Human Element Archives - Material Handling Wholesaler

Why leaders need to understand every behavior has a purpose

Mon, 27 Jan 2020 16:11:26 +0000

Behavior is what humans do, and it’s observable and measurable. Whether it is to walk from one place to another or to crack one’s knuckles, behavior serves some type of function and provides a consequence or reinforcement for the behavior. When leaders successfully identify the function of their organizational behaviors, one can reinforce an alternate, acceptable behaviors that will replace them. When an employee has a particular need or function fulfilled by an alternate means, the mal-adaptive or unacceptable behavior is less likely to reappear. For example, if an employee seeks attention and a leader gives them attention in an appropriate way because of appropriate behavior, employees tend to cement the appropriate behavior and make the inappropriate or unwanted behavior less likely to appear. While this sounds fairly clinical, and maybe even simply common-sense, it is often overlooked and underutilized by organizational leadership. We assume since we are working with experienced adults, that behavioral reinforcement isn’t really necessary – that’s only required for children. However, the opposite is quite true. Consider an employee who continually skirts deadlines, or avoids taking on tough projects – even if they are directly assigned to them. Does the manager address this behavior, or simply avoid conflict? When these behaviors aren’t addressed or corrected, it’s a way of validation – stating that the behavior is acceptable. In addition, those leaders who aren’t attuned to their employees’ behaviors can miss many red flags. Has an employee who once was hard working and positive, recently tuned-out or disconnected from the group? This can be an indication of a problem, whether personal or professional. It could be an indication of anything from harassment in the workplace, all the way to problems at home such as an ill family member, adding stress to their day-to-day. While we often don’t want to cross the line into these deeper personal areas, an employee’s behavior is sending a signal nonetheless. Every behavior has a purpose, and these behaviors usually indicate a bigger, underlying issue. They often aren’t simply mood swings. As leaders, we need to take more time to tune into employee behaviors, listen, observe, and take action. Leaders, whether consciously or not, are always shaping organizational culture with their behaviors, or lack thereof. If you want to build a strong, healthy and productive team, don’t simply ignore changes in employee behaviors, or fail to reinforce healthy and productive behaviors. It’s the job of leaders to develop people, and a key part of that role is understanding behavioral signals. About the Author: Andrea’s 22-year, field-tested background provides unique, applicable approaches to creating more customer-centric organizations. A 4-time ADDY® award-winner, she began her career at a tech start-up and led the strategic marketing efforts at two global industrial manufacturers. In addition to writing, consulting and coaching, Andrea speaks to organizations around the world on how to craft effective customer-facing operational strategies to effectively differentiate and build healthy, efficient organizational cultures. Connect with Andrea to access information on her books, workshops, keynote speeches, training or consulting. More information is also available on www.pragmadik.com and www.thecustomermission.com.

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Ten ways to create a WOW Culture (and retain your best talent) in 2020

Fri, 03 Jan 2020 14:35:10 +0000

Are you creating what Deb Boelkes calls a “WOW factor workplace”? If not, watch out: You’re at risk of losing your best people. Here, she suggests ten things leaders should do—or stop doing—to turn your culture around this year January is the perfect time to start thinking about your workplace culture. A positive one produces happy, engaged employees who give their best efforts, challenge themselves to grow, and consistently meet goals and delight customers. A toxic one creates miserable, unmotivated clock-watchers and job-board checkers. Deb Boelkes says shoring up your culture—making sure your company is a place where the best and brightest can thrive—is probably the single most important thing you can focus on this year. “In a strong economy like ours, people have their pick of good jobs,” says Boelkes, author of The WOW Factor Workplace: How to Create a Best Place to Work Culture (Business World Rising, December 2019, ISBN: 978-1-734-07610-3, $19.95). “If your culture is one of disengagement and toxicity, your most talented workers will be looking to leave. You’ll be left with mediocre and low performers who have little incentive to do more than the bare minimum.” The bad news is that leaders often aren’t aware their culture isn’t what it should be. The good news is that they can change that. When leaders consistently motivate and inspire employees, fill them with purpose, challenge them, and make them feel safe and supported, what Boelkes calls the “WOW factor” manifests, grows, and permeates the entire culture. Any type of company can create a “Best Place to Work” culture—also known as a WOW factor workplace—when leaders commit to being role models who train and inspire employees to create extraordinary products and deliver impeccable service at a great value (regardless of the price). This creates an unparalleled experience for both employees and customers, making both groups feel special, appreciated, and respected. To start creating a culture of WOW in 2020, follow this advice. Stop allowing difficult people and idiots to thrive. (Hire slow and fire fast.) When your company is made up of talented, enthusiastic, hard working people, employees won’t want to leave. That’s why you should hire only people who will fit in with the culture you’re creating—and get rid of bullies and others who create a toxic culture. You may be reluctant to fire someone you yourself hired, but don’t wait till they do maximum damage. Fire him or her now. “I love the simple yet effective mantra of Todd Wilcox, chairman of Patriot Defense: ‘No assholes, no idiots,'” says Boelkes. “These no-nonsense standards guarantee that everyone supports each other, has the right attitude, and wants to do what’s best for the company.” Make adjustments and break things to make WOW happen. Adjustments are made all the time in WOW factor workplaces to make things even better than they already are. The adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is NOT the way WOW factor workplaces become WOW factor workplaces. Sometimes you must break things intentionally to make continuous dramatic improvements that enable WOW to happen. “You may have to move an employee from one position to another, for example,” says Boelkes. “If someone isn’t thriving, you owe it to him or her and to the company to make a change.” Encourage your employees to interview elsewhere…really! Boelkes is a strong believer in a piece of advice she learned early in her career: Always be interviewing. While this applies to managers seeking the best possible job candidates, she says it also applies to employees. Everyone should interview elsewhere from time to time. This is one way to ensure neither the employee nor the business gets complacent. It’s crucial for employees to know their value to the outside world. “Likewise, organizations should be made aware if they are not keeping up with competitive marketplace opportunities,” says Boelkes. “You certainly don’t want to wait until your best team members have accepted another position elsewhere to finally offer them a raise or a promotion. By then, their hearts and minds are out the door.” Start mentoring in the moment. Mentoring should happen every single day, not just a few times a year during performance reviews. That’s why Todd Wilcox recommends that leaders should have a smaller number of direct reports—more like five or six instead of fifteen or twenty. With a smaller group, leaders can talk to their mentees every single day. “There are limited resources,” says Wilcox. “You don’t have enough time to talk to more than four or five or six people in a single day. If you’re not talking to people every single day, then I would argue you’re not effectively communicating, managing, mentoring, and developing them.” Set high expectations and hold your people to them. WOW factor workplaces have a well-documented set of behavioral standards and performance expectations. When someone isn’t meeting these expectations, leaders will collaborate with him or her to develop an improvement plan that spells out SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Reasonable, and Time-bound). Each party is responsible for holding the other accountable to his or her end of the bargain. The underperformer must either get his or her act together or move on to something else. “I have had to look dear friends in the eye and tell them they couldn’t keep a job because of something they’d done,” says Colleen Barrett, president emeritus and corporate secretary of Southwest Airlines. “Or I couldn’t recommend them for another, and I still retained the friendship. You know, that’s hard. But if you’re just honest with people, I think the worst disservice you can do is NOT tell somebody when they are not making the grade. That’s just ridiculous.” Refuse to tolerate excuses (from yourself and from others). Some people hold themselves back. They may think they aren’t as good as others or as prepared as others to assume a leadership role. Maybe they haven’t had as much education or they’re from a low-income family or any of a whole variety of reasons. Don’t let this happen. Tell employees

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Create a long-term success plan for your new hires

Wed, 20 Nov 2019 06:00:44 +0000

A new season of hiring means welcoming lots of new members to the team. Change can be challenging, so it’s important to focus on creating a long-term plan for your new hire’s success within your organization. This helps build an employee development framework for both you and the individual so they can make a smooth transition and feel empowered to take on their new role, while working toward their career goals and meeting organizational needs. We’ve put together the four necessary points you need to focus on when planning and building out your long-term success plan for your employees. 1. Onboarding and training Your plan for the long-term success and growth of your new employees starts with onboarding and training. Ensuring they have the necessary materials and tools to help them jump in and stay in is essential for overall employee success – and it all starts with onboarding and continues with training. So how can you plan for the best onboarding and training for new hires without falling into common traps? Below are a few common mistakes and how to avoid them so you can maximize your onboarding and training initiatives: Common Mistakes in Your Onboarding Process: Fast-tracking executives. Onboarding isn’t just for entry-level employees. Many organizations pass right by the onboarding process for their executive-level hires, but don’t assume that they don’t require proper onboarding. While they have more experience, every company is different and has unique needs that their employees have been hired to fill. By onboarding every level of new hire, you will be able to ensure success and continuous growth within your company. Relying on charts and bullet points for communication expectations.Take the time to actually show new employees where to go and who to talk to, and introduce them to members of their new team. Many companies fall into the trap of leaving new employees to fill in the gaps themselves. By creating this bridge of communication, you’ll have lines of communication open from the start. As a result, you’ll be able to help make your employees feel more comfortable reaching out to others, collaborate more effectively, and boost productivity. How to maximize training and onboarding: Multi-Device Learning: Maximize your new hire’s performance and potential with multi-device learning from the start. You’ll find your workers will be far more engaged with your training when they’re able to self-direct their education and are not forced to spend hours away from their desks to do it. You’ll also have a far more productive workforce, as they can use your learning platform at their times of need and immediately put their learning into practice. Plan for the first 3-6 months: Frequently, companies end their onboarding after a month, sometimes even less, which can make your new hires feel disconnected and lost. Learning expectations and being entirely comfortable in a new role can take six months or more, and according to SHRM, only 15% of companies continue onboarding after six months. Take into consideration that nearly 90% of employees decide whether to stay or go within that first six months — those first few months make a significant impact on that decision. 2. Goals and benchmarking Do you and your new hire have the same understanding of the role and the expectations thereof? It’s crucial to start on the right foot. Start by collaborating with their team and supervisor to make sure goals and training align with team needs and how the new employee fits in. Building this into your success plan will help create a smooth transition into the employee’s new role. Helping your new hire set goals with their supervisor and strategize a game plan to execute those goals will not only give insight and motivation for your new hire but will also provide the organization a better look at how each employee is impacting the business. This isn’t something you necessarily implement within the first few days, but planning for the next six months, or even further, can help them understand their overall path with the company. Setting your new team members up with a tool like the Individual Developmental Guide will help direct them to take ownership of their own growth to reach their goals and keep them on track. Utilizing such a tool will help you and your new hire develop a strategic long-term training plan to maximize their performance and boost their engagement. Tip for Success: Have a mentor program – connecting your new hires with an experienced team member to bounce ideas off of, hold each other accountable, and give them a sense of support to push out those goals will build a strong foundation for your new hire. 3. Professional development and continued learning Learning doesn’t stop after onboarding. Help each employee reach their maximum potential by going beyond traditional training by training self-awareness. The best way for employees to grow their own strengths is by understanding what they are. With the Individual Developmental Guide, your employees and managers can stay connected, and it allows management to take part in each employee’s continuous training. Setting, executing, and completing goals is just one small part of the guide. Your managers and employees can also practice and improve different skills and evaluate their own success. Professional development is one of the key benefits candidates often search for in a company. They want to know that they will be challenged and have the opportunity to grow, improve, and climb in their profession. Planning out and building this into your long-term success plan — and continuously building on it throughout an individual’s time with the company — keeps them on track and shows them that you want them to succeed. The Individual Developmental Guide is designed to help employee’s understand their own personal traits, motivators, stressors, and behaviors, so they can work with their managers to build their success plan and utilize actionable recommendations for growth and development. 4. Promotion and leadership You’re spending a considerable amount of time — and possibly money — to help your employees improve their skills. To get a return on investment, your

