Choosing an Assessment That Maximizes Your Investment

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Choosing an Assessment That Maximizes Your Investment

The Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How

By: Craig Robbins | May 19, 2016

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Have you ever been through the process of selecting a workplace assessment? If so, you know how difficult it can be to find the right tool for the job. With thousands of assessments to choose from that measure everything from personal motivations and career alignment to leadership effectiveness and team culture, ensuring your organization is using the right assessment, with the right people, and for the right reason can be quite the challenge.

Realizing how difficult these decisions can be, I’ve decided to provide some guidance that should help. Whether you’re choosing an assessment for the first time, introducing a new assessment within your organization, or changing assessments for an ongoing project, here are a few of the considerations I find to be most helpful in making the right selection:

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WHY Are You Considering an Assessment?
WHEN Will You Be Using the Assessment?
WHAT Assessment Aligns with Your Goal?
WHO Will Be Taking the Assessment?
HOW Do You Know Which Assessment to Pick?
WHERE Do You Buy the Assessment You’ve Selected?
Are You Ready to Choose an Assessment?

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WHY Are You Considering an Assessment?

Like many things in life, selecting the right assessment should start with a clear understanding of purpose. Below are three of the most common uses for assessments today:

To Uncover the Unknown

We all have blind spots, but many of us are unaware of what our blind spots really are. Assessments can help uncover blind spots that individuals, teams, and entire organizations have by providing you with a better understanding of career alignment, internal motivations, and the relationship between various working and communication styles that exist on a team. The results typically produce at least one “Ah-ha!” moment – for you personally or somebody else on your team.

To Address an Issue

Have you recognized a recurring communication problem within your team, department, or organization? Do your hiring managers repeatedly struggle to select the best candidate to hire? Are you tasked with resolving conflict between individuals you manage? The right assessment can address these issues and help resolve many common workplace challenges.

To Improve Oneself and One’s Team

Assessments are the first step in creating a successful development program and serve as a foundation for further growth and development. You may want to use them when building new teams, improving processes within your organization, and enhancing the learning experience within programs already in place.

WHEN Will You Be Using the Assessment?

Is this a one-time event, or are you hoping to implement a common practice and establish historical reporting data? Assessments typically fall into one of two categories:

Limited Use

These assessments are used on a limited basis when they’re intended to address very specific issues and produce immediate results that can be used to take action. You might use this type of assessment if you’re looking to hire somebody for a unique position within the company or you need to address issues on a particular team at a particular point in time.

Ongoing Use

Organizations typically use ongoing assessments to create historical reporting, best practices, competency models, and training. Continuous use of assessments can be necessary if you want to create normative data and best practices throughout the organization. You may see this in cultural assessments, skills and competencies, or performance management.

WHAT Assessment Aligns with Your Goal?

Would you use the same assessment when hiring the right candidate to fill a position as you would to improve a sales manager’s interpersonal skills? Probably not. Below are 5 of the most common assessment topics:

Hiring and Selection

Assessments used during the hiring process help to accurately identify job applicants before the interview and make scientifically-informed judgments to select the right candidate.

Sales Effectiveness

These assessments can identify areas for improvement which can strengthen your sales team’s ability to identify observable behavior, profile prospects, and adapt their selling style in advantageous ways.

Behavioral Profile

Assessments, such as DiSC and Myers-Briggs, can provide a detailed analysis of a person’s nature and can predict how a person will likely behave in a given role or situation. These assessments are often used to improve interpersonal relationships and team dynamics.

Emotional Intelligence

An Emotional Intelligence assessment can improve a person’s ability to read the emotions in others, be more engaging, and make better decisions.

Learning Style

These assessments can help organizations identify how different employees learn and retain new information. They’re often incorporated into ongoing training programs.

WHO Will Be Taking the Assessment?

While many assessments are offered in multiple formats, some can only be applied to individuals. Other assessments are only designed to measure team and organizational metrics, while some combine self, 360, and group profiles into the same report. Here are the primary differences between the assessment types:

Self Assessments

Self assessments are centered around getting to know oneself. Without the feedback from third parties, these assessments rely solely on the input provided by the person being assessed. This one-sided view, however, does not negate the statistical significance of the insights, as most assessments produce valid results. These results, or reports, can be used to create action plans, development plans, and help guide mentoring or coaching relationships.

