VUCA Leadership today: how to identify great VUCA Leaders

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VUCA leadership is paramount, with the world facing an uncertain future today.

The VUCA acronym (Volatile, Uncertain Complex, Ambiguous) has been around since 1987. It was the US Army War College’s response to the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s.

No one was forecasting Covid-19, even in January 2020.

Without a doubt, it has been the most disruptive event in our lifetimes. It has devastated:

  • countries,
  • economies,
  • businesses,
  • individuals,
  • families, and
  • communities.

But it is likely there may be other disruptions waiting in the wings that, as yet, we know nothing about.

What does VUCA leadership and uncertainty mean for organisations?

The BIG questions for organisations are:

  • which elements will affect you,
  • to what degree, and
  • how will a combination of consecutive catastrophic disruptions alter the change.

Despite the deliberations of many so-called thought leaders and experts, the truthful answer is no one actually knows what’s going to happen in the future!

What you can rely on, though, is that there will be significant change. VUCA leaders in your organisation means the capability of anticipating, responding and reacting to change when it happens in turn, reacting again and again when it changes again (and again).

 

“THE ONLY CONSTANT IN LIFE IS CHANGE.”  – HERACLITUS (C535BC – C475BC)

 

What makes an effective VUCA leader?

Effective VUCA leadership is demonstrated by those who can give their company more than an abundance of skills and experience. Traits of VUCA leaders are that they can:

  • develop and communicate a clear and motivating vision, based on an understanding of the constantly changing economic environment, and
  • apply it through quick decisions, well-adapted to ever-changing conditions.

In addition to skills learned for a role, experience, and qualifications gained, there is no substitute for the enthusiasm, motivation and vision these great leaders possess. VUCA leaders can mean the difference between an average team and a high performing team in an organisation. They are the leaders every company wants to keep, nurture and develop to their full potential.

VUCA leaders are acutely aware of the strategic goals they are striving for, and what they need to do to get there. They share:

  • company values,
  • strive to be the best at what they do,
  • identify areas for improvement, and
  • actively engage with their own leaders to perfect their craft and leadership method.

Leadership style isn’t a perfect science – but what all great leaders have in common is their ability to be authentic.

Future proof your business through VUCA leadership

Thinking back to the beginning of the Covid crisis, who among your managers disappointed you with their response? Who impressed you? Were any of these a surprise to you (either positive or negative)? Those who responded well are, potentially, your VUCA Leaders. If you manage to retain them they are the people who will guide you through future change events.

Using the Great People Inside customised VUCA leadership assessment, you can identify and quantify which team members and potential candidates possess the required attributes. Gaps that may be obstacles to your organisation’s success can also be uncovered.

Click here for a free trial.

Your ideal candidate when hiring – what’s on your wish list?

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We usually see various words and phrases in job ads that describe an employer’s wish list for hiring an ideal candidate.

This statement below I came across recently brought a smile to my face as it reminded me of this.

 

Can you perform under pressure? asked the recruiter. 

No, said the candidate, but I do a mean Bohemian Rhapsody!

 

Some more standard features you might see employers looking for in hiring an ideal candidate are:

  • Ambitious
  • Resilient
  • Bubbly personality or Can-do attitude
  • Clear thinker and have a Strong work ethic
  • Share our passion
  • Accuracy and Attention to detail
  • a Team player, a Strong Leader, and yes, Perform Under Pressure!

As an illustration, the typical wish list for the “perfect employee” often reads something like this:

“We are looking for someone ambitious who will demonstrate initiative and resilience has the maturity always to remain calm and professional. You will have an excellent work ethic and have outstanding communication skills. 

You are respectful and enjoy working in a team in a fast-paced environment in which you will be able to prioritise and handle multiple tasks while meeting deadlines”.

Job advertisements will also include what the work involves, and the qualifications and experience needed to be a successful applicant.

 

Consider the total recruitment cost of hiring a non-ideal candidate

Despite rigorous selection processes, many studies tell us that up to 50% of new hires fail within 18 months.

For Australian businesses, the cost of these failures is indeed high. Recent research discovered the direct recruitment costs to hire ONE employee are on average a staggering $19,000!

Add to that another 30% to 50% of the annual salary with the total cost of induction, orientation, training, maintenance, termination, and lost opportunity.

There would be “skin and hair flying” in many management meetings if all these costs showed up on a Profit and Loss Statement line.