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How to create balanced sales teams

Sun, 20 Oct 2019 05:00:25 +0000

Creating balanced sales teams may not be the first thing you think of when hiring and coaching but when you HAVE a balanced team, the results and benefits are clear to the bottom line, productivity, and engagement in the workplace. So, how can you work to create balanced teams within sales organizations? Well, it starts by understanding what a balanced team truly is…and what it isn’t. We’re all familiar with the sales archetypes that run rampant through pop culture. There’s the typical used-car salesman type, the shark, the “always be closing” type, and more. However, in today’s more sophisticated sales environments, those aren’t what we’re working with. Portrait of a balanced sales team Simply put, a well-balanced team is one where all the elements that make an individual salesperson successful are represented across the team. It’s unrealistic to think that all these employees will have the same level of mental toughness, something we’ve identified as necessary to create successful salespeople. If we look closer, however, we can see that underlying the standard “sales abilities”, you can find out how to balance all your teams’ strengths and weaknesses with a little knowledge. Digging deeper into your sales team’s strengths and abilities No one knows your sales team better than you do, and hopefully, you’ve used assessments to gain a deeper understanding into what makes them tick, what coaching style works for them, and how to develop mental toughness in those employees who are lacking. Let’s take that knowledge, expertise, and assessment information to figure out how to create a well-balanced sales team. You’ve likely already determined which of your employees possess the mental toughness to succeed overall, but what about your other employees? Get to know your employees. This seems like an obvious one, but when you take the time to get to know each employee, you may discover Heather’s capacity to see a complex sale through to the end, or Jona’s uncanny knack to calm an irate prospect down in order to get him to sign on the dotted line. While neither of these traits displays mental toughness per se, they are both crucial to a well-balanced sales team. Using these traits together with mental toughness and other sales-focused abilities and skills will create a well-balanced sales team. But you won’t know about any of these traits or abilities unless you assess your team properly and often AND take the time to get to know them and watch them at work. Ask yourself: How and when do they seem to work best? In which situations do they thrive? What tasks do their coworkers bring to them specifically? How do they respond to clients and prospects? It’s also worth noting that if you DON’T see them as mentally tough, or if they rated low on that attribute, dig into WHY. You may find something there that can help to round out the team. What other aspects can help create a balanced sales team? While mental toughness is one of the best indicators of sales success, it’s certainly not the only one. In our recent article, Power of Personality, we wrote about a few personality traits that are measured by the Caliper Profile found to contribute to sales success: Ego-Drive:A person with a high ego-drive is motivated by the ability to persuade others. For a salesperson, that means they feel good when they make a sale, so they’ll do whatever it takes not to lose. They’re driven by the desire to feed their ego. Empathy:An empathetic person considers how the things they say and do affect others. A salesperson with strong empathy will pay attention to the reactions of their prospects and adjust their tactics based on response. They are constantly taking the temperature of the conversation and will pivot as soon as they feel something is amiss. Urgency:Urgency means that a person feels compelled to complete a task quickly and efficiently. For salespeople, that means proactively setting up calls, following up promptly, setting hard timelines, and consistently pushing the conversation forward. So, our aforementioned “always be closing” archetype may have the trait of Ego-Drive, while the person in the office who gets really motivated on the 25th of every month might display Urgency. Having a team that possesses these traits can be incredibly valuable, especially since they can be driven by different things. Keeping your balanced team motivated One of the key reasons to create a balanced sales team is for it to motivate itself. When you have equal parts mental toughness, urgency, ego-drive, and empathy, your motivation cycle is often picked up by one member or part of the team at a time. While your ego-driven team may help the team start the month on a high note with her energy and desire to win, your empathy-minded team member may help get a difficult sale across the goal line. While the mentally tough employee continues to keep trying despite his low numbers, the urgency teammate can get the team to the end of the month with his focus on hitting the end goal. Note how these styles complement one another and can serve as antidotes when each of the attributes is eventually spent. Pay close attention to your employees’ attributes but know when to coach and activate them so they can motivate one another. Productive, tightly-knit teams have high morale, especially when they must work together to meet challenging goals. About Caliper – For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve peak performance by advising them on hiring the right people, managing individuals most effectively and developing productive teams. The accuracy, objectivity and depth of our consulting approach enable us to provide solutions that work for over 25,000 companies. To find out more about how Caliper can help you identify and develop people who can lead your organization to peak performance, please visit us at www.calipercorp.com or call them at 609-524-1200. Email editorial@mhwmag.com to contact Caliper.

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Six components of Self-Management

Fri, 20 Sep 2019 05:00:55 +0000

The office environment can be a challenging place. You have to deal with all kinds of personalities at any given time, you see things that are broken but lack the resources or influence to fix them, and, often, people who don’t understand your work are there to tell you how to do it. But we all just want to produce good results and receive acknowledgment for our effort. In an ideal world, you are in a role that plays to your strengths and motivations and limits exposure to your weaknesses, and you are partnered with a manager who serves as your advocate. In reality, you’re likely motivated by some aspects of your job and not always by others, and your manager has many other responsibilities that prevent them from being the best coach they can be to their team. In this scenario, the best you can do is do your best. And achieving your best requires a measure of self-management. Motivation is often a set factor. In other words, you can’t choose what motivates you at work anymore than you can choose your height or your family members. You can’t make yourself be outgoing if you’re shy, and you can’t spark competition if trophies don’t interest you. And the external factors that can stand between you and your goals—economic upheaval, competitive threats, disruptive changes, and mergers and acquisitions—aren’t something we can always plan for. You can, however, choose how you conduct yourself. Organizations are always looking for employees who exhibit high potential and caliber for self-management. Focusing on the following six areas of self-management can help your company identify and nurture future leaders and lay a foundation for performance management and individual development. 1. Composure under pressure Did you know one of the top job competencies for supervisory, sales, and customer-service positions is composure? Regardless of the power dynamic between employees and stakeholders, staying composed shows that they are in control. Staying calm earns respect, sets the tone, and increases others’ willingness to follow their lead. It’s contagious, in a good way. Four ways to keep your cool and remain composed: Remain visible– Allow your teammates to see you so they know you are in control and handling the situation. Respond decisively– Stand behind your decisions and encourage your team to take action, but don’t hesitate to ask for help when needed. Take accountability – Let your teammates know that you are accountable and committed to solving the issue and that you’ll do so in a timely, effective manner. Stay positive– Enable others to regain their composure by keeping your cool. The more relaxed and calmer everyone is, the better the outcome will be. 2. Self-awareness It’s important that employees consider the way they’re perceived by the people around them. They might be perfectly good at performing their work, but if their teammates only experience their loud personal phone calls that echo through the building, oblivious comments that insult other team members, and tiresome questioning of others’ statements, it’s going to be difficult to put that person into a place of leadership. A self-aware employee monitors reactions and considers how their words and actions affect everyone else. How to be more self-aware: Ask for honest feedback– Don’t argue with or deflect what you hear. Take a personality assessment– Gather insights on your personality and work-specific competencies to help you understand your own proficiencies and deficiencies. Reflect – Think back on your daily interactions and how you handled situations well or could have handled them differently. 3. Open to change Technology changes fast, as do consumer preferences, company processes, and market trends. It’s inevitable that companies have to revise systems, strategies, and policies. Refusing to adapt and showing resentment toward change are sure ways to be labeled as stubborn or stagnant. How to show you’re adaptable: Ask questions– Start preparing yourself early for new changes, and help others transition as seamlessly as possible. Update your understanding – Stay current with best practices and read up when new information comes to light. Volunteer to be part of the solution – Is there a steering committee or a team leading the changes? Get involved! 4. Professionalism Professionalism is about maintaining integrity when executing your responsibilities, respecting people at all levels of the organization (as well as customers and vendors), and embracing the ethics and best practices of the profession. In fact, openly expressing a personal philosophy of professionalism in a job interview can make a favorable impression on a prospective employer. How to demonstrate professionalism in the workplace: Show up to work on time Stay positive and redirect negativity Offer assistance to your co-workers Own up to your mistakes Leave a bad mood at the door Avoid swearing or using inappropriate language 5. Ownership of work No matter where they stand on the organizational chart, an employee with good self-management makes tasks their own and delivers on their promises. They accept both praise and criticism gracefully, and don’t pass the blame for setbacks or are grateful for help when working on a team. How to own your work and set an example for others: Hold yourself and employees accountable– Accountability is the belief that we have control over most situations and outcomes in our everyday lives, regardless of the situation or how fair it seems. What does true accountability look like in your team? Define this and be open to any feedback from your team. Be in control of your own fear– Fearful of failure? Write down your concerns, and how much of that fear you have the ability to impact. Chances are you are in control of a lot of those failures because you choose your own fear. Own that fear, and it’ll help you get ahead and make you that much better of a leader. Start with the end goal in mind– What is the end goal you need to accomplish? Discover it, define it, and don’t try to alter it if it hasn’t been achieved. This will help you stay on track when you start to slip, and what it

