human resources Archives - Richard Lannon

Be Teaming With Success: Using Assessments And Profiling To Understand Yourself And Others

On September 24, 2016 / analysis, human resources, people, team building

I have received a number of emails regarding a statement I made in one of my previous blogs. In that particular post, I mentioned the importance of understanding yourself and others through profiling. The exact quote, “you should profile yourself and the people around you”. So let me explain the importance of profiling and give you some options.

See Original Article: Master These 7 Skills to Become an Excellent Interviewer

A business leader and professional is a leader who must engage people in order to get stuff done. This reality exists whether through identifying business problems or opportunities, evaluating solution alternatives, or planning and implementing projects. Nothing happens unless you can engage people appropriately. Profiling helps. I learned this years ago when I was a Senior Manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers. It was a valuable professional and life lesson.

Three Profiling Rules And Profile Types To Endure

There are a few rules about profiling that you need to internalize. First, it is not about you so leave your ego at the door. Second, it is all about the other person’s communication needs. Third, you need to adapt to the communication needs of the other person.

Generally, there are three kinds of profiles to consider; intelligence quotient (IQ), emotional quotient (EQ) and culture quotient (CQ). EQ has to do with emotional intelligence and is now considered more important than IQ in achieving success in our lives (business, career, and life). Success is dependent on our ability to read people and act appropriately.

Four Attributes Of Emotional Quotients (EQ)

Self-Awareness: You are aware of your thoughts and emotions and the impact they have on your behavior. What you think is what you feel, what you feel is how you act and how you act is the results you get (think, feel, act, results).

Self-Management: Can be defined as your ability to manage your feelings and behaviors. It includes your ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Social Awareness: This is where you engage in understanding other people. In essence your ability to read the situation around you, pick up on social cues and adjust accordingly. It is all about people and group dynamics.

Relationship Management: Emphasis is placed on your ability to develop and maintain good relationships. This could be short-term (for projects), to influence and motivate others, to interact for the purpose of understanding a problem, to manage conflicts, etc. I like to think of this as your ability to get on and get along in life.

Six Tools Of The Assessment Trade (There Are More)

There are many tools that can be used to develop your understanding of yourself and others. I believe that throughout your career it is important to use several tools in order to develop a self-profile that goes beyond just the standard EQ assessment. It’s important to look at your career and work fit, your career anchors, and of course the standard emotional intelligence profiling options. Here is a list of options to help you build your ability to understand yourself and others so you can improve your professional effectiveness.

DISC Profile: This is a behavioral model that examines individual behaviors in their environment, their styles, and behavioral preferences. Four areas looked at include; Dominance (control, power, and assertiveness), Influence (social situations and communication), Steadiness (patience, persistence, and thoughtfulness), and Conscientiousness (structure and organization). This is a powerful tool for profiling, building teams and relationships. Click for Further Information: DISC Profile

Self-Management Pro: This one is used to predict management and leadership potential so that organizations can develop their professionals. The tool has been proven effective in predicting performance and retention. I like the way it looks at your profile and style in terms of process and structure, learning, orientation, self-direction and lifestyle management. Click for Further Information: Self-Management Pro

Related Service: IMPACT Teaming with Success

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): A personality inventory that measures people in four key areas; how you relate to others (either by extraversion or introversion), how a person takes in information (sensing or intuition), how a person makes decisions (thinking or feeling) and how a person orders their life (judging or perceiving). Click for Further Information: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Career Anchors: We are all anchored in something. This tool will help you understand your career anchors and other people’s career anchors. Everyone is not anchored in the same things. You and the person you are working with will fall into one of eight categories (autonomy/independence, security/stability, technical/functional, general management, entrepreneurial creativity, service, pure challenge, and lifestyle). Knowing a person’s career anchors tells you a lot about their natural motivation. Click for Further Information: Career Anchors

Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit. Conrad Hilton Share on X

Career Fitters: My new favorite profile as I filled this one a few weeks ago and I was surprised how accurate it was. This profile looks at your personality in the workplace and then provides you insight into career options based on your work personality style. It is great for working with teams and individuals to understand fit or even working with other people and their fit to what they are doing. Click for Further Information:Career Fitters

Coaching Skills Inventory: The coaching skills inventory generates an overall coaching-effectiveness profile. It teaches you how you do in meetings from the opening, communicating, gaining agreement and closing. Don’t let the title fool you as it is not just about coaching. It can be used to improve your meeting performance. Something I found incredibly valuable in identifying my weaknesses and then developing my meeting skills. This is a huge bonus. Click for Further Information: Coaching Skills Inventory

Final Thoughts:

The importance of understanding yourself and others continues to grow. I think it has become imperative that the professional step up and take the time to learn how to profile and adapt in order to increase their success. A combination of emotional quotients and career profiling provides valuable insight into the world around you. These profiles are becoming increasingly relevant to organizations and people development, and the ability to solve business problems because they provide a way to understand and assess behaviors, styles, beliefs, values, attitudes and interpersonal skills. All of which impact your ability to do your job.

