Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Facing Today's Talent Challenges

To meet today’s challenges, companies world-wide are searching for ways to do more with less. While many strategies offer streamlined processes and ways to add value, the biggest opportunities to meet this challenge lie within the talent themselves and are critical to future success:

Managing talent can be tough, but it doesn’t have to be. The key is to understand the current needs of the organization and what each unique individual brings to the job to help you make tough talent decisions.

Less than 25% of senior teams actually realize their potential.
-Chief Executive, an international study of more than 120 senior teams

While education, experience and intelligence are important, you simply cannot uncover the true picture of human talent without a total person analysis that includes an assessment of behaviors, values and personal skills. Together, these areas present a more in-depth approach to truly understanding an individual’s unique characteristics and how they apply to performance on the job.

In particular, a behavioral assessment will reveal HOW a people behave through their natural style in dealing with four different areas: problems, people, pace and procedure. With a better understanding and appreciation for people with different behavioral styles, communication can be enhanced, conflict can be reduced and a better job fit can be made. With an assessment of motivators, you can reveal WHY people act, or what drives a person to take action. People can be managed more effectively in an environment where their motivators are naturally satisfied. Finally, an assessment of an individual’s personal skills will allow you to determine WHAT specific talents your employee will naturally excel in and can ensure you are leveraging the skills they bring to the table. Different than hard skills, such as engineering techniques or medical procedures, personal skills are more intangible, such as teamwork, personal accountability and self management.

More than 90 Percent of Fortune 1000 companies are using multi-source assessments for developmental feedback. -International Personnel Management Association

Together, this total person analysis will give you a more complete picture of personal talent so you can make tough decisions with support, rather than relying on education, experience and intelligence alone. When you analyze this against the core competencies needed to drive your business forward, you will experience increased profits, faster execution of organization strategy, reduced employee turnover, and "raving fan" customers.

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