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Five qualities that separate Extraordinary Salespeople from the rest

Sat, 20 Jul 2019 05:00:07 +0000

Sales is a competitive business and a tough one at that. If a candidate doesn’t have the right qualities in place, your team and company are going to lose big. So, what makes an individual a good fit for the job? These five traits of salespeople separate the extraordinary from the rest. Self-Motivated Top salespeople are continually learning and improving their processes to keep up with their customers and competition. They take time to understand the product, the company, and customers. With this new-found knowledge, they create a customer focused action plan. Want sales to grow? You have to stay ahead of the game, and top sales performers know this and are willing to put in the extra work to make it happen. Did you know? More than half of prospects want to see how the product works on the first call. Remarkable salespeople have the focus and determination to strive for the best and more. They push past the distractions and set individual goals to be a top producer. They’re armed with a strategic action plan that guides them to reach goals and not let setbacks stand in their way. Personable Nobody likes to talk to someone who can’t hold a conversation or comes off cold. Every salesperson who has closed multiple deals and has a long list of clients has one thing in common – they’re personable. Customers are more attracted and likely to work with your company when your sales rep has a heightened level of emotional intelligence and can use it to create a connection with customers. Your sales reps should be able to spark a connection and build a foundation between the customer and themselves. By doing this, your customers will feel valued and appreciated, and in the long run, will want to continue doing business with you. A benefit that comes with this is word of mouth referrals. Customers who have an incredible experience with their sales reps are likely to tell others, which can bring in more sales opportunities for your company. Passionate & Optimistic Top salespeople are typically positive and optimistic. They have a strong passion for the company and the products they sell. They typically have an upbeat outlook and tend to have a good sense of humor and overall fun aspect about them. While they still have those grounded traits, they make sure customers love working with your company. A top salesperson demonstrates passion every day, and it is clear that they believe in their product and their organization. This confidence and passion give customers a sense of comfort. They see their sales rep as authentic and trust what the rep is telling them. Fast Fact: “Less than 10 percent of top salespeople were classified as having high levels of discouragement and being frequently overwhelmed with sadness.” Optimism plays a huge part when you separate the average salesperson and the top performer. When your sales rep uses an optimistic approach, they know what they can achieve and they don’t allow one bad day or experience to tarnish their positivity or outlook on their overall goals. They focus on what they can control and take those bad experiences as learning opportunities to do better. Resilient Those top performers know the feeling of being told “no” over and over, but they also know how to bounce back fast and be persistent. They know how to get the job done and keep their focus. Bouncing back can tell you a lot about a salesperson’s attitude and personality if they can jump back into the game after being discouraged. They’re likely able to take constructive feedback well and are willing to put in the hard work. Top performers don’t get discouraged when their numbers are lower than usual but instead look for opportunities. Those extraordinary salespeople have the tenacity to push through hardships and conquer any obstacles that might get in their way. Problem Solver The desire to create an ultimate experience for customers is a necessary quality for top performers. A great salesperson will look for new ways to solve customers’ needs, financially and emotionally. They are able to offer the right solutions based on customer needs and present it in a way that feels genuine and empathetic. By putting your customers’ needs first your organization is seen as capable and trustworthy. Want to train your salespeople so they may compete with the best? With Caliper Precision Series your company can offer self-paced micro-learning around the competencies related to sales success. About Caliper – For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve peak performance by advising them on hiring the right people, managing individuals most effectively and developing productive teams. The accuracy, objectivity and depth of our consulting approach enable us to provide solutions that work for over 25,000 companies. To find out more about how Caliper can help you identify and develop people who can lead your organization to peak performance, please visit us at www.calipercorp.com or call them at 609-524-1200. Email editorial@mhwmag.com to contact Caliper.

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What’s your Human Capital strategy?

Mon, 20 May 2019 05:00:19 +0000

The accelerated rate of change occurring across most industries today makes strategic planning especially challenging for business executives. It has become increasingly difficult to maintain a competitive edge in an era of low barriers to entry, increased competitor activity, rapidly changing customer needs, quickly evolving technology, and economic and legal trends. As the workplace continues to evolve, it will become ever more important to integrate your business planning with your talent-development strategy. “Companies need to become more nimble and flexible with respect to how they manage human capital if they want to stay ahead of constantly changing demands,” says Tom Schoenfelder, Ph.D., director of Caliper’s research and development. Rather than creating job descriptions that are simply lists of qualifications and demanding that applicants have X number of years’ experience carrying out specific tasks that were defined as tactically important in the past, business leaders need to step back and ask themselves: Why does this company exist? What are we trying to accomplish? How do we maintain and grow our position in the market? How is all of this going to look in 3 to 5 years? Only after answering these questions can you see what the evolving functions of critical job roles are likely to be, now and in the future. In other words, Schoenfelder says, “Once you identify the collection of functions required to support the strategy and reinforce the company’s competitive differentiators, you have a better idea of what is needed from your human capital.” Otherwise, you are following the standard, inefficient hiring model where you keep hiring new people to take on outdated and ineffective tasks that are not necessarily linked to a strategy. Work context matters as well. Business leaders should seek a deep understanding of the company culture to answer two critical questions: first, does the culture support the strategy? and second, are we hiring and onboarding individuals who are likely to thrive in that culture? For example, does fostering an environment of autonomy and creativity lead to overall performance that supports the competitive differentiators, and are these workplace attributes highly valued by management, or is it more important for employees to follow set systems and integrate with existing processes? Many managers will offhandedly say that their organization wants creative and independent people, but the practical reality may be that rules-followers perform better. Fortunately for senior leaders, the field of business analytics is becoming more and more sophisticated and science driven, and good analytics can help a company not only map employees to company culture but also evaluate the ROI of recent hires and refine the hiring process. Dr. Schoenfelder believes work context is not only measurable through analytics but that it “significantly impacts organizational behavior and performance.” That is, failing to properly map people to company culture affects not just a particular function but the entire organization. About Caliper – For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve peak performance by advising them on hiring the right people, managing individuals most effectively and developing productive teams. The accuracy, objectivity and depth of our consulting approach enable us to provide solutions that work for over 25,000 companies. To find out more about how Caliper can help you identify and develop people who can lead your organization to peak performance, please visit us at www.calipercorp.com or call them at 609-524-1200. Email editorial@mhwmag.com to contact Caliper.

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How promoting employee happiness benefits everyone

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 16:59:10 +0000

Everyone has seen the statistics about employee happiness and how it’ll change the way your workplace operates. Companies with happy employees outperform their competitors by 20%. Some companies have even gone as far as hiring an employee experience officer. One of the most notable companies to hire someone dedicated to employee experience was Airbnb back in 2015 when they transitioned their Chief Human Resources Officer to the Head of Employee Experience. The duties of the new role include shared HR functions as well as responsibilities that focus on their new “workplace as an experience” vision. To achieve this vision, most offices included a group of employees called “ground control” that focus on bringing AirBnb’s culture to life. So why are companies focusing so much on employee happiness and their experience at work? Beyond looking good in Forbes’ Best Places to Work List here are a number of benefits that outweigh the cost when investing in employee happiness. But, most offices can’t afford to hire a Head of Employee Experience. Often, departments delegate responsibilities to one person or a team of individuals to ensure that tasks don’t fall through the cracks. At the end of the day, you want your employees to be both happy and productive. So, what are you doing to promote their happiness? Productivity, happiness and your bottom line According to a new report titled The Financial Impact of a Positive Employee Experience, the companies that scored the highest reported nearly three times to return on assets and doubled their return on sales. Your employee experience isn’t just tied to happiness but also productivity throughout the workplace. The better the experience your employees have, the happier they become. This can lead to a drastic improvement in your company’s bottom line. If you notice that productivity is low and it seems you’ve done all you can do to promote employee happiness in the workplace, take a look at your hiring practices and see if there needs to be more precision when hiring. Sit down and take the time to assess options to improve gaps in your hiring process. Moving forward, this can tremendously impact your employees’ future happiness and productivity. Offering a work-life balance isn’t easily maintainable. Adding simple changes can help employees feel like their entire life isn’t about their job. Being able to separate work and personal life often gives people freedom, allowing them to unplug and recharge. When employees aren’t having to constantly worry about work after work, it increases their drive. Allowing employees to recharge gives them the opportunity to come in with a fresh attitude instead of being bogged down. Having a clear break between life and work is an easy way to promote happiness. Engagement, happiness and a retained workforce The average cost-per-hire for companies is $4,129 per new employee according to the Society of Human Resource Management’s recent Human Capital Trend Report. In terms of employee retention, the average employee tenure according to this same study is eight years with an annual turnover rate of 19% and an involuntary turnover rate of 8%. Take this cost-savings approach when it comes to factoring in your budget for employee happiness. To maintain a level of employee happiness it’s important to keep employees engaged. Your employees are responsible for sparking energy and creating ideas throughout your company. One way that companies are able to decrease retention and increase happiness is by having better engagement between co-workers. Developing and enforcing friendships can have a great impact on your organization. Work friendships help employees to become more engaged and more innovative. Employee happiness is 23.3% more correlated to connections with coworkers than direct supervisors according to a recent survey. At the end of the day, real success comes from how engaged your employees are. Be creative and ask your employees for suggestions Who knows what they want more than your actual employees? While there isn’t much science behind the idea of a suggestion box, there is behind your employee’s knowing what they want out of a successful workplace. Add a suggestion box and pick out something each month to improve your workplace, whether big or small. Not only will your employees feel heard and appreciated, but it’s a simple and quick way to increase employee happiness. Allowing your employees to ask or suggest tools and resources they may need to collaborate and improve in the workplace can serve as a big win for your company in the end. Tapping into their resources, technical savviness and creative expertise, your employees can show you things that you may have missed in your organization. By inviting employees’ best ideas, you are continuing to foster and promote a more collaborative culture that sparks creativity beyond your expectations. Employee happiness benefits everyone because, at the end of the day, you’re increasing your bottom line by either saving or not having to spend a ton of money on new employees. Think of happiness as something you can offer by tweaking different aspects in your workplace that benefit employees and improve your organization. All in all, it is possible for employees to be happy and productive in their workplace. Caliper offers you the tools and resources to assess, track and improve employee engagement in your workplace. About Caliper – For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve peak performance by advising them on hiring the right people, managing individuals most effectively and developing productive teams. The accuracy, objectivity and depth of our consulting approach enable us to provide solutions that work for over 25,000 companies. To find out more about how Caliper can help you identify and develop people who can lead your organization to peak performance, please visit us at www.calipercorp.com or call them at 609-524-1200. Email editorial@mhwmag.com to contact Caliper.

