn’t mean they aren’t walking around creating liability for you. One type of toxic employee is the “Mini Napoleon”.

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Suitability and Eligibility- The Win Win Candidate

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Winning CandidateSuitability AND Eligibility.. The winning combination in HR that can help you find the win/win candidate.

Choosing the best candidate to recruit and hire is not an easy task. However, hiring right the first time can save you a lot of time and your company a lot of money. Today forward thinking companies are using HSM’s and new tools to choose the best candidates. A successful HR manager will use tools that focus on both “suitability AND eligibility” to attract and retain good candidates.

Some recruiters make the mistake of hiring people only for their qualifications, resulting in bad hires related to behavioral weaknesses.

Other recruiters make the mistake of over-emphasizing behavioral factors by eliminating people only on the basis of their behavioral assessments. Sometimes they even unfairly eliminate candidates based on a single behavioral factor. Behavioral assessments should be part of the overall assessment that includes qualifications such as experience, education, and skills. That’s why the Harrison system provides a unique eligibility assessment that complements the suitability assessment, providing an overall score for better hiring and succession planning.

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Emotional Moody

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emotional moody

Do you have an “Emotionally Moody” type person working for you?

Almost every organization today has experienced a “Bad Apple” employee; someone who, whether consciously or subconsciously, disrupts or hinders the advancement of productivity in the workplace. One type of bad apple is the “Emotionally Moody”.

Characteristics: Temperamental and goes through mood swings; difficult to predict the best time to communicate with such employees. Appears distant and can be rather cold towards others; unable to control emotions and finds it diffcult to maintain self-composure.

Traits to look out for: Introverted, low self-esteem, easily tensed and poor stress management techniques, intolerant to bluntness, pessimistic, weak in interpersonal skills and display low comfort with conflict.

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Psychological Traits of a Good White Collar Worker

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psychological traits of a good white collar worker

Psychological Traits of a Good White Collar Worker

Baby Boomers remember the old days that had set working hours. You went to work and then around five p.m., you packed up your stuff and went home. If there were an emergency you might stay until five-thirty.

Those days are gone! White-collar work, sometimes called Knowledge Work, is never done. Your immediate To Do list might have twenty items on it, but right behind the immediate To Do list is a supplemental To Do list with another forty action items on it and after that list is done, there’s a third one waiting.

Most white collar workers today need to be able to work autonomously (that big college word for trusted to work on your own and get it done without supervision). And yet, they also need to be able to work cohesively as part of a team when the need arises.

But not all white collar jobs are created equal.
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Zealous Extremist

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zealous extremist

Do you have a Zealous Extremist working for you?

Characteristics: Strong personal values and life principles; completely passionate and committed to his own belief system. Can be overzealous in preaching or influencing others towards one’s belief system.

Traits to look out for: High influencing power, highly cause-motivated, highly certain and enjoys teaching and/or making presentations.

Negative side: Can either work with the organization or against the organization, depending on whether their values are aligned or different.

How to assess when you hire: If the interviewer finds the above tendencies through profiling, it is critical to takes the time to fully explore the individual’s values as well as the alignment with the organization’s value and direction.

You may even have a “Zealous Extremist” as an employee.
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Robo Advising HR

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Robo Advising HRCylon Centurion
Robo Advising HR

Algorithms seem to be the hot topic and “Robo Advising” is one of the newest fads. Algorithms are used for predicting everything from the weather, sports, economic indicators, and financial data to who is the best person to date? Trying to predict behavior is nothing new, people in ancient times used oracles, fortune tellers and crystal balls. Today’s technology uses algorithms and the new age of “robo advising” has begun.

According to dictionary.com an Algorithm is: a set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps, as for finding the greatest common divisor.

Even though Algorithm’s are sometimes used in place of a human being, hence the term “robo advisor”, they are ultimately just a very powerful tool that needs to be used with care by human beings in order to accurately predict successful outcomes.

So is there a Robo Advising HR that can choose the right person to hire?

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Missing a Step in the Hiring Process

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missing a step in hiring process

Missing a Step in the Hiring Process

You place an opening on a job board to find the professional employee. This is considered time and money well spent since the position you are filling takes skill and requires a substantial amount of training and investment.

