Category: Talent Management and Development

We provide full service talent management and talent development consulting services. Read our blogs in this category for stories and best practices from real clients and real research.

  • 3 Questions for Balancing Empathy and Expectations as a Leader

    3 Questions for Balancing Empathy and Expectations as a Leader

    Quite a while ago, I wrote about the “Es of LEadership” with empathy being one of them.  Not included in these essential “Es” was “expectations”.   And as the article on empathy points to, sometimes managing expectations and having empathy seem to be in direct conflict.

    Setting, communicating, monitoring and maintaining expectations is a critical skill for leaders.  We must maximize performance of others through effectively setting expectations high and constantly pushing others to reach higher.  When we do so, we provide meaningful and challenging work, which has been shown to increase worker satisfaction leading to higher productivity (and profits).

    Yet also as leaders, we always need to put people first, realizing they have demands both inside and outside of work.  People are our greatest asset, and we must be able to put ourselves in others’ shoes to lead effectively.  In other words, we must establish an empathetic approach to leading with a genuine interest in the whole person.

    So what do we do when “e” of expectation seems to be in direct conflict with the “e” of empathy?

    For example, say you have an employee that is not performing their job satisfactorily.  You are aware that this employee is dealing with several difficult personal issues.  He/she is in the process of getting a divorce, has a mom that is suffering from cancer and has recently brought a troubled teenager into his/her home to support.

    You take off your shoes and walk around in his or hers for a bit to establish empathy towards them.  You feel for this person, yet they are not maintaining performance standards at work.  Do you talk to them?  Do you ignore the issue?

    Bottom line, when do you lower your expectation bar for the sake of empathy??

    Here are three questions to consider for how to respond when empathy and expectations seem to be in conflict:

     1.  Is the need to compromise expectations for empathy an established pattern or an isolated event?  In the above example, has the employee had an issue with performance before this set of personal issues arose or has the person been a star performer in the past? 

    2. Does acting in empathy enable a continuation of bad choices? As a leader, our job in not to take ownership and responsibility for bad choices others have made either inside or outside of work and their subsequent consequences.  If you ignore expectations or lower them, will it enable the continuation of bad choices that impact not only your business but also the person?  You may have heard parents call this “tough love”.  And tough love is still love and empathy is a component of love.  Maintaining expectations may actually be an act of empathy.

    3. Does empathy for one cause you to be lacking in empathy towards the whole? If we let someone’s performance suffer and it causes others who do a good job day in and day out to take up the slack that shouldn’t be their responsibility, then we aren’t acting as a leaders.  When we do this, we are communicating to those star performers that it is okay not to meet expectations. We are actually giving the person who seemingly needs empathy the green light to NOT act in empathy towards their team.  Realizing that our actions have consequences that impact the greater whole is important both for us and for conveying this message to others.

    If you walk through these questions and realize a person needs a break from responsibilities of the job in order to resolve situations and come back better able to perform and meet expectations, then my hope is that you allow that flexibility in your company policies for a leave of absence.   As Workforce magazine points out in its feature article- “A Monumental Problem” from the August 2014 issue, mental health, stress and burnout is a major issue in today’s workplace.  Sometimes the best thing to do is allow people opportunities to regroup and come back better for having that time.

    However, if you walk through these questions and realize that you are just avoiding confrontation with empathy as your guise, become the better leader by tackling the difficult issue of refusing to lower the bar.  Often, when we lower our expectations that we know are fair expectations given the person’s skill level and expertise coupled with what is needed for the job, lowering the bar is potentially the inverse of empathetic.   It sabotages putting trust in people and empowering them to do a great job. And at our core, we all want to be valued and trusted.  When we take that away from people by avoiding difficult issues, we aren’t acting as leaders and we aren’t being very empathetic.

  • How Personality Assessment Can Help You Be A Better Leader

    How Personality Assessment Can Help You Be A Better Leader

    “This is why I’m not married anymore,” said a participant in a recent leadership training class.   She was partly kidding, but it was obvious that the results of her personality assessment, which were being used to launch the leadership training series we were conducting for her company, had struck a cord.