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Should I hire this person?

Wed, 20 Mar 2019 05:00:37 +0000

Nothing can derail decision making like conflicting data. Have you ever read online reviews for restaurants when planning a vacation itinerary? You get 12 people saying Uncle Frank’s BBQ is the best they’ve ever had, while 8 others claim it’s the worst. The 12 advocates report that Uncle Frank’s Memphis-style ribs are tender and flavorful. The 8 naysayers insist the ribs are dry, chewy, and bland. So you end up saying, “To heck with it,” and go to the national-chain restaurant because at least you know what to expect there. Selection and hiring can be a bit like choosing a restaurant, but the stakes (no pun intended) are a lot higher. If a restaurant turns out to be mediocre, it’s not a tragedy; you only had to eat there that one time. But when a new hire is mediocre, you’re reliving it every day for the next six months or five years. Consider that a company is looking at two candidates for the same role. One applicant has 7 years’ experience doing the work. However, he didn’t interview well. The other applicant only has 1.5 years’ experience but clicked with the interviewers and seems like a good culture fit. The hiring manager is rendered indecisive by the conflicting inputs. She personally liked the second candidate, but there’s no denying the first candidate’s proven skill set. What to do? Well, one advantage hiring managers have that restaurant patrons do not is the option of running a pre-employment assessment. An assessment that is validated for selection, such as the Caliper Profile, will show you the things you can’t see on a resume or in an interview: the intrinsic motivations, limitations, and behavioral tendencies of job applicants. This is often the additional data point needed to make that hiring choice with confidence. It’s not uncommon for employers to overestimate the importance of learned skills and underestimate the intrinsic potential of prospective workers. The next statement is obvious: skills can be taught and potential cannot. But more to the point, skills fall out of favor when business priorities shift and technology changes. Learned skills today might not be relevant 3 or 5 years from now when the person who was hired is up for promotion or moves to a different department. Meanwhile, intrinsic motivations like Active Listening, Collaboration and Teamwork, Relationship Building, and Creativity and Innovation not only help a person succeed in a given role, they are beneficial to the company now and for as long as the person is under its employ. Furthermore, by bringing in people who are wired to exhibit the on-the-job behaviors you want to see across the organization, you can reshape the company culture for the better. That’s so much more powerful and meaningful than 5 years of experience plugging away at one task or another. None of this means that the person with more experience won’t also be the better candidate from a psychometric perspective. You may find out, after looking at the assessment report, that the less-experienced person also lacks the intrinsic motivations you want now and in the future. You might discover that, although the experienced person did not interview particularly well, he shows the performance drivers needed to deliver the desired work result over time. Conversely, it’s possible that the less-experienced applicant’s motivators align better with the job. The point is that having your applicants complete a behavior-based pre-employment assessment like the Caliper Profile will provide the objective data you can’t get from resumes or interviews. Assessment results also show a wide-angle view that considers the entire employee lifecycle, not simply what candidate brings today in learned skills. And it gives hiring managers the confidence needed to answer a fundamental question: Should I hire this person? About Caliper – For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve peak performance by advising them on hiring the right people, managing individuals most effectively and developing productive teams. The accuracy, objectivity and depth of our consulting approach enable us to provide solutions that work for over 25,000 companies. To find out more about how Caliper can help you identify and develop people who can lead your organization to peak performance, please visit us at www.calipercorp.com or call them at 609-524-1200. Email editorial@mhwmag.com to contact Caliper.

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The surprising secret behind amazing hires

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 06:00:14 +0000

Are you hiring top talent with the right degrees and experience, but something still seems to be missing? Imagine the capability of taking it a step further, beyond the candidate’s credentials and measuring if they’re truly capable of handling the position you are hiring for. Focusing more on the competencies of a candidate, rather than credentials, will allow you to do just that. It’s reported that 31% of organizations have yet to define the essential leadership competencies needed for leaders at all levels to achieve business goals. And of those who have defined leadership competencies, just 8% have automated competency management, according to Brandon Hall Group’s 2016 Talent Management Study. Defining Competency-Based Hiring Competency is simply the ability to do something successfully or efficiently. The term core competency was originally introduced in 1990 by the Harvard Business Review to describe the management concept of corporations possessing specialized expertise in a specific area. The concept of core competencies was quickly adopted by many corporations to communicate what they did “best” and to leverage the competitive advantages of their brands. Core competencies are grouped in two ways: Skills, knowledge and technical qualifications Behavioral characteristics, personality attributes and individual aptitudes Competency-based hiring starts by identifying a full range of competencies required for success in a position and then gauging each candidate’s demonstration of those traits. A candidate’s competencies can be measured from when they respond to a job posting, to their interviewing and onboarding process, to performance reviews. Hiring Accuracy Competency-based recruiting can serve a number of purposes, allowing a company to achieve the desired performance in their hired candidates. Competency-based hiring provides a clear understanding for the recruiters as well as the candidates about the requirements of an open position. This process leads to a more standardized selection process because the same standards are used to evaluate all of the candidates applying for the same position. There are also fewer hiring mistakes with this recruitment process. It helps prevent recruiters from evaluating candidates based on characteristics that might not relate to the job itself or position they’re interviewing for. With little to no hiring errors, it improves the accuracy in assessing a candidate’s traits needed for the job. Competency-Based Interviews Competency-based interviews are more systematic, with the questions targeting more of a specific skill or competency. Candidates are also asked questions relating to their behavior in certain circumstances and asked to back up their answers with solid examples. The hiring managers dig further into the provided examples by asking for specific explanations about the candidate’s skills or behavior. For example, the interviewers might want to test how a candidate can deal with stress. First, they would ask the candidate how they generally handle stress, then ask to provide an example of a situation where they worked under pressure or stress. There are a number of different interview questions that a candidate can be asked, depending on the competency. Adaptability, compliance, communication (verbal, listening and written), conflict management, creativity and innovation, decisiveness, flexibility and independence are just a few competency topics interview questions are formed around. Example Interview Questions: Give us an example of when you took responsibility for delivering expected outcomes, giving credit to other teams and individuals where appropriate. Tell us about a situation when you failed to communicate appropriately. How do you respond to customer feedback? What is the biggest risk that you’ve taken? How did you handle that process? Tell us about a decision you made too quickly and got wrong. What made you take that decision? A competency-based hiring process requires a company to invest a lot of time and effort, but the work pays off in the end because it enables the hiring decisions to be more appropriate and sophisticated. After a candidate is hired, core competencies continue to be useful in setting goals and positioning new hires for success. Ensure an exceptional candidate experience every time! See how we can help you increase employee engagement and retention.

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Why are my new hires under-performing?

Fri, 18 Jan 2019 18:00:58 +0000

Potential does not guarantee performance. How many times have we seen it in sports? A top draft pick who never pans out. The offspring or sibling of an athletic superstar who displays the same physical gifts but somehow bombs out. Sports drafting is not a perfect analog to staffing, but it suffices to make a point: You can’t assume that an applicant who displays high potential will automatically turn in a top performance on the job. Just as some sports team managers may have unrealistic expectations that an athlete’s pedigree alone will lead to success, some hiring managers might think, “I screened my applicants thoroughly and chose the one whose strengths and performance drivers best align with the job. My work is done.” Don’t misunderstand the message: Hiring based on intrinsic potential is and always will be a critical part of making a successful hire. But that’s not the end of making a successful hire, it’s just the beginning. Real success comes from employee engagement, and onboarding is the engine that drives engagement. By being engaged, we mean that people are performing work that aligns with their strengths and motivators, that they feel empowered, and that their work feels meaningful. If you’re willing to consider that onboarding is the path from good hire to good team member, ask yourself these important questions about your onboarding process: Do you and your applicant/new hire have the same understanding of the role? Ideally, you are keeping your job descriptions up to date and reflective of what applicants can expect once in position. In your final interviews, avoid sugar coating the job and underselling the responsibilities you would personally find unappealing. For example, if you’re a people person who finds detail work to be a necessary evil, but you’re filling a role that calls for extended task focus and a willingness to work with minimal interaction, don’t try to downplay the aspects of the position that you might find dull. Realistic expectations and a clear understanding from the outset (i.e., honesty) will set the stage for new-hire engagement. If you are doing the right thing and looking at applicants based on intrinsic motivations and performance drivers, you would have screened out everyone who lacks patience with repetition and details. Once you’ve found the right person, make sure he or she understands how his or her responsibilities fit into the overall strategy and why those activities are important and valued. It should go without saying that the person who understands the role best should be the one making the hiring decision. This is not something to delegate to an HR assistant. Are you training and integrating new hires based on their intrinsic strengths and limitations? People don’t all learn the same way or respond the same way to on-the-job stimuli. Some are more comfortable adapting to new systems and processes. Some are more comfortable speaking up when they don’t understand something. Some respond better to self-paced training while others value hands-on demonstration. Since you are aware of the new hire’s strengths and motivators (again, ideally), you should be able to customize the training effort accordingly. The ultimate goal is to maximize potential, and a recent hire who feels empowered and effective will also feel engaged. Engagement unlocks potential. Do you have a mentor program? A mentor program offers multiple benefits. One, it helps the new hire become integrated into the culture of the company. It’s not easy to embrace the social norms in a new work environment, like when moving from a hierarchical culture to a more collegial one, for example. Even reserved people who prefer limited interaction don’t want to be seen as outcasts. A mentor can “show the ropes” to accelerate integration. The mentor also benefits from feeling valued and trusted by the organization, and both mentor and new hire gain a sense that the company is invested in them as individuals. Which, of course, further drives engagement. It also takes some of the development burden off of you. Because, let’s be honest, you’re reading this post and thinking, “When am I going to have time for all these onboarding activities?” Are you setting worthwhile and realistic goals? There’s a reason managers and staff members roll their eyes at some of the recommendations in articles like this one. It’s because employee-development programs that start out with good intentions often become rote or are executed mindlessly and, in the end, fail to benefit the employee or the manager. It’s up to you, whether you’re a hiring manager or an HR professional invested in the onboarding process, to take an active approach to new-hire development. Consider these important components to goal setting: 1) Goals should be relevant to the job, and the recent hire must be afforded the opportunity to achieve them. That is, provide the time, tools, and resources to achieve the goals, just as you provide a workstation, a computer, and a business objective. 2) Goals should come with deadlines and clear measures of success. Falling short of goals should be viewed not as a failure but as a developmental opportunity. People who are made to feel like disappointments tend to become disengaged from their work. Remember that when coaching, just as when selecting and training, each employee has his or her own strengths, motivations, and inhibitors. Some respond to a blunt challenge, while others might prefer a supportive, “we can do this together” type of message. The “corporate ladder” may be somewhat mythological at many companies, since more and more organizations are flattening their structures, and, realistically, most people are better as individual contributors than as leaders. But the learning and skill-acquisition ladder is as real—and engaging—as you make it. About Caliper – For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve peak performance by advising them on hiring the right people, managing individuals most effectively and developing productive teams. The accuracy, objectivity and depth of our consulting approach enable us to provide solutions that work for over