Group Assessments

Group assessments provide team/department profiles and feedback on how large groups are operating. They create insights related to group communication styles, culture, and team cohesion. They can also be used to compare and contrast the culture of various teams or departments throughout an organization.

360 Assessments

360 assessments provide objective feedback from direct reports, bosses, peers, and others associated with a single person. These assessments can help a person better understand how they’re perceived by specific groups of people they work with, which enables guided change to work or lead more effectively.

HOW Do You Know Which Assessment to Pick?

After determining the goal of the assessment and who all will be involved, you’ll have the necessary information to select your assessment. The selection process is two-fold – selecting which publisher and which vendor. This section focuses on the publisher who designs, creates, and produces the assessments of the end product you purchase. You’ll want to evaluate assessment publishers in the following areas:

Credibility

Credible assessments are scientifically validated. They’re rooted in scientific research and use surveys that are designed to avoid biases and produce objective feedback and accurate results. You’ll want to find a publisher whose assessment has noted proven results and can support the quality of their research/questions if asked about the scientific validity of their assessment.

Certification Requirements

Some assessments will require a certified individual to analyze and deliver the results. You need to determine if you’ll want to regularly use a particular vendor to interpret results, seek a “train the trainer” model to establish an in-house capability, or send somebody to training outside the organization to become a certified partner.

User Experience

Let’s face reality. If you’re going to ask someone to participate in an assessment, it had better provide them with a good experience. Factors that lead to a positive user experience include mobile technology and accessibility (using smartphones and live links to complete surveys), design and branding, clarity of instructions, and perhaps most importantly – the ability to see the bigger picture once the process is complete.

Packages with Additional Resources

Some assessments only provide raw data and information, leaving it up to you or your certified practitioner to deliver meaning and guidance that will make that information useful. Other assessments are accompanied by workbooks, action plans, and sometimes digital media such as videos and other resources. Using a full package will ensure that you get the full value out of your investment in the assessment.

WHERE Do You Buy the Assessment You’ve Selected?

Publishers produce only a handful of assessments but enlist the help of vendors to distribute their assessment to the masses. There are thousands of vendors who each distribute the same publishers’ assessments, so how do you pick the right one to work with? When selecting where to buy your assessments, consider:

The Level of Support

The more complex an assessment is, the more you’ll need to rely on a quality vendor to provide services. The level of complexity can vary greatly between assessments. Some are easy to interpret and can be understood without additional explanation of its results. Other assessments require a certified expert to interpret and place the results in the proper context to produce meaningful takeaways. Ask yourself what level of support you need.

Your Expectations of Customer Service

Customer service is essential. If you plan to use a complex assessment, establish historical reporting through high-frequency use, or require a database to track and manage administrative tasks, you’ll want exceptional customer service. A vendor that provides quality customer service will be easily accessible, willing to provide guidance and answer questions, and provide updates and support through every phase of the assessment process.

Are You Ready to Choose an Assessment?

Have you pinpointed WHY (what is the goal) you are using an assessment?
Do you know WHEN (ongoing, single use) you will be using the assessment?
Have you determined WHAT (Hiring and Selection, Sales Effectiveness, Behavioral Profile, Emotional Intelligence, Learning Style) type of assessment best aligns with your goal?
Do you know WHO (self, group, 360) will be taking the assessment?
Are you confident in HOW (credibility, certification, experience, resources) you will select the exact assessment you’re using?
Are you prepared to determine WHERE (vendor support, customer service) to buy the assessment?

Assessments can provide invaluable information to support decision making and improve employees, teams, and organizations as a whole. There are a number of factors to consider, so keep in mind that only looking at the cost per assessment can be quite misleading. If you take the time to carefully consider your options, you will find the right tool for the job. Good luck!

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Gumby, Iron Man, and the Importance of Adaptive Leadership

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Gumby, Iron Man, and the Importance of Adaptive Leadership

By: Craig Robbins

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Imagine Gumby and Iron Man as leaders in your organization. We all know what your teams would do to Gumby as their boss. They’d pull, twist, and bend him in every way possible. Gumby would ask the team to do something and they’d literally tie his hands behind his back and stick a foot in his yapper. Poor Gumby can’t lead. Why? Because he’s simply too flexible.