Your choice

So, what gets in the way of more consistent selection outcomes when it comes to hiring an ideal candidate based on a wish list? Most would agree that even the most basic selection process can get it right with the required qualifications and experience for a role.

However, when it comes to attributes similar to the examples below, the ability to precisely assess if the person sitting in front of us possesses these is close to impossible:

  • Tenacious
  • Ambitious
  • Resilient 
  • possesses Initiative
  • will Remain calm and professional, and
  • has an Excellent work ethic.

People tell us what they think we want to hear; after all, they are looking for a job!

Consequently, many of us make our hiring decisions based on our “gut feel” and what we “liked” about the candidate during the interview. In essence, we hire people we like.

Given that research tells us that more than 40% of Australians think it’s okay to lie during an interview, this stacks the odds against us. We need to add some objective data to our “gut feel” to help us get it right more consistently.

The way forward for hiring more ideal candidates

The next generation award-winning Great People Inside (GPI) customisable assessment platform now available in Australia allows you to choose those specific attributes on your recruitment wish list.

Therefore, if you want to assess certain attributes, these can readily be selected. For example, attributes like:

  • Resilience
  • Tenacity
  • Ambition
  • Discipline
  • Customer Focus
  • Closing sales.

Thanks to https://unsplash.com/@fiteka for this image

Over 60 validated psychometric dimensions are available to precisely evaluate the crucial traits for both your business and the specific role. And if we don’t have what you need, we will build it for you. We call this full customisation.

With this in mind no longer are you restricted to relying on your gut feel and hiring people you “like”. You can easily create GPI assessments as short or as long as you wish.

By adopting this approach, specific objective data can be added to your selection process and increase your success rate by up to 300%.

Don’t take our word for it!

We were delighted to recently receive the following feedback from one of our clients who has been using with great success the Great people Inside (GPI) platform for more than 18 months. This client uses the GPI platform to assess alignment to the company values of both internal employees and new recruits.

They tell us, “We are observing through using the GPI profiling tool to test for values fit, we are naturally defining critical success factors to base our hiring decisions on.

The more we benchmark our top performers and see success in our new recruits, the more we learn about what are the critical behaviours and interests that make a person a successful cultural fit in our business.

Whilst we would like to think we were good at picking this up before, GPI provides us with an evidence-based, tangible tool to confirm this and has been a real value add to our hiring decisions”. 

If you’d like to learn more, we’d be happy to let you try us for free. Click HERE, and we’ll be in touch straight away.

 

Diversity and culture fit – how to hire for your business

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When recruiting a new team member, I have never met any business owner or manager who set out to deliberately hire a substandard performer. Then, why is it that studies tell us that we get it “right” (i.e., hire a top performer) only 25% of the time? The answer is that traditional recruitment processes, (resumes, interviews, and reference checks) are just not meeting the modern business needs.

In Australia today, we are lucky that we have a highly educated and well-trained workforce, which logically means that most employees in Australia have the skills and competencies to perform their jobs well. But if this is the case, why is the hiring success rate so inconsistent?

Most new employees fail – not because they are incompetent or don’t have the required skills – but because they don’t “fit” with the practice owner, the manager, or their colleagues or due to other factors.

What is fit?

Culture fit (the alignment of values, beliefs, and behaviours between the employee and employer) has become another one of those also overused cliches in business-speak. While it is essential, the issue when hiring is that it means different things to different people. As a result, hiring for culture fit alone can be difficult to measure and is not a reliable predictor of high performance. When we speak of ‘fit” we are talking about much more than culture fit alone. Our definition of “fit” is as follows:

  • Can the person handle the mental demands of this job?
  • Will they enjoy the environment and the people they must work with?
  • Are they highly motivated by this type of work?

Hardwiring

Psychologists tell us that our core traits and beliefs about ourselves and the world are hardwired into our brains by the time we are 10 or 12 years of age. Of course, as people we evolve and develop, however our deep-set inner identity and core beliefs about ourselves, others, and how the world works are intensely cast in our DNA and are hard to change.

As we go about our daily work in the business, many of us will have observed our top-performing employees going about their jobs quite differently. Still, despite different approaches, they consistently deliver top outcomes and results.

Achieving these top outcomes and results is the DNA we refer to, the four or five key qualities most important to your business and that are possessed in abundance by your top performers. These qualities are the heartbeat of your company. We call this success DNA and when it comes