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Organizational Culture vs. Organizational Climate

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 06:00:40 +0000

Creating a sustainable work environment where employees feel engaged, loyal, and satisfied should be the goal of every organization. After all, if people dislike their workplace, they’re going to be unproductive at best and perhaps even quit, taking their skills and knowledge with them and leaving you with the high cost of finding replacements. It should be well known by now that the long and involved process of recruiting, interviewing, selecting, and training ends up being rather expensive. It also brings the unpleasant side effect of lost production, not just because no one is doing the work once performed by the employee who left, but also because the new hire is drawing labor resources away from other tasks. In the hope of improving engagement and productivity through talent alignment and development, many conversations have been had, presentations and seminars delivered, and literal and digital ink spilled. Throughout this discourse, the terms organizational culture and organizational climate get thrown around a lot, often interchangeably. However, they’re not the same thing, and the difference is important. Organizational culture is your identity as a company. It’s your values and the norms that have arisen organically over time. A traditional bank, for example, is by necessity a structured environment, as the banking industry is heavily regulated by well-established laws. Banking is an old industry, which suggests the culture has had a long time to develop and is firmly ensconced. It follows that you’d probably find a culture where people are expected to follow proper channels and defer to the chain of command; where being too “entrepreneurial” in your methods and practices (i.e., making it up as you go) would be frowned upon; and where staff members present a calm, courteous face to the customer so as to convey trust and reliability. On the other hand, a tech start-up is likely to be more collaborative and unstructured. Disruptive conflict and ideas might be welcome. Everyone from the company president to the newest intern may communicate laterally and casually. Every organization is different, and while these examples might seem like they’re taken from a TV show representation rather than real life, if you’ve had jobs in more than two industries, you know first-hand that cultural norms vary widely from one industry to the next. Organizational climate deals with how people are experiencing the work environment at any given moment. What is it like to work there and to operate in that culture? How are business conditions and management decisions and actions affecting the general mood? When you consider the collective experience of all the talent in the organization, you’re evaluating climate. Revenue swings, for example, can affect climate without changing the culture. If you work for a freight-transport company built around a culture of process and efficiency, and then revenue drops, you’d probably double down on improving processes and efficiencies; you’re not likely to abandon them. At the same time, employees might feel resentful or despondent that their bonuses were cancelled and a couple of their friends were laid off. The culture stayed the same, but the climate changed. Another way of looking at it: When people aren’t going to fit the culture, it’s usually obvious right from the interview. They might not get a job offer in the first place, and, even if they do, they are unlikely to stick around long because they will feel like outcasts or be miserable. If the climate is troubled, people who do fit the culture and would ordinarily be engaged and satisfied may become unproductive or quit. This distinction is important because problems with culture and problems with climate are resolved with different solutions. Problems of organizational culture arise when the existing culture is detrimental to achieving business goals or realizing the organization’s ideal state. For example, a tech company where the culture is collegial, collaborative, and academic—and where people who exhibit aggressive, autonomous, or competitive behaviors are marginalized—may be an engaging place for easygoing managers and low-key product engineers to work. However, the tech world is highly competitive and disruptive. This organization could find itself falling behind in its industry niche as edgier, leaner, more venturesome start-ups hit the scene. Perhaps it would be time to change the culture. In this scenario, the company may consider a People Analytics solution to identify the talent gaps and spot high-potential employees as candidates for more responsibility and development. Furthermore, they could use pre-employment assessment tools to select outside applicants who demonstrate a motivation to innovate, drive change, and provide more demanding leadership. Problems of organizational climate arise when you’re not paying attention. At companies that seem relatively healthy, management tends to chug along and maintain the status quo. However, many organizations are vulnerable to slowly escalating problems because they aren’t tuned in to the daily experience out on the shop floor, in the field, or at the corporate office. It could be a problem with communication and messaging, general dissatisfaction with leadership decision making, or structural/procedural flaws that are fomenting frustration and harming engagement and satisfaction. Somehow, a malaise is settling over the organization, and declines in productivity, employee retention, and market share will probably follow. It’s a good idea for business leaders to keep a finger on the pulse of the organization, so to speak, and not allow themselves to be blindsided. Employee surveys are a good way to get a broad sense of staff members’ prevailing thoughts, and survey results can serve as a springboard for programs around improved transparency, greater collaboration, better alignment of talent, or greater potential to address business concerns. By taking steps to ensure a positive culture and a healthy climate, management can both move the company forward and perform the preventative maintenance needed to maximize business results. About Caliper – For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve peak performance by advising them on hiring the right people, managing individuals most effectively and developing productive teams. The accuracy, objectivity and depth of our consulting approach enable us to provide solutions that work for over 25,000 companies. To find out more about how Caliper can

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Six components of Self-Management

Eric Baker at Caliper — Fri, 16 Nov 2018 06:00:00 +0000

Jobs can be aggravating. You have to deal with all kinds of personalities, some of them difficult. You see things that are broken but lack the resources or clout to fix them, and people who don’t understand your work are often the ones telling you how to do it. You just want to produce good results and get noticed (and rewarded) for your effort. In an ideal world, you are in a role that plays to your strengths and motivations and limits exposure to your weaknesses, and you are partnered with a manager who serves as your advocate. In reality, you’re likely motivated by some aspects of your job but not by others, and your manager is probably being pulled in too many directions at once to play cheerleader. The best you can do is to do your best. Truth bomb: You’ll never be good at the things you’re bad at. In other words, you can’t simply choose what motivates you at work any more than you can choose your height or your family members. You can’t make yourself be outgoing if you’re shy, for example, just as you can’t force ideas to materialize if you’re not intrinsically creative. None of us chooses external factors like economic upheaval, competitive threats, disruptive changes, and mergers and acquisitions, either, which are often the obstacles that stand between you and your career goals. You can, however, choose how you comport yourself. Organizations are always looking to identify high-potential employees. Focusing on the following six areas of self-management will not guarantee a promotion, but they could help you get noticed positively and increase your perceived value to your employer. And the higher your perceived value, the more likely they are to invest in you. Let’s get to it: 1) Staying composed under pressure – Did you know one of the top job competencies for supervisory, sales, and customer-service positions is Composure? Regardless of the power dynamic between you and your stakeholders, staying composed shows that you are in control. Staying calm earns you respect, sets the tone, and increases others’ willingness to follow your lead. It’s contagious, in a good way. 2) Showing self-awareness – Some folks have no clue how they are perceived by the people around them. They might be perfectly good at performing their work, but the rest of us only experience their loud personal phone calls that echo through the building, oblivious comments that insult other team members, and tiresome questioning of others’ statements. A self-aware person monitors reaction and considers how their words and actions affect everyone else. If you’re not sure how you are perceived, ask for honest feedback (and don’t argue with what you hear). 3) Being willing to change and adapt – Technology changes fast, as do consumer preferences and market trends. It’s inevitable that companies have to revise systems, strategies, and policies. Refusing to adapt and showing resentment toward change are sure ways to be labeled an outmoded dinosaur. Instead, ask questions, get ready to update your understanding when new information comes to light, and volunteer to be part of the solution. 4) Demonstrating professionalism – Professionalism is about maintaining integrity when executing your responsibilities, respecting people at all levels of the organization (as well as customers and vendors), and embracing the ethics and best practices of your profession. In fact, openly expressing a personal philosophy of professionalism in a job interview can make a favorable impression on a prospective employer. 5) Taking ownership of your work – No matter where you are on the organizational chart, from entry-level employee to CEO, make your tasks your own and deliver on your promises. This doesn’t mean you have to fall on a sword when other people screw up, but it does mean accepting praise and criticism alike and not passing the blame for setbacks onto others. 6) Focusing on learning – Everyone likes to be the expert and to feel confident in their skills, but if there’s a recurring theme for the 21st century business world, it’s “change.” To stay viable and valuable, it helps to keep an open mind, look for cross-training opportunities, and show an eagerness to gather insight and expertise from the people around you. This goes for senior managers too. New hires just out of college or trade school have been exposed to methods and philosophies you haven’t thought of. Being open to new ideas doesn’t undercut your authority; it strengthens your authority. We’re not naïve enough to think that companies and managers don’t sometimes create their own obstacles to maximizing employee performance. Some managers say they want their staff members to take ownership and then they micromanage them anyway. And when companies shift gears every five minutes and senior leadership can’t make up their minds or provide clear direction, it’s hard to be “adaptable.” While we may never experience the picture-perfect work environment, all other things being equal, isn’t it better to take a self-managed approach than to let the churning tide carry you off? Be your own high-potential employee and see what happens. About Caliper – For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve peak performance by advising them on hiring the right people, managing individuals most effectively and developing productive teams. The accuracy, objectivity and depth of our consulting approach enable us to provide solutions that work for over 25,000 companies. To find out more about how Caliper can help you identify and develop people who can lead your organization to peak performance, please visit us at www.calipercorp.com or call them at 609-524-1200. Email editorial@mhwmag.com to contact Caliper.