Over the course of my career I have done a lot of interviews, small group meetings and workshops where understanding the people around me was critical to the initiative success. Sometimes we would profile on-the-fly and other times we would do formal profiling using a combination of tools, one-on-one debriefs and Group to Business Impact Sessions. Something I still do for clients today.

Six Innovative Personality Types to Create Business Success

On September 2, 2016 / human resources, leadership, profiles

There are many types of people that make up an organization and team. Sometimes the type of person needed changes depending on the circumstances within your organization. Innovation or innovative people types has become popular as of late. So I pose the question, when asked to create a list of innovative people, who comes to mind? Maybe Einstein, Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Spielberg or Hanks. Innovators are people with the creative ability to come up with and act on something new. To take an idea, work with it and create. That leads to the question, who are the different kinds of innovators? When it comes to those in charge of businesses and organizations, there are five different types of innovative personalities that tend to end up at the top.

1. The Driver
The driver is a strong personal type that creates hard, disciplined leaders. They aim for targets, are motivated by results and they love rewards. As time moves on, they work hard to retain influence, to create impact and to leave a legacy. They have a unique ability to run with projects and promote their own success as they get things done. They work to the drum beat of “get it done” and their main question for their team members is “is it done yet?” The Driver make up about 33% of senior ranks.

2. The Pathfinder
Pathfinders are risk takers. They are open to fresh ideas and have a knack for choosing the right approach. They drive results through the use of creative engineering. For better or worse, Pathfinders believe that their sheer will to succeed will guide the way. Even though their ideas or initiatives will not always be fully supported, they dedicate themselves to the cause and apply an unparalleled work ethic to move great ideas along. Pathfinders make up about 16% of executives.

3. The Entrepreneur
Usually have excellent analytical abilities and are the great strategic thinker. Normally easy going, objective and seldom critical. They can succeed in any occupation they chose as long as it does not involve routine. They require independence, diversity, plenty of intellectual stimulation and the opportunity to generate ideas. Their work must be challenging to be satisfying. They do tend to be quick, ingenious, inventive, resourceful, social and enjoy complexity. Best to surround them went capable people.

4. The Wizard
Wizards love to learn, volunteer first, get noticed and everything works out for them even when it shouldn’t’t. They can be the organization’s pet, liked by everyone. Wizards have the ability to create relationships with the right people, support/build talent and leverage their skills for success. Wizards make up 24% of the senior team and are often the person in charge.

5. The Conformist
Conformists like to control and their risk tolerance is low. These individuals like clear instructions and authority. They like to be right, tend to be precise, and are highly organized, thorough and conscientious. Policy and procedure are key. Often they are challenged by change and transformation within their environment, especially if they have no say. Conformists are great tactical managers within the mid range of an organization. They make up about 12% of the senior team.

Related Article: 9 Steps to get Teams Going in the Same Direction

6. The Anchor
The Anchor helps hold everything together. They tie down the sails and batten the hatches. They are great at weighing pros and cons and taking one step at a time. They will sound the warning sign if things are not right. Anchors use approaches and methods that they know work. The Anchor will remind the team of their strengths and limitations. They are realists and love structure. Every boat needs an anchor. They make up about 23% of the senior team.

Final Thoughts

Each of these groups has their unique strengths. The Drivers and Pathfinders are enterprising, prone to risk and internally motivated. They are great for younger organizations. The Entrepreneur is great for creative teams solving problems or leverage opportunities. Unfortunately most traditional organizations and human resource professionals shy away from hiring these individuals because they do not understand how to leverage their unique abilities. Established organizations considering a change might need the Wizard to move vision and strategy forward. The Conformist gets people moving to the rhythm of structure and controls as the Anchor ensures that the rate of innovations is in step with the strengths and limitations of the organization.

Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open. T. Dewar Share on X

The Driver and Pathfinder make things happen. The Entrepreneur figures things out quickly and strategically. The Conformist and the Anchor holds everything together.

A Side Note: Disruptions has become the big word in innovation thinking. Along with creative teams innovation drives success. The most innovative teams have a natural tension between risk and reality, and creating a strong mix of the above personality types can help keep a healthy balance. Of course there is always the potential for chaos. But managed chaos often requires the ability to diverge only to converge on new ideas and the different innovative personality types play an important role in making that happen.

Do your best,
Invest in the success of others,
May your journey count.
Richard

Do you Know your Business’ Guiding Principles?

On June 26, 2015 / business, business decisions, business leadership, business planning, decisions, guiding principles, human resources, key performance indicator, strategic planning, strategy, values

Stay Focused with Guiding Principles

Companies that get focused and provide a vital service for people’s lives deserve to be around a long time. RANA Respiratory Care Group (http://bit.ly/1zq46Do) is one such company. Recently I had the opportunity to interview Cory McArthur, President, about the strategic planning of RANA and their organization as a whole. As we discussed RANA’s thinking on Strategic Planning and the importance of business growth and development, it became apparent that having Guiding Principles was a key to their business’s success.

Guiding Principles provide a litheness test for making better business decisions. They are usually based on your organization’s core values and, to be of most use, should be simple and easy to understand for all

involved. . Most successful companies have between 3-5 Guiding Principles. They use these both as a foundation for making short-term business decisions, as well as a platform from which to create their strategic planning.

As Corey explained, RANA has five unique guiding principles, but one stands out the most: good for the client, good for the system and good for RANA. Simple and profound at the same time, it’s something that both the executives and employees can embrace. It reflects their core values, provides balance, and keeps the company pointed in the right direction. The executive team felt that with this guiding principle none of them could lose when making business decisions. That is a powerful perspective. It not only provides RANA focus, but also has allows them to come out neutral or ahead in their business.

Cory went on to break down this Principle in more depth:

Good for the clientkeeps the company and its people focused on their primary responsibility: the health and well being of their clients.
Good for the systemis about embracing and enhancing the healthcare system over the long term. As a private provider in a public system they need to benefit and compliment the overall healthcare system.
Good for RANA has to do with the business side of the organization and sustainability. That means helping patients and maintaining a healthy company over the long term.

RANA has definitely embraced the key elements of strategic planning. In this case, as a company of 25 years, they have grown and developed a set of Guiding Principles for their business decision-making process that can be used over the long term. A great lesson learned from a company that is a Canadian business champion.

What are your company’s guiding principles?

Listen to our CJOB podcast here The SPAR with Richard Lannon and Cory McArthur.

Four Steps to Align Your Organization to its Strategic Plan

On June 2, 2015 / alignment, business analysis, business leadership, business planning, human resources, strategic planning

Often we want all the moving parts to connect together in our business. We want everything and everybody rowing in the same direction together. This is not always easy to accomplish.

In today’s competitive climate with global competition we need to break down internal barriers and align the strategic thinking and goals and objectives of our departments.

The starting point is to ensure that you have developed the key strategic vision and mission along with our strategic agenda items. Once that is complete alignment planning as part of the strategic planning process can be embraced.

Alignment planning as part of your strategic planning initiative seeks to accomplish three main objectives:

ensure strong connection among the organization’s mission and its operational resources
fine tune departmental goals and objectives and discover implementation gaps
address issues that may exist around internal efficiencies and effectiveness.

There are generally four steps to the Alignment Planning Process for the strategic planning team to engage in. These include:

Outline the organization’s mission, programs, resources, and needed support areas
Identify what’s working well and what needs to be adjusted
Identify how these adjustments should be made and determine the best approach
Include the adjustments as strategies in the strategic plan and roadmap with an alignment path

The challenge with the Alignment Planning is that you require a solid model to follow prior to applying it. You must have gone through a proper strategic planning approach to ensure your have identified and defined the direction of the organization.

If that work is done then you can benefit from bringing your strategic plans to the department and management level. You can engage them in the process of aligning the organization. Your management can help you engage the employees to avoid disconnects between your business strategy and operational reality. The final objective is to link the strategic and operations to establish employee commitment and motivation.

Alignment planning is part of the overall process when making plans for your organization. It is important that you embrace the need to establish business alignment.

