The most rewarding thing about our work is that we are able to help people quickly become more effective in their professional lives. Recently, we have been asked by several smaller companies to help strengthen the abilities of their leaders. While most of our work is with larger companies, we really enjoy working with leaders of smaller companies where the impact of change can be so dramatic.
Many of these companies are highly successful, but they face a common issue. As they expand, they bring in new leaders who are initially successful but then don’t stay for the long term or who make unreasonable demands for their continued participation in the organization. Every time this happens, it is highly disruptive, often endangering client relationships.
We’re constantly asked: “Could this behavior have been predicted?” The answer is “usually yes.” To do so, you need to understand the characteristics of your existing team and the internal motivators or new potential hires. We use a combination of online behavioral job profiles, structures interviews, team assessments and personality assessments to help clients gain a strong understanding of the kinds of people who will thrive and stay with their companies. We pay particular attention to two aspects:
- ● Understanding the predominant group personality type. To do this, we use the Four Groups 4G assessment that gives a crisp snapshot of predominant team personality type from among the four choices:
[list style=”customlist”]- → Model builders, who exalt their thinking styles and cognitive structures above all other considerations in decision-making.
- → Model extenders, who need existing structures on which from which to create value.
- → Pragmatists, who focus on the commercial applications of situations and ideas to drive value.
- → Value Maximizers, who are the “sharks” of the business world and drive relentlessly for quantifiable results.
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A mismatch between a new leader and the style of your team can spell future trouble.
- ● Understanding the internal motivators of your leaders. To do this, we use the Signa Personality Research Form E. In particular, we look for a few telltale characteristics:
[list style=”customlist”]- → The leader’s affiliation score, telling us how much the person values being part of your organization and value existing relationships.
- → The leader’s aggression score, telling how much aggression will work culturally in your organization.
- → The leader’s social recognition score, telling us how much visible credit the leader need to get to feel valued by the organization.
- → The leader’s achievement score, telling us how deeply the leader needs to be achieving new personal goals to feel important.
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A mismatch of a potential hire with the prevalent scores of your team in these areas can signal real trouble.
Once we get solid baseline information form your existing leaders, we develop a recruiting approach for screening potential future leaders against the data. Along with this, we build in the proper process steps to give the company effective recruiting and onboarding processes.