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7 Keys to successfully Onboarding New Employees

Sat, 20 Oct 2018 05:00:00 +0000

Hiring-managers, recruiters, and HR professionals are understandably excited when they find a qualified candidate who also interviews well. Depending on the length of the search, it can be difficult to resist offering a job on the spot. It may take a few anxious days, but, once all the hurdles are cleared, an offer is made and the candidate accepts the terms. Now it’s time to celebrate. The hiring team got the top performer it was looking for! What can go wrong? Everything. Alas, many employers are missing (both procedurally and philosophically) a fundamental component of making a successful hire: an onboarding plan. Onboarding is the mechanism through which new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective organizational members and insiders. Employees who are systematically coached and supported from the beginning, via an onboarding program, will learn faster, contribute more, and feel a closer connection to the organization. Those are the employees who, not coincidentally, will stick around longer and perform better. Even high-potential employees can fail when they feel disengaged. And when employees are disengaged, productivity suffers and turnover increases. Not only that, management has to expend valuable time and resources replacing people who quit or get fired. The cost to employers can be catastrophic. The solution is to make onboarding an integral part of your hiring process. Fortunately, successful onboarding is not complicated. It simply requires that management recognize the importance of onboarding and commit to following through. Here are the seven keys to doing it right: Don’t confuse orientationand onboarding Reviewing policies with the HR Manager, getting a tour of the building, doing a meet-and-greet with co-workers, and watching corporate videos is orientation. Onboarding is about communication, culture, and acceptance. It’s the overall process by which a new hire becomes a loyal employee. Orientation is just a tiny sliver of that. Don’t equate training with onboarding Training new hires in processes, systems, and job requirements is an obvious and critical component of success. Employees need to feel confident and capable of doing their jobs if they are to be productive and engaged. However, training isn’t onboarding (though it is perhaps the largest piece on a pie chart). Onboarding also involves proactive social integration, cultural fit, trust, and acceptance from management. Keep that personality assessment handy Many companies use pre-employment personality assessments for selection. But why put an assessment report in a drawer after the hire when it can be a terrific platform for development? With awareness of a person’s strengths, motivations, and behavioral tendencies, it becomes much easier for management to shape coaching and mentoring strategies, provide targeted guidance, and help the new hire thrive in the company’s culture. Even if you don’t use assessments for selection, you can still apply them during the onboarding process. Better yet, by looking at the assessment results for both the manager and the new employee, you can enhance mutual understanding, improve communication, and foster a strong partnership. Set SMART goals New hires will struggle to succeed if they don’t know what success looks like. Therefore, development goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Specific goals are boiled down to their most basic component and should be free of vague or moving targets (“Getting up to speed” is not specific). Measurable goals are quantifiable and not subject to the whims or moods of management. Attainable goals are realistic; during onboarding is not the time to set up a brick wall and expect the individual to crash through it. Relevant goals should relate to the job and not be an arbitrary test of persistence. Time-bound goals have reasonable, yet competitive deadlines so manager and employee can plan and pace the effort. Involve new hires in their own development New hires tend to be “on their best behavior,” which sometimes manifests as agreeableness and letting managers take the lead in conversations. Thus, if an eager manager jumps right in and starts assembling a grand vision of success, the new hire might sit back and play a passive role to avoid appearing difficult or uncooperative. In reality, the best, happiest employees are the ones who feel empowered and take ownership. Management should guide the development process but encourage new hires to contribute ideas, express professional goals, and, within the requirements and expectations of the given position, define their roles. Set time aside for Q&A A good manager is tuned-in to what employees are experiencing not through some mystical gift for mindreading but simply by asking open-ended questions. Doing so is especially important with new and recent hires, who might not feel comfortable vocalizing their feelings. Questions can include: What do you like best about the role so far? What has been the biggest challenge or difficulty? What can I (or the company) do to help? What resources do you wish you had? And be sure to follow through, even if the answer is “We can’t do that, but what we can do is …” Recognize that onboarding is ongoing Though every job and company are different, a general onboarding plan might include 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day meetings to formally assess progress, adjust plans, revisit goals if necessary, and determine next steps (just remember that the purpose of these particular meetings is to provide constructive guidance, not to demand accountability). But it shouldn’t end there. Policies and best practices need reinforcement. Company culture needs maintenance. Employee engagement needs to be monitored so management can accurately evaluate the organizational climate. In short, when new hires know management is invested in their long-term success, they are more likely to positively change and grow with the company. If you build a successful onboarding program and implement it systematically, both the organization and new hires benefit in a multitude of ways through improved communication, increased collaboration, and a reinforcement of company culture. You’re also clearing obstacles to learning, making policies understandable, increasing productivity and engagement, reducing turnover, and, ultimately, improving business results. Isn’t all that worth a little extra effort and attention in the beginning? About Caliper – For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve

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Five components of developing successful employees

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 05:00:00 +0000

You don’t want to hire that employee, do you? Of course not. You want to hire THAT employee. That employee is one who interviewed like a star but turned out to be lazy or needy or disinterested, ultimately creating more work for management and team members than he ever completed himself. THAT employee, on the other hand, is one you wish you could clone because he learns fast, works his tail off and requires little-to-no maintenance. [Note: Caliper does not endorse the cloning of employees.] Most employees land somewhere between these two extremes. We often talk about “hiring and developing the next top performer,” but realistically, you seldom have an unlimited applicant pool or time to wait for THAT employee to show up. Sometimes you have to go for the best possible choice, given your financial, temporal and geographic constraints. You often aim for hiring ‘that’ employee—the one who might not be a superstar but who shows potential to be pretty good—and then make the most of it. Notice that the previous sentence ended with “make the most of it” and not “hope for the best.” Good managers know that developing and leading a team is sort of like gardening: Just as you need healthy soil, the right climate, and plenty of TLC to grow flowers that bloom, you have to supply a positive work environment, stimulating challenges that emphasize employees’ strengths, and an investment in staff development to achieve a consistently excellent performance. While there’s no guaranteed method for developing successful employees, a focus on these five areas can enable companies to maximize results over the employee lifecycle: Selection – Naturally, a successful employee lifecycle starts with hiring a viable candidate. A pre-employment assessment for selection is a worthwhile investment when you consider all the valuable information it reveals about applicants’ motivators and behavioral tendencies. And it helps you dodge the high costs associated with hiring the wrong person (turnover, lost productivity, renewed searching, etc.). Onboarding – If you want your new hires to succeed and stay with the company, their first six months on the job are the most critical from a development standpoint. This is when management should be taking proactive steps to integrate the person not just through training but also through acclimation into the company culture. The more “at home” employees feel, the more likely they are to be productive and loyal. During this period, it’s important to explore their motivations, strengths and performance inhibitors so you can develop a targeted coaching plan and set meaningful and measurable goals. Coaching and development – Take that pre-employment assessment report back out of the file. Here’s where it truly starts to pay for itself. Previously, it helped you decide which of your applicants best fit the demands of the position. Now it will help you coach and manage your new employee more effectively. As an example, let’s say the new hire is an account executive in an insurance company who needs to provide support to producers and customers, do some light up-selling and handle a relatively high volume of account-related administrative work. This can be a tricky position from a strengths and motivators standpoint because the employee has to alternately be assertive and helpful as well as quality-minded and structured in task management yet comfortable changing priorities moment by moment. Imagine the assessment indicates that the person is service oriented, organized and conscientious with details, but not so strong in up-selling and overly self-critical and sensitive. If you work in the insurance industry, bells are probably going off in your head right now. You’ve met this person before. But with the assessment in hand, you can proactively identify development areas (how to help this person deal with pressure and recover from setbacks more constructively or how to manage the transition from service-related conversations to take advantage of up-selling opportunities). The assessment results can also guide you in how to deliver coaching by answering questions such as: What kind of message will resonate best? Which coaching approach will tap into the motivators? Which approach might cause retreat? Determining a team role – As technology replaces more and more repetitive tasks, the emphasis on cross-functional teamwork will only increase. And teams will need a diversity of skills, talents and, yes, internal motivators to be most effective. Some people are adept at bringing people together, others are good at generating ideas, and still others are at their best when implementing agreed-upon solutions. Knowing where your new hires fit into the larger collaborative framework will help you assign the work for which they are best suited, simultaneously developing their skills, enhancing their contributions toward a shared effort, and balancing the team. Promotion/succession – With the right people on board and a dedicated investment in coaching and development, you should be able to foster an environment where people feel valued and are productive. You will also be building your bench strength in terms of future leaders and high-level individual contributors. Many employees are content serving the company in their existing capacities, but others have growth aspirations. For the latter group, assessment results will provide ROI once again by identifying beneficial new training opportunities. As people move from individual contributors to leaders, the coaching related to success in their current role might not be enough. With assessment data at your disposal, you know where to begin building the development bridge. Now imagine having assessment results for your entire team. You’d be able to see untapped potential, talent gaps and other performance dimensions that enable you to plan for the next generation of leaders. If you focus your energy the right way over the lifecycle of your hires, you’ll finally let someone else worry about staffing for a while. You’ve got THAT vacation to take. About Caliper – For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve peak performance by advising them on hiring the right people, managing individuals most effectively and developing productive teams. The accuracy, objectivity and depth of our consulting approach enable us to provide solutions that work

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How to build a world-class sales organization

