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Historically, one of the hardest things about managing people is a lack of objectivity (or objective metrics), personal biases, or both. For many of us, even the most difficult technical task seems easier than solving human challenges. Many managers and leaders either start to give up, or even worse, become actively disengaged with the entire process of leading people.
We’ve always believed that the most unbiased and objective way to work with people is to introduce an assessment program. These bring objective data, useful information, actionable strategies, and easy to understand tactics that managers and leaders can use right away. Most people we work with are amazed at how accurate our assessments are, and often feel silly they didn’t use them before.
We use a proprietary and exclusive set of assessment tools – we have over 25 sciences we can use for virtually any situation. Best of all, most assessments are very easy to take, require only 10-15 minutes to complete, and can be taken on most devices. The information is safe, secure, and easy to manage.
At HBI we have great confidence that most people-related challenges can be quickly diagnosed with the use of simple assessment tools. Once we know the root cause of a problem, it’s a matter of creating new processes and measuring our improvement over time. Many advisers often use their gut and instincts to solve problems – we do too. However, instinct without scientific backing creates inconsistent results. We aren’t interested in being a one-hit wonder – we want to continually and predictably produce great results for our clients. This is why we blend both science and experience to create the best outcomes.
Behavioral science is the most approachable and most practical tool for most organizations who want to improve the results they get from people. Commonly referred to as DISC, it measures where people rank on a behavioral spectrum of Dominance, Influencing, Steadiness, and Compliance. While some practitioners use behavioral science very lightly or in a team-building application, we have over 25 years of experience using this tool for major company improvements ranging from divisions or territories to entire company-wide projects. Some of the ways this tool can be used are:
According to most studies there is a great lack of awareness regarding what truly motivates individuals and groups within our organizations. According to Forbes, who analyzed a study of 19,700 post-exit interviews, 89% of employers think their people leave for more money. The employees who actually leave for more money? Just 12%. This incredible disconnect between employers and their employees can be alleviated using the motivators assessment tool. It measures 12 factors of motivation ranging from money, power, altruism, and other important driving forces that inspire our team. Some useful applications of this assessment are:
While everyone can benefit from better management and regulation of their emotions, it is absolutely vital for leaders and managers to possess this trait. The moment someone on your staff is in charge of managing other people, they have the power to make or break your organization. According to Gallup, it is middle-management that truly drives the culture and overall performance of a company’s employees. At HBI, emotional awareness for leaders isn’t just a nice perk – it’s a requirement. Here is some of what you can expect from having high EQ managers and leaders:
In recent years, the most common feedback we get from our clients is that there seems to be a disconnect between someone’s background and experience and their actual performance on the job after being hired. It is incredibly deflating to hiring executives that someone they spent so much time recruiting and hiring didn’t work out. Why does this happen? Very often, the issue comes down to someone’s developed or undeveloped soft skills. We measure 23 different soft skills – an example of some of these are: leadership, goal-setting, resiliency, time management, self-starting, and interpersonal skills. A soft skills assessment will be an additional piece of information that will help you decide who will be the best fit for promotions or open roles. Some applications of this tool are:
Our business acumen assessment is typically reserved for those who hold the highest positions of responsibility within the organization. Simply put, this assessment tool measures one’s ability to understand different components of business leadership and management, and the biases they have that could limit successful decisions. It is one of the most impactful executive coaching tools and we’re very proud to be one of the leading experts in this field. The most useful applications of this tool are:
What happens when we’ve identified the root cause of a personnel challenge? What are the next steps? If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. For that reason, we have to take action once our assessment and discovery process reveals certain truths that would greatly improve our organization.
Going back to the concept of scalability and sustainability, we don’t want to make changes on a whim – we want to carefully think it through. A new standard must be created that is adopted by all stakeholders and becomes woven into the overall company operations.
New standard operating procedures will be created by the team and shared with everyone who will be impacted by the new processes. The key to any successful new system is the ability to measure it. Therefore, it is vital to create appropriate success metrics to ensure a new habit or behavior has been implemented and adopted by our team.
Choosing the right success metrics (sometimes called key performance indicators) are extremely important – without all parties agreeing on what a successful change looks like, and without having a way to measure that, we are flying blind. The right KPI’s create objectivity, clarity, buy-in, and the ability to forecast our future success.
What gets measured gets improved. We’ve all heard this expression and believe that it’s true, but many of us skip this type of formality in our life and work. Using our assessment tools and training programs can produce powerful results, but those impacts are less noticeable when all team members aren’t aligned on goals and outcomes. It’s mission critical to any corporate initiative that all parties involved agree on the methods and outcomes of any project. Once agreed upon, those tactics will be translated into measurable data points that can show us the following:
In the best cases, all of these data points become streamlined into a dashboard or simple format that allows all stakeholders to see the relationship between our strategy planning and strategic execution. Furthermore, in most cases the tracking of this data can be enjoyable for those involved – it becomes “gamified” and unifying to measure what we’re doing and seeing the growth and improvement in front of our eyes.
Perhaps most important of all, when we report and measure all our strategic actions, we avoid strategic drift or falling off track. We will immediately notice if something isn’t working out and quickly pivot to a new idea or tactic that will improve results. We won’t spend months working on a failed strategy or only realize change is needed before it’s too late. The best companies measure their strategies and changes and exhibit agility and adaptability.
