The Power of Behavioral Assessment Tools
As a CEO your job is to build an organization made up of highly qualified employees who are fully engaged, motivated and committed. The best way to do this is to truly understand what makes each of your employee’s tick and the only way to do this at scale, and with consistency, is through the use of behavioral assessments that are infused throughout your companies HCM processes and which are used as the basis for recruitment, onboarding, training, development and retention.
Management is not a one size fits all practice because no two people are exactly alike. Great managers intuitively understand that the best way to get the most out of their team is to manage each individual differently, and so given enough time, and consistency in a team, the best managers will discover the best way to manage each individual on their team to peak performance
However, in the modern workplace there is seldom consistency among the team and therefore even great managers rarely have enough time to figure out what makes each person tick and the best way to manage them. Additionally, not all managers are great, in fact most aren’t, and so even given enough time they will never fully discover how to manage each individual uniquely.
This is where behavioral assessments come in. Behavioral assessments are such a powerful resource because they give managers insights into each employee that would take them years, if ever, to discover on their own. Each of us has unique patterns around how we like to communicate, the way we behave under different circumstances, how we like to work, and much more. A person performs at peak performance if their behavioral needs are being met. So to get the most out of each employee requires managing them according to their unique behavioral DNA and the fastest and most consistent way to do this is through a behavioral assessment tool.
For example, one key universal behavior marker is the quality and frequency of communication that an individual requires. Some of us require frequent communication with our manager to feel comfortable while others don’t. It isn’t that one type is a “better” employee than the other, it just means that if you are a manager and do not have regular communication with the employee that requires it then rest assured your employee will feel “out of the loop” and “underappreciated” and will begin to underperform and will soon be looking for another job. Their communication requirement needs to be met in order for them to feel engaged, committed and motivated.
As a quick aside, the funny thing is that most of us are fairly unaware about our behavioral DNA except in the broadest of brush strokes. It requires an assessment to not only help a manager gain insights but for the individual employee to as well. Most of you reading this blog post will have taken an assessment or two in the past and I am sure most of you (and me) have come away with a profound new understanding of “what makes us tick”. The insights for both parties are invaluable.
So if we accept that in order for each of us to feel engaged, appreciated, motivated and committed to a job and a team we need to have our behavioral DNA needs met then it stands to reason that management practices based on these insights need to be infused throughout the HCM process.