Sun, 20 May 2018 05:00:00 +0000

The world of sales is changing, and top sales leaders are changing with it. Building a world-class sales organization starts with building a world-class buying experience for your clients – and the key to this process is developing true relationships between salespeople and customers. These days, it is not about pushing products; it’s about creating an experience and a relationship that addresses clients’ needs. The selling climate today The world we live in is becoming more dependent on technology and digital communication, and industries are changing as a result. The average customer is changing, as well. Today’s customers are coming in prepared with information they have gathered from web sites, social media and word of mouth, and they are expecting more from salespeople than ever before. Given the changing landscape of the marketplace, salespeople can no longer simply stick to what has worked in the past. Buyers are coming in prepared, and most customers have made their buying decisions before ever interacting with a salesperson. The sales process no longer simply entails showing up and attempting to close the deal. To be successful, salespeople must be experts who can read the customer, learn quickly, be resourceful and connect the dots for the customer. Salespeople must become trusted advisors who provide insight, not just information. What can sales leaders do? Today’s sales leaders are faced with the challenge of creating a better, more efficient sales organization. Gerhard Gschwandtner, founder and CEO of Selling Power, explains that sales leaders need to ask themselves the following questions: Do I hire the right salespeople? Do I give them the right start, with comprehensive training on company culture and professional selling skills? Do I provide the tools needed to succeed, and do I give the right coaching? According to Mr. Gschwandtner, “Sales managers should not be numbers catchers, but people developers.” Coaching and development should be a priority. “As a coach,” he says, “you want to look at two things all the time. First, is the salesperson setting high enough standards and high enough goals? And second, which is more difficult, what are the self-imposed limitations that salesperson believes they have?” This requires listening on the part of sales leaders, as they must try to uncover the hidden obstacles and internal roadblocks their salespeople have in place. How do we get there? It is critical for sales leaders to understand the strengths of their sales team. Tom Gartland, president, North America at Avis Budget Group, states that a major goal for sales managers and leaders is “ensuring that you have the right people in the right jobs.” According to Mr. Gartland, “You have to be able to assess that, be decisive and move on.” He recommends matching words to actions. It is important for sales leaders to get to know each individual on the team, understand his or her role, and use that knowledge to create the best team possible. In order to do that, Mr. Gartland says, you have to, “invest the time in them to understand them personally, their strengths, their development areas and then make a decision and put the right team on the field. And support them.” Implementing the solution The key to mentoring your sales team is listening carefully to what the salesperson is experiencing and seeing how they respond. To help your salespeople adapt to this new business environment, add some innovative or creative aspect to their standard methods of operation. Salespeople must learn to adapt to this new type of customer in order to create that world-class buying experience, and doing so involves thinking about how to sell to an organization in a way that makes a difference to them. Salespeople today must develop the required business acumen and learn to connect the dots to address crucial aspects of the client’s business. Sales leaders have to focus on the knowledge and motivations of each team member and then predict how they will respond to sales situations and whether they will be successful. It is no longer as simple as identifying a hunter or a farmer. Those models are outdated, and sales leaders must create a new sales force that possesses the knowledge, insight and resourcefulness to adapt to the new business environment and consistently provide a world-class buying experience to clients. This process begins with assessing your sales team by using a valid and reliable personality assessment. Sales leaders can use the information gathered from the assessment in coaching initiatives, three-sixty engagements, and even talent audits. Mr. Gartland told us how his experience with the three-sixty approach: “I’ve been through the process, and so has my team, and we’ve all discussed these openly.” These open discussions allow team members to understand one another’s strengths and areas in which they struggle. “We’ve done three-sixtys on all of us, including myself,” Mr. Gartland continues, “and I know the areas where I’m vulnerable.” Once all parties understand their behavior dynamics and motivations, members of your sales team can work together to make decisions and move forward to create a world-class buying experience for clients. “Be totally open to the diversity of ideas that your new team is going to bring. Get shoulder to shoulder with them; work with them,” says Mr. Gartland. In order to create a sales force that will understand your clients, you need to truly understand the members of your team and ensure they are placed in roles in which they will succeed. Agota Alvarez has been with Caliper since 2005 and currently serves as Caliper’s Content Marketing Manager. For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve peak performance by advising them on hiring the right people, managing individuals most effectively and developing productive teams. The accuracy, objectivity and depth of our consulting approach enable us to provide solutions that work for over 25,000 companies. To find out more about how Caliper can help you identify and develop people who can lead your organization to peak performance, please visit us at www.calipercorp.com or call us at

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Four steps for avoiding a bad hiring decision

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 05:00:00 +0000

Let’s look, for a moment, at the process of buying a car. It’s a big decision with many steps. First, you have to determine your price range, compile a list of possible models, and compare specs. Then you research safety features, performance reviews and reliability ratings. Finally, you take test drives until you find the one that fits you and your lifestyle the best. Even after putting in all that work, you could still end up with the wrong car. Maybe you can cut your losses and trade it in on another one, but you still wasted a lot of time and money. Hiring a new employee is a lot like buying a car, and the consequences of a bad choice can be even more catastrophic. Time and money wasted, sure, but there’s also lost productivity and the hidden costs of turnover to consider. Yet you must make this hiring decision with far less information than you have when buying a car. There are no consumer reports on would-be employees, and you don’t get to try them out for free (and none of them come with a sunroof, either). However, there are steps you can take to limit the likelihood of hiring the wrong person. Companies that integrate clear steps into the hiring process not only increase their hit rate, they build up their bench strength of future leaders and other promotable contributors. Define the success factors Many organizations focus on developing a detailed list of job tasks instead of determining what kind of person is best suited for a role. Instead of trying to find a person who checks a bunch of “experience” boxes, it’s a good idea to develop a specific success model for each open position. Before you even start looking at applicants, decide what the role needs to accomplish, how it interacts with other people and processes inside and outside the company, and how it fits into the overall company strategy. Is it a structured role steeped in process or an unstructured role? What’s the level of client contact? How much independent problem solving is involved? Once you have established the true position requirements, such as Manages projects independently or Follows rules diligently, you’ll have your success factors. Your top candidate is the one whose motivations and strengths align with the factors you have identified, not necessarily the one who has been trained in a specific task. Use a valid pre-employment assessment Good HR professionals and recruiters, whether contracted or in-house, should be able to source a field of ostensibly viable candidates. However, a candidate’s past experience does not equate to future success. In other words, there are plenty of mediocre applicants who did enough to stick around somewhere and pad their resume. A scientifically validated personality assessment (i.e., one based on hard data and R&D-tested to ensure validity) will tear down façades and show a person’s intrinsic motivations. If one of your success factors is Sustains client relationships, for example, the assessment will show the difference between an applicant who is merely personable and one who is an attentive listener, service-minded and responsive to stakeholder input. If someone’s personality drivers line up with your success factors, you’ve found the connection that often translates into top performance. Ask behavior-based interview questions Behavior-based interview questions effectively circumvent vague claims of accomplishment by asking candidates for specific examples about how they have handled job-relevant situations. Imagine that an applicant for a customer-service role writes “Achieved 94% customer-satisfaction rate” on his resume. That could be a made-up number, or it could be apropos of nothing that the individual actually did. A behavioral interview question here can be, “Talk about a time you dealt effectively with an upset customer on your own. What was the problem and how did you resolve it?” After a few questions along these lines, you’ll begin to gain clarity around the applicant’s ingenuity in service situations, his decision-making style, his client focus, and his attentiveness as a listener. To take it further, come up with a consistent set of questions for each role and then determine a system for scoring responses (e.g., 1 for poor, 2 for fair, and 3 for good) so you can quantify which applicants delivered the strongest answers. Make sure you ask all the applicants the same questions, and preferably, have one person ask the questions and another do the scoring. This approach reduces bias. Implement onboarding & developmental action plans Sometimes, the problem isn’t a bad hiring decision; it’s bad post-hiring decisions. A big mistake companies often make with new employees is to assume their training and development needs are the same as everyone else’s. As revealed by the results of the pre-employment personality assessment, people are different from each other (surprise!) Employee development, as a general concept, should be an ongoing focus. However, it is especially critical for hiring managers to stay involved for the first six months of tenure to keep potentially good hires from turning bad due to misalignment and lack of communication. Put together a true onboarding program that fully integrates new hires not only into the role but into the company culture as well. Moreover, use the personality data you’ve collected to build a customized development plan for each employee that maximizes strengths while compensating for limitations. By devoting a little extra time, money, and attention up front, you will return on your investment many times over when you have the right people in place who are not only motivated and productive but also willing to stick with you for the long haul. About Caliper – For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve peak performance by advising them on hiring the right people, managing individuals most effectively and developing productive teams. The accuracy, objectivity and depth of our consulting approach enable us to provide solutions that work for over 25,000 companies. To find out more about how Caliper can help you identify and develop people who can lead your organization to peak performance, please visit us at www.calipercorp.com

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There’s more than one way to succeed in a job

Mon, 19 Mar 2018 05:00:00 +0000

You’ve been gunning for that promotion: working hard, bringing ideas and making yourself visible and valuable to the company. The position you wanted finally opened, and you got the job. Uh-oh. Now what? The person you’re replacing moved onto another organization. She was effective in the role, well respected and conveyed natural authority. Perhaps you don’t possess as much of that same assertive, no-nonsense quality. You’re more personable and collaborative but maybe lacking in the aggressive nature to push things through and deal with opposition. What if people come to see you as weak? What if the company starts lamenting the loss of your predecessor and regrets promoting you? The good news is that there’s more than one way to succeed in a given role. The other good news is that companies often have a conception of an ideal performer in a position, but few applicants are ever going to check all the boxes. Just as you have perceived limitations, so did the person who held the role before you. Do you see any perfect employees walking around who never ask questions and do everything flawlessly from the get-go? Of course not. Play to your strengths Although emulating successful people is, in a general sense, a good philosophy, you can’t force yourself to be someone you’re not. The pretense eventually crumbles (try coaching someone who hates details to be more detail focused and see how long the new behaviors last.) Everyone has a personal work style, and the key is to make your style work for you. Depending on who you talk to in the organizational-development field, personal work styles may labelled as facilitator, implementer, delegator, director, expresser, thinker, creator and so on. Imagine you are a facilitator, whereas the person who held the role before you was a director. You might be less comfortable issuing orders and pressing people for results, but, on the other hand, you are probably better at bringing people together, fostering teamwork and identifying hidden skillsets in your employees. This is not to imply one style is better than the other. The previous manager may have empowered people by saying, “Take ownership of this challenge and deliver a result in two weeks. The methodology is up to you.” You could empower the same employee by saying, “I noticed you are good at [skill]. Let’s work together to develop it so you can take on more interesting and varied responsibilities going forward.” [But maybe sound less like a fictive quote from a business blog when you say it.] Awareness breeds understanding Ideally, you will not only develop an awareness of your style but also the work styles of each team member, your manager and the cross-functional peers with whom you work closely. By understanding each other’s strengths, motivations and limitations (which all derive from our intrinsic personality dynamics), the entire group can become better at communicating and collaborating, and you’ll be able to define the role for yourself instead of trying to measure up to your predecessor’s accomplishments. The example above only looks at one work-style scenario, and it might not describe your situation. The point is to gain self-awareness so that you know how to leverage your strengths and motivations for success. Then, when you move farther up the ladder in the future, you’ll be able to look back on your experience and belt out, Sinatra style, “I did it my way.” Now that’s a style. About Caliper – For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve peak performance by advising them on hiring the right people, managing individuals most effectively and developing productive teams. The accuracy, objectivity and depth of our consulting approach enable us to provide solutions that work for over 25,000 companies. To find out more about how Caliper can help you identify and develop people who can lead your organization to peak performance, please visit us at www.calipercorp.com or call us at 609-524-1200. Email editorial@mhwmag.com to contact Caliper.