This Weeks Red Question: What areas of your organization could be better aligned to ensure operational efficiencies and connecting to the strategic plan?

3 Things I learned from the Bow River Flood about my Business

On June 25, 2014 / business analysis, business improvement, business leadership, business planning, change management, human resources, leadership, strategic planning

Bow River Calgary Alberta Fish Creek Park after the floods

Recently I visited Calgary, Alberta, Canada on business. To facilitate a 3 day business requirements session for a client with a focus on the business and stakeholder needs to solve a particular business challenge.

I decided to drive. It was a lovely 15.5 hours there and 13 hours back. I guess I wanted to be home again. Since I drove I took a few extra days, brought my mountain bike and headed for the hills. Calgary has many trails to mountain bike and hill sides with beautiful views. I was interested to see how the landscaped changed. A year early I was in Calgary when the heavens opened and the rain poured down creating a huge flood.

From the hill top where I stood, in Fish Creek Park, you could see where the river runs through it. It had changed course. You see, a year earlier, on that same hill side, where I stood, in the valley below, you could see a meandering river and an island with plush trees. It was now gone. The river had changed course. It shifted to the right.

There are many things we can learn from our surroundings about business. At this very moment three things came to mind.

There are things outside of our control that will impact our lives and business. Sometimes we have to go with the flow.
That business meanders like a great river and often our course is changed by outside forces. So we adjust to the new circumstances and re-focus our efforts, and
When a new course is set and there are opportunities that we can embrace. The key is to remain open to what is presented.

Sometimes we come to a point in our business where things have changed. This particular week the business leaders and their teams I was working with realized that an external force changed the course of their business. The only option was to embrace their new reality, adjust their course and follow a new flow. A river runs through our businesses and when things change we need to change with them.

Question of the Week:

What has changed in your business that needs you to review your circumstances and re-focus your efforts?

If Hind Sight is 20/20, why are we not listening to our people?

On June 4, 2014 / business analysis, business planning, communications, facilitation, human resources, planning, project management, project manager, strategic, strategic planning, strategy, talent management, technology

In June 2008, while I was teaching a three day workshop on facilitation and gathering and documenting business requirements, someone raised an issue about the economy and stated that the market is headed for a crash soon (within 6 months). Interestingly, the people attending the workshop were not investment specialists. They were professionals from across various industries with backgrounds in human resources, information technology, healthcare, project management and administration. In essence, they were operational and tactical professionals with the same learning goal of understanding how to get the information they needed to create solutions for business problems and opportunities within their respective areas.

Instead on doing the planned assignment we went with the issue raised. I was interested in knowing if a group of professionals from different industries and expertise could apply the five requirement type’s principles (business, stakeholder, solution, data, and implementation) to understanding a complex business issue. Thirty people (6 groups of 5) discussed and brainstormed the issue, defined the challenge, the market parameters, the solution options and build consensus with one key recommendation. They recommended that it would be wise to exit the market by August 2008.

So I decided to take their recommendation to the street. I interviewed three investment advisors independently. Each advisor told me that there was no way that a group of thirty people who were not professional investors could predict the market. They further told me that it would be smart to stay the course with my present investment portfolio and not make any adjustments. Hind sight is 20/20.

There are many lessons we can learn from listening to our people. We must include our people when it comes to understanding business problems, opportunities and creating innovative solutions. People need to work together to unravel complex issues. There are approaches and processes that can be applied to help you make better business decisions. Never under estimate the level of group intelligence of your people. They do know what they are doing. Having a common direction comes in real handy when investing in the success of your organization. More importantly, implementation is the key to the success of best laid plans.

We all know that hind sight is 20/20 and we can chalk it up to a character building experience. Or we can listen to our people. They have something important to contribute. Let them.

Question of the Week: What lesson have you learned from your people that could have made a positive impact on your business? Why did you not implement it? What would you do differently?

Be Teaming With Success: Using Assessments And Profiling To Understand Yourself And Others

Three Profiling Rules And Profile Types To Endure

Four Attributes Of Emotional Quotients (EQ)

Six Tools Of The Assessment Trade (There Are More)

Final Thoughts:

Six Innovative Personality Types to Create Business Success

Do you Know your Business’ Guiding Principles?

Four Steps to Align Your Organization to its Strategic Plan

3 Things I learned from the Bow River Flood about my Business

If Hind Sight is 20/20, why are we not listening to our people?

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