New Assessment Tool Helps to Promote Better Teamwork

"By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day." -- Robert Frost

The eloquent American poet's words have a ring of truth to them – but they provide only one view of the boss's job. There are perspectives aplenty, and one in particular does not rely on the chief spending 12 or more hours every day toiling at work. It is this: The boss's goal instead is to develop employees so that everyone enjoys a productive, enjoyable and fulfilling workplace.

Let's pay a visit to an imaginary workplace. We will call it The Nirvana Company. Imagine a boss at Nirvana focusing energy and expertise on the quality of his or her relationships with employees. This boss would know, for example, whether an employee's decision-making style matched her own fast-paced method, or whether the worker preferred to ponder situations a while before making decisions. The boss would learn how best to manage that worker to get his very best decisions and the highest productivity. There's more – the boss would do this for every employee in the organization.

Does this scenario seem too good to be true? It doesn't have to be. In fact, Profiles offers an assessment that not only helps the boss work on relationships – it helps employees do the same thing.

Workplaces do exist in which supervisors and their direct reports know each other's work styles and use that knowledge to their own and the organization's advantage. And studies show that such managers and employees are highly productive and engaged. The reverse is also true: Managers who are out of step with employees often cause low productivity, low morale and high turnover. In fact, more people leave bosses than they do jobs.

The Profiles assessment that takes on this issue is Profiles WorkForce Compatibility™, and it combines insight into the characteristics that affect the boss-employee relationship with information on how unique individuals can best work together.

The strength of Profiles WorkForce Compatibility™ lies in two key areas: What it measures and what it provides as a result of its measurements. First, the measurements: Profiles WorkForce Compatibility™ examines seven important characteristics that define the relationship between an employee and the manager: self-assurance, self-reliance, conformity, optimism, decisiveness, objectivity and approach to learning. Once these are measured and analyzed for both boss and worker, each receives a report. The manager's report provides a detailed description of the differences between the two on each characteristic, as well as a "best-practice" working style for both the manager and the employee. A "Working Together" section gives ideas for managing this unique employee and a "Next Steps" section offers detailed instructions on how to proceed.

The Employee Report shows the worker his or her similarities to and differences from the boss, with ideas for making the work relationship smoother.

In short, Profiles WorkForce Compatibility™ helps both manager and employee to:

Communicate better

Spot conflicts before they occur

Successfully resolve problems that pop up

This assessment is neither magic nor a fairy tale – nor does it support the view of Robert Frost expressed above. It does require hard work and a commitment to rely more on facts than assumptions. But its strength is in its personalization of management strategy. The one-size-fits-all approach to management is out the window – good riddance.

The Management See-Saw

By Jan van der Hoop

Deadlines hinder management success.

Sounds absurd in a world where it seems things only get done because we have deadlines to work towards, doesn’t it? Bear with me.

Three decades ago companies decided that the path to sustainable success was to gut their organizations of successive layers of management that were deemed redundant, unproductive overhead. In many cases this was probably a valid assumption.

In order to pick up the slack, ‘management’ tasks such as project management, planning, budgeting, administration, and reporting all got pushed onto the plates of the few managers and supervisors who remained. They were forced to step up and pick up the work that was left to be done.

But in the process what got squeezed off overflowing plates were the activities that were, in Stephen Covey’s model, ‘Important but not Urgent’, things we gave value through lip service but rarely measured, had deadlines for or held managers accountable to such as the development and retention of talent, employee engagement, coaching, mentoring, or offering meaningful performance feedback.

The idealist in me wants to believe we can revert to a model where managers can and do find the time for these mission-critical activities, and where they fully appreciate the value of their efforts in these areas… but that’s pie-in-the-sky. Businesses can’t change their economic and cultural models overnight.

What can we do? We can put tools in the hands of managers and their direct reports that help them make the most of the scarce time they do have for 1:1 communication. Tools that jumpstart conversations about things that matter and that help people grow through understanding themselves and others better.

If you’re not using tools like the Profile XT and the Checkpoint 360 and showing managers how to use them effectively to strengthen your organization by spending even part of their day on the ‘important, not urgent’ activities, you are leaving your organization vulnerable.