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Five ways to become a better leader in 2018

Tue, 20 Feb 2018 06:00:00 +0000

If your company is looking to grow revenue in 2018 (or if your not-for-profit organization seeks to expand its impact), your leadership team surely has a strategic plan in place. Hopefully that plan includes a talent-building component geared toward developing current and future leaders. But even if you plan to implement a structured talent-development strategy, it doesn’t mean your managers and supervisors can’t strive for professional growth on their own. The goal of any committed manager—beyond leading an efficient and productive team, of course—should be to achieve leadership maturity, a state in which the manager navigates the different aspects of the role in a balanced, confident, and non-egotistical manner. We all have a personal mix of strengths and weaknesses that make reaching this state a challenge. By taking a few moments to think about the five leadership recommendations below (and perhaps incorporating one or two into interactions with employees, peers, business partners and customers), managers and supervisors can get a head-start on the talent-development effort: Listen more Some managers take the “do it because I said so” approach because, frankly, it’s the fastest route from point A (the task) to point B (completion of the task). Managers who aren’t as assertive, on the other hand, often lean on policies and mandates and end up becoming mouthpieces for upper management. They make excuses instead of making things better. Both approaches are short-sighted and a little bit lazy. The first focuses on the “now” at the expense of potential future gain. The second focuses on “never.” By actively listening to what employees have to say (that is, listening to understand rather than listening to reply), a manager can get to the heart of what’s broken and take steps to fix it. Even if immediate change isn’t possible, a listening manager can serve as a conduit between individual contributors and upper management, and gain clarity around employee engagement and organizational climate. They might even discover that employees often have worthwhile ideas. Don’t take it personally While it’s important to be supportive in terms of providing the tools employees need to be successful, it can be tempting for some managers to go beyond helpfulness and try too hard to be popular. However, a mature manager doesn’t look for personal validation from employees or peers, but from successful business results. When employees push back, complain, or challenge, it helps to remember that we all have our own motivations and hot buttons. Instead of thinking, this employee is my adversary, think, this issue has pushed the employee’s buttons, and I need to address it in a way that balances the needs of the employee with the needs of the department and the organization. Make it about them. Empower people Some managers find themselves pushing people out of the way while declaring, “Forget it; it’s easier if I just do it myself.” Now, it could be that you don’t have the right people on staff, and if so, that’s imperative for upper management to address. However, some supervisors who think this way are by nature overly controlling and oriented toward micromanagement. Maybe they got promoted to supervisor because they happened to be the best individual worker and deserved reward. The reality is that doing and leading are not the same skill set. Some might not be comfortable holding people accountable or adept at providing training. Perhaps no one told them that good management is getting the most out of others, not doing it all themselves. Whatever the reason, it’s time to move forward. If employees don’t know how to do the work, train them. If they do, expand their responsibilities. Ask an experienced staffer to mentor a junior associate. If people think their work matters and they bring value, they will be more invested in the job. Make fact-based decisions Our brains aren’t generally wired for neutrality and objectivity. They are wired for snap judgment and affirmation of what we already believe. It’s a prehistoric thing. When it comes to leadership decisions, whether they pertain to hiring or solving problems or improving processes or allocating capital, we make our best choices by packing away our biases and instead looking for consistent data patterns. Diversifying information sources and seeking input from others can also help broaden the scope of one’s thinking. Sometimes this requires quieting our own egos and embracing fresh ideas. This doesn’t mean overanalyzing minutiae and gumming up the works. It means eliminating that which is unimportant and focusing on the key information that leads to optimal decision making. Think Globally If we don’t constantly seek new learning and fresh ideas, our imaginations stagnate. You see it with struggling companies still trying to sell to customers who don’t exist anymore, or they continue attempting to sell in ways that no longer resonate with buyers. By keeping abreast of change and resisting an adversarial stance toward it, and by listening to an array of voices and perspectives, managers can gain a better understanding of stakeholder needs and become more effective at customizing responses to suit different audiences. One doesn’t have to agree with or adopt other viewpoints and experiences to recognize them as valid. Sure, it can be difficult to think about self-developing these soft skills when departments are understaffed, business processes are inefficient, or you simply don’t have the people on board who can get the job done. But as a company’s strategic plan begins to correct shortcomings that are outside your immediate control, you can work toward integrating these tips and becoming the best leader you can be. About Caliper – For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve peak performance by advising them on hiring the right people, managing individuals most effectively and developing productive teams. The accuracy, objectivity and depth of our consulting approach enable us to provide solutions that work for over 25,000 companies. To find out more about how Caliper can help you identify and develop people who can lead your organization to peak performance, please visit us at

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Yankees hope a competency-based approach to hiring proves a Boon(e) for the organization

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 06:00:00 +0000

Few jobs in sports compare to managing the New York Yankees. The team is quite simply the most iconic baseball franchise in the world. (Have I given myself up as a fan yet? Too bad!) Based on the latest Forbes list of the most valuable franchises the world over, the only team valued higher than the Yankees ($3.7 billion) is the Dallas Cowboys ($4.2 billion.) If you’re the Yankees’ manager, you’re running a multi-billion-dollar corporate enterprise as much as you’re filling out the lineup card. The Yankees brand is synonymous with winning. Anything less, as an old deodorant commercial once stated, “would be uncivilized.” Case in point: Yankees skipper Joe Girardi – who won the World Series as a Yankee player and manager – was unceremoniously dumped earlier this fall after managing the team to within one win of a World Series berth. Here’s how tough New York is: When pressed by the media, Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner said that even if the team had won the World Series, he was not going to bring back Girardi. “It would have been maybe a more difficult decision to make, but I would have made it because I felt like that was best for the organization moving forward,” Steinbrenner told the media. For all of Girardi’s success on the field, management believed he was not exhibiting the learning agility or flexibility to adapt to the Yankees’ vision for how they want their manager to function. Despite his winning pedigree, Girardi was not aligning with corporate expectations, evidently. The Yankees were clearly ready to close “The Binder” – the sardonic nickname Girardi detractors gave to the straight-laced manager who was frequently seen scratching his grey crewcut as he rifled through three-ring binders of statistics to determine an optimal matchup. So, whom did the Yankees tap to be their next manager? Here’s a basic sketch of the credentials you’d expect Girardi’s successor to possess: Former major-league player World Series champion Professional scout Minor-league coach or manager Major-league coach or manager Aaron Boone checks just one of those boxes – the first. Best known for a series-deciding walk-off home run in the 11th inning to prolong the Red Sox’s World Series “curse,” Boone was a solid, but unspectacular, ballplayer. He has one All-Star appearance on his resume but nothing else that really jumps off the back of his baseball card. Boone’s remained close to the game in his retirement – but as a color commentator on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball for the last two years. More importantly, he has no coaching or managerial experience of which to speak. Talk about jumping into the deep end of the pool! Just as any other business hiring for an important role, the Yankees had a list of prerequisite competencies that a manager needs to display, and they believed Boone, 44, can embody their ideals more than Girardi. Instead of viewing one’s prior managerial experience as the be-all and end-all, the Yankees looked at how one’s personality fits in the role of manager. Like several other franchises making managerial hires this off-season, they are viewing the position as a middle manager. As General Managers begin to wield more power across the baseball landscape when it comes to roster construction and analytics-heavy decision making, an on-field manager’s role is changing. Now, he has to be a deft communicator and effective liaison between management, players, and the media. The word being used over and over again by those hiring managers this off-season is “collaborator.” They aren’t looking for a field general so much as they want someone who can explain team policy to players and serve as a sounding board to young, impressionable athletes. The Yankees, at their core, did what Caliper suggests to its clients: Contextualize a position Determine the job family in which it resides Pinpoint the competencies and must-haves for those serving in the role In the case of the Yankees’ manager, they wanted someone with – as GM Brian Cashman stated – “an astute mind for the game, a progressive approach to evolving strategies, interpersonal skills, and baseball pedigree.” When viewing Aaron Boone in the context of those parameters, he does indeed check all the boxes. Without prior managerial experience, though, Boone is entering a modern-day wilderness. Perhaps he will need to tap into some of the folklore surrounding his pioneer ancestor, Daniel Boone (true story!), who fought hand-to-paw with a bear (embellished story!). To survive as the Yankees’ manager, he may well need to utilize that pioneering spirit. About Caliper – For nearly half a century, Caliper has been helping companies achieve peak performance by advising them on hiring the right people, managing individuals most effectively and developing productive teams. The accuracy, objectivity and depth of our consulting approach enable us to provide solutions that work for over 25,000 companies. To find out more about how Caliper can help you identify and develop people who can lead your organization to peak performance, please visit us at www.calipercorp.com or call us at 609-524-1200. Email editorial@mhwmag.com to contact Caliper.

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