But what do you do with the applicants? How do you know from the resume and their references that they are the right fit for your job? Many past employers are afraid of the legal ramifications of indicating that a person did not work out in the job. Or, they may have an incentive to have you take this bad hire off their hands so they may stretch the truth in order to push the exit.

One of the next steps is typically to choose the top 5-10 and then interview. However, you are “missing a step” in the process.
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A Good Weapon to Use in the War for Talent

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War for Talent

A Good Weapon to Use in the War for Talent

Companies today are constantly in a war for talent. Identifying the right targets and having the ability to capture them is essential to winning. We are looking for the innovative leaders of tomorrow and the competition is stiff.

Gone are the days of high unemployment and applicants banging down your door just to get an application. Job boards and matching sites are furiously searching for qualified candidates to post their resumes. Companies are competing against each other to find and attract good candidates.

It is imperative for hiring managers and recruiters to fully understand what truly appeals to the candidates in order to attract and retain the best people.
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The Best Kept Secret in Talent Management!

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bestKeptSecret

Harrison Assessments

Is improving engagement and retention a top priority in your organization? An analytics system that facilitates better hiring and promotion decisions at every level and enables leaders to more effectively onboard, coach and mentor their employees can dramatically impact your results. At the same time, preparing your talent to advance requires effective behavioral assessment. The best kept secret in talent management is that now one system can meet each of these crucial needs!
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Harrison’s Job Success Formula- JSF

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Harrison Assessments Job Success Formula

Harrison’s Job Success Formula- JSF
Personality tests are increasingly popular due to the importance of understanding how an employee or job candidate will behave. Since poor performance usually relates to behavioral issues, measuring job behavior is essential.

However, personality tests are very general, usually measuring only 4-30 personality factors which are used for every job. In contrast, Harrison Assessments’ award winning suitability assessment is designed to measure engagement, motivation, interpersonal skills and retention factors related to specific jobs.

Ever wonder how Dan Harrison and the Harrison Assessments formulate the success factors for a specific job?

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Blind Optimist

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blind optimist

Blind Optimist

Do you have a Blind Optimist at work? The kind of person who sees good in everything, no matter what the situation? That ever so cheery person who never seems to be living in reality? A little ray of sunshine in the workplace is good right? The sprinkler alarms could be raining water down on desks and they would smile and say… “at least the plants are getting watered”. Okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration but you get the point.

Having optimism is good, but it is also possible to have too much optimism to the point that it is “blinding”. An optimistic attitude is good, especially if you are in a position that requires a little extra positive energy, such as sales or customer service, however if the optimism gets in the way of making accurate strategy analysis or executing or performing a tasks with attention to the possible fail factors the increased level of optimism could become a hindrance to success.

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Walkway Strollers (or Web Browsers)

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Prairie Dogging

Walkway Strollers (or Web Browsers)

Do you have a Walkway/Web Stroller at your office? You may recognize the type:

Characteristics: Highly mobile around the office complex and loves peeping into others’ cubicle (workstation) finding out how others are managing their work and life.

This behavior may manifest itself virtually. The walkway stroller may not cruise the actual hallways, they may cruise the web instead. They may take it upon themselves to police the social media sites, peeping into the personal posts of their co-workers.

This person typically thinks s/he is practicing management by walkabout except that s/he forgets to manage his or her own work, deliverables and KPIs first.

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Suitability and Hiring Selection Success

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suitability and hiring selection success

Suitability and Hiring Selection Success

For most jobs, suitability/behavioral factors are about 50% of the reason people succeed or fail at a job. Therefore, effectively measuring suitability should be an essential part of any job fit or hiring assessment. The importance of assessing behavior during recruitment is evidenced by the fact that most organizations hire people for their eligibility and then try to develop their suitability. And in many cases, they fire them for their lack of suitability. Since behavior is fundamentally more difficult to change than eligibility, it is better to hire people who already have the right suitability for the job.

Suitability/behavioral factors are more difficult to assess because, unlike eligibility factors, there is no objective and verifiable information that is readily available. In addition, suitability factors are much more interrelated, and subtle balances between factors have significant implications for behavior. To make it even more challenging, applicants have a significant incentive to withhold or distort information that might hinder their job opportunity. This is highlighted by a recent study that determined that 80% of resumes contained lies.

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