    Her personality assessment showed that she was a highly dominant, take charge, get it done kind of person.  These characteristics had served her well in her role in finance with the organization, but she realized that maybe her personality had impacted the success of her marriage.

    In another conversation with the director of a college career center, concerns were expressed about students’ ability to know themselves- their strengths and areas for development- and take this knowledge into the workplace in order to succeed.  In designing a leadership workshop for them, our first approach was to implement a personality assessment to help these student leaders with the self-awareness they seem to so desperately need.

    As we’ve often said, self-awareness is the first step in establishing yourself as a leader.   Although it isn’t the only way, personality assessment can help with this self-awareness and then provide a framework for building interpersonal relationships, providing feedback, delegating and a host of other leadership issues.

    Here are some assessment tools/vendors we use based on client needs (Note: It’s important to know which personality assessment is right to use based on your organization’s needs.   You should define the needs first- are you wanting to facilitate teambuilding, leadership coaching or training, make better hiring decisions, etc.- then pick the best assessment, not the other way around.):

    Hogan Assessments

    DiSC Assessments

    Tools from Assessment Associates International

    Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

    How as a personality assessment helped you at work or in your personal life?

  • Now don’t go changing your compensation structure without….

    Now don’t go changing your compensation structure without….

    You’re worried you’re not attracting the right talent or that you aren’t able to keep good talent around for long and you think it might be because of your salary structure.   Before you launch into a compensation structure overhaul (we’ll tell you how to do this next week on the blog), you need to:

    Know for sure that the reason you are having the problems you are having is in fact compensation related.  It may be that all your supervisors are jerks and people may leave even if you paid them twice as much.  Surveying employees, especially through exit interviews is a good way to do this.  Also, getting a quick snapshot to see if you are externally competitive in compensation in your area is also advisable.  

    Some sites to spot check your wage rates with the market (Make sure you search based on your market.  If you are just competing for talent locally, then search by your metropolitan area, not the entire nation): 

    Career One Stop

    Salary.com

    Salary Expert

    BLS

    Do a job analysis and write job descriptions.  You can’t accurately design a compensation structure without defining what jobs require.  This helps you compare jobs both internally and externally.  

    A job analysis can be done in several ways: 

    Job observation

    Job questionnaire to the people in the roles and their managers

    Review of job logs or reports

    Structured panels

    A combination on any of these

    Reviewing occupational information can help you frame any of the above or help you check the data you’ve gathered against standard responsibilities based on job title

    A job analysis needs to gather what is required to perform the job. (This is a really short way of saying this; there are many purposes of job analysis because it is the basis of any talent management intervention.  Read more about the things needed in job analysis based on what you are trying to accomplish here.) 

    A job description needs to include: 

    Date description was written

    Job status (exempt, non-exempt; full or part time)

    Title

    Purpose of the role

    Reports to

    Job summary (outline of responsibilities of the role)

    Knowledge, skills and abilities required as well as education and experience required

    Essential Functions for ADA purposes

    Tasks and Responsibilities of the job

    Physical factors of the job (environment where the job is performed) and working conditions (overtime requirements, shift)

    The disclaimer that the description is not designed to cover a comprehensive listed of everything the job entails (the other duties as assigned statement) 

    Once you have gone through these two steps, you are ready to start with a compensation redesign if you have determined through Step 1 that is what you need.  Check back on the blog soon to see how to do this. 

    Do you need a compensation overall or something entirely different?

  • Leaders are Noticers

    Leaders are Noticers

    “The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.”  John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

    According to my editorial calendar, I’m supposed to be writing about job shadowing today, but I’ve noticed something. In the past week I’ve had conversations with three people about their work.  One just quit. One is DONE with her work and is planning her quit, and one just realized she wants to quit, but hasn’t started the plotting of her exodus yet. (By the time I see her again next week though, I imagine she will have it all mapped out.)