Now imagine Iron Man bursting through the door (or window) for his first day on the job. Iron Man was hired to take charge and lead those teams through anything that life throws their way. We can probably guess how this scenario would play out. Iron Man would walk in and find his teams huddled closely together in the janitor’s closet. Iron Man can’t lead either. Why? Because he’s simply too rigid.

I’ve worked with hundreds of leaders throughout the world and most of them fall at a fixed point somewhere on this continuum between overly flexible and overly rigid. The very best leaders I’ve worked with have mastered a very important skill; they’ve developed the ability to lead from different points along the continuum depending on the needs of their current situation. I call this Adaptive Leadership; in my opinion, using an adaptive leadership style is the most effective way to lead in the world today.

Why Adaptive Leadership Works

Our world is more interconnected today than it has ever been, and situations change with the blink of an eye. It’s not uncommon to be in a casual morning meeting with your peers and later find yourself at a formal dinner with people from a very different culture than your own. Within your own office, you likely experience uniquely different personalities because, in today’s workforce, our employees typically come from a wide range of backgrounds and life experiences. As a manager, you will sometimes need to be more like Gumby and at other times more like Iron Man.

The Continuum Exercise

Imagine a scale from one to ten, with one being extremely rigid and ten being extremely flexible. Think about where you fall on this scale as a leader. Now think of three different scenarios that could occur in one day, each requiring you to fall at a different point on the scale. For example, you might have to deal with an employee who violated a sexual harassment prevention policy that calls for an immediate and rigid response. Later in the day, you might find yourself in a typical meeting. You remain flexible enough to encourage collaboration and let the team steer the conversation toward a positive outcome, yet rigid enough to keep the team on point and on time. Later that evening, you’re invited to attend a casual dinner with foreign business partners. You’re not well versed in their cultural practices so you take a watch-and-learn approach, remaining flexible enough to adapt to their behaviors. These examples should help you think of different scenarios in your own workplace that require adaptation.

Three Key Adaptations

There are many ways for you as a leader to adapt to a given situation, but I find three areas to be most important. At a minimum, you should be able to adapt mentally, physically, and communicatively.

Adapting mentally requires you to change your mindset to based on your perspectives, emotions, biases, and more. This is not easy to do, but actively thinking about the way you think and feel is the best place to start. You might be engaged in one activity that requires a direct communication style and later engaged in an activity that requires you to simply listen and understand. You must find ways to manage your mindset, or switch modes. Also, be sure to consider your cultural biases and perspectives and manage them as you work with people that are different from you.

Adapting physically requires you to change your physical behavior. This includes nonverbal behavior, such as how much space you leave between yourself and those around you. Sometimes you’ll need to be more physically authoritative and other times you’ll need to be more relaxed and laid back. Physical fitness also plays a role here. It’s well researched that peak performance and physical conditioning go hand in hand. If you’re preparing for three long months of travel, you should exercise regularly before you travel; if you’re going on a business outing that requires you and your team to hike, climb, run, or play sports, you should prepare yourself to keep up with your team. There are many ways to physically adapt to your situation, but most of us don’t think about this often enough.

Communicative adaptation requires you to change the way you communicate and manage relationships. Different people on your team will respond better or worse to different communication styles. Observe your team and adapt your communication style when necessary. Some people don’t respond well to an overly rigid communication style, while others don’t respond to leaders who are too flexible. Iron Man should sometimes talk like Gumby, and Gumby like Iron Man.

Adapt and Thrive

Adaptive leadership can help you overcome a number of challenging situations and will certainly improve your ability to lead others. To be an exceptional leader, you must consciously manage the rigid-flexible continuum and learn how to walk the line. This will require a strong sense of self-awareness and the discipline to allow you to manage your mindset, physical presence, and communication style. Know that if you’re able to demonstrate Gumby-like flexibility and Iron Man-like rigidness in a controlled and purposeful manner, you will thrive as a leader.

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