Create a Climate of Truth

The hardest thing about strategic planning seems to be finding the direction that a company should take.  In Good to Great Collins suggests creating a climate of truth throughout the organization so that voices can be heard and facts can be confronted.  If you’ve gathered the right people and allow them to be heard, the right decisions for the organization will become self-evident.  Collins says that creating a climate of truth can be achieved through these practices:

1)    Lead with questions, not answers.  It seems that the greatest leaders didn’t walk in trying to solve problems.  Rather they gathered bright minds together and posed questions that would lead the organization to a sound decision.

2)    Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion.  Along a similar line as the statement above, encourage discourse among members of the organization in order to bring about a positive change rather than making top down decisions and expecting people to “buy-in.”

3)    Conduct autopsies, without blame.  This is the cornerstone of “confronting the brutal facts.”  In order to find out what works and what doesn’t work, a company must scrutinize and examine every move it makes.  If it works, seek to understand why it worked and what can be learned from this.  If it doesn’t work, don’t place blame, rather seek to understand and learn from these mistakes.  This process of conducting autopsies will go a long way towards creating a winning strategic plan.

Creating a climate of truth can be easier said than done.  You can allow people the freedom to voice their opinions, but will they?  If people voice their opinions, how do you prevent conflicting opinions from becoming outright arguments?  Our assessments can help in this process and provide answers to these questions.

Using Assessments to Create a Climate of Truth
Using (and understanding the theories behind) an assessment like DISC and Meyers-Briggs can aid in creating a climate of truth and provide a more cohesive environment where expression and opinion are welcomed.  In assessing a team with behavior based assessments, team members will start to understand themselves and the other members of their team in a way they never have before.  In terms of the behaviors, each team member will see their own communication style and the strengths and weakness that their style has in communicating with the styles of other team members.  In terms of motivators, members will see what drives their passion as well as the passion of their fellow team members and how that may affect the way in which they relate to one another.  The understanding and awareness of these factors alone will improve the team dynamic by leaps and bounds, yielding a true climate of truth.

Building An Atmosphere of Trust

Like many of the best things in life, trust really is free. Doing without it, however, will cost you dearly, especially in business. What’s at stake is productivity, innovation, and ultimately, profits. 
High functioning teams share goals that drive day-to-day activities. Their mutual self-interest greases the wheels of collaboration, but trust is the solid ground they ride on. Capitalizing on their energy and motivation so your team is productive requires that they collaborate freely, and for that, people need to trust each other.

Trust is based on a history of honest relationships. Teams are subtly strengthened or gradually divided by the way simple, everyday differences are communicated. Unified teams have integrity, demonstrating honesty through actions. Having integrity means that what an individual says and what they actually do are consistent with each other. Can your team count on one another to do what they say they will do?

Teams that operate in the absence of trust are guarded, and by necessity more cautious about everything they say and do. Communication becomes a way to defend and protect oneself, avoiding risk rather than reaching for results. The consequence for your business is more of the status quo, instead of the collaborative risk-taking that exemplifies off-the-charts growth.

Harnessing their inspiration and creativity depends on employees being able to trust each other and their managers. Groups innovate when they are comfortable sharing ideas, exploring “What if…?” and can rely on each other to keep the process moving. They need to feel safe discussing “what’s not working” in the context of exploring ways to make it better. If ideas are often met with cynicism and viewed as a waste of time (“Don’t bother, it’ll never be considered”), you may be missing out on great contributions.  Are individuals viewed with respect for taking the initiative to pitch ideas, regardless of the outcome?

The answers to these questions are a good indicator of whether your company is already recognized as a creative industry leader or one that follows trends set by more innovative competitors. When trust levels are high, so is the potential that the talented people you’ve hired will coalesce to become a powerful team.

You can discover and measure the level of trust in your team with our Team Performance Survey. This tool and many more are designed to find out what is needed to improve, insight to understand the issues at an interpersonal level, and on-demand resources to take action. And, importantly, the ability to measure progress.

Employment Myths Busted

In case you haven’t noticed, a lot of what we used to know even two years ago isn’t necessarily true in today’s changed business climate. How many outdated ideas do you have about the employment world? Read each question in bold to decide if you think it’s true or false before reading the answer below.

1. Employees always leave managers, not jobs. Wrong. Employees leave jobs even when they like and respect their manager because the fit between their talents, interests and skills isn’t good enough to give them quality of life on the job. In fact, struggling in a job where you spend Sunday night dreading going to work on Monday morning is a dead giveaway of a poor job fit. All jobs have a unique profile of distinct skills, attitudes and behaviors that are required for best performance, just as people have their own unique profile, too. When a person is matched to a job that requires the combination of behaviors, skills and attitudes that come naturally to them, achieving superior performance isn’t a struggle, it’s a challenge they can win.

2. Our superior performing employees may secretly be waiting for the economy to open up more jobs, so they can find another job with more money and opportunity than we can offer them right now.  In the present economy with budgets so tight that raises and incentives have been cut almost across the board, employee surveys show that this is absolutely true. But it doesn’t mean you can’t deepen your superior performers’ bond to your company. Savvy employers are investing in professional development that helps them develop talent from within. By doing this, they help current employees improve their performance now, while preparing them for upcoming leadership roles. People understand that budgets are tight right now, but when they see their company’s willingness to develop their skills, they recognize it as a vote of confidence in their potential and their value to the organization. Nothing says “We’ll give you a raise when we can” like investing in an employee’s career development now.

3. If my company asks me to take an assessment, it must mean they think I’m not good enough to do my job and they want an excuse to fire me. If you said that nothing could be further from the truth, you’re right. Just as employees are slow to leave a good job right now, employers are realizing that it’s much more cost effective to mine the talent they already have rather than to start from scratch with someone new. Using assessment reports is a strategy that smart companies are using to build bench strength so they are ready when business picks up. If your employer has asked you to take an assessment, congratulations! You’ve been identified as an employee with high potential to become a superior performer or next-generation manager.

4. Behavioral and values assessments are NOT like personality tests. If you agree with this statement, you’re right. Behavior and values assessments are statistically validated ways to see what a person’s natural style is for communicating on the job, how they like to manage their workflow, how they respond to a changing work environment, and what aspects of the job can make it deeply satisfying beyond the paycheck. Using assessment reports to identify a person’s strengths is a great way to make sure the company is deploying an employee in the right job to play to their strengths and develop more.

5. Managing other people to achieve peak performance is only possible if you’re a really accomplished, experienced manager with a long track record of success, or a manager with too much time on your hands. If you recognized this thought as so outdated that it’s last millennium, you’re right. In the age of research validated job benchmarks and assessments, it’s possible to pinpoint exactly what a person’s workplace strengths and weaknesses are. Smart companies are using the latest technology, available online, to not only generate an assessment they can review with the employee, but to ‘prescribe’ professional development modules that the employee can use anywhere they have access to the internet. Managers can review performance goals and contribute suggestions online, too, without having to micromanage either performance or professional development.

For more information on how assessments can help strengthen your organization, contact Vantage today.

Only 27% of large organizations are Transferring Knowledge from retiring baby boomers to younger employees.

• -Novations Inc.