    Why are these three DONE with they’ve been doing? Through these conversations, I’ve decided that the two reasons people quit a job (they are actually quitting a boss, not a job) is because:

    They don’t feel like they have the opportunity to make a contribution and/or

    They don’t feel like the contribution they are making is valued.

    Long and short, what they are doing isn’t being noticed. And the one who needs to be noticing, their boss, just isn’t. More often than not, the boss is too busy “doing things” instead of noticing people and the contribution they are making or have the potential to make. 

    As the boss, don’t let it take cancer (read the book) or a resignation letter to make you wake up and notice.  Want to be a leader or a “hero” as the quote states, then start noticing people- who they are, what they value, how they want to contribute- and give them the avenue to make a contribution that is valued. If you do, you become a hero in their eyes and you get to keep them as valuable talent. If you don’t, they will demand to be noticed with a resignation letter.  And if it takes the resignation to get you to stand up and take notice, as the guy who just quit boss did by offering him at $15,000 raise, stock options and a VP title to stay, you’re already too late. Your employee is already done, mentally moved on to a place where they think someone may stand up and take notice of their talents without having to demand it.  

    But I must end here; my three month old is demanding to be noticed by her cries. No one said the noticing was easy, as I delay picking her up to write these last few sentences, continuing to pretend to unnotice. No one said leadership (or parenting) was easy either. There is so much to be noticed. But if you can be half a percent better at noticing than the rest of the population half a percent more of the time, you’ll be able to do what everyone is trying to do but hasn’t quite figured out yet how to do it- retain the best talent.

  • The What and Why of Competencies as Seen through CDF Training and SHRM’s new move

    The What and Why of Competencies as Seen through CDF Training and SHRM’s new move

    The HR world has been all a buzz with SHRM’s announcement of a switch to a competency-based certification.

    In an email to members, the SHRM CEO stated,  “We believe a competency-based certification is the new standard for HR professionals around the globe. Our members have told us this; and we have listened.”

    Regardless of whether or not you agree or disagree with SHRM’s move, competency models are prevalent.  The career development world has been competency-based through its Career Development Facilitator Training for quite some time.

    What is a competency?

    Good ole Wikipedia provides us with this definition: A competency is a set of defined behaviors that provide a structured guide enabling the identification, evaluation and development of the behaviors in individual employees.” 

    Why I like competencies

    Competencies are behavioral-based.  Whereas an assessment of knowledge is just that, knowledge that may or may not be acted upon or put in to practice, a competency begets action through behaviors.

    If you have knowledge of something, you can tell me about it, but if you are competent in something, you can show me how to do it by demonstrating it.  You apply your knowledge and demonstrate it through your behaviors.  This aids others in learning through your behaviors.

    What are the CDF Competencies?

    CDF competencies emphasize the broad scope in which career development professionals practice.   They are:

    1. Helping Skills
    2. Labor Market Information and Resources
    3. Assessment
    4. Diverse Populations
    5. Ethical and Legal Issues
    6. Career Development Models
    7. Employability Skills
    8. Training Clients and Peers
    9. Program Management/Implementation
    10. Promotion and Public Relations
    11. Technology
    12. Consultation

    To read more about the competencies click here.

    If you are tied to the career development world in any way, are these things that you think you need to be able to DO not just know as they relate to delivering services to whoever your “client” may be?  If so, CDF training may be an option for you, as it provides a path that can lead to your Global Career Development Facilitator (GCDF) certification.

    Among other reasons, the emphasis on GLOBAL may be why SHRM is driving towards a competency-based model.  The National Career Development Association (NCDA) already sees competency-based training, education and certification as the best method for preparing practitioners to operate in a global environment. It also emphasizes the need for the same standards of practice for a profession around the world.

    More to come in our next post about the CDF competencies as we sample what a couple of them look through the doing of them, not just the knowing of them.

    What do you think?  Is knowing something the same thing as being competent in it?   Is it all really just six of one and half a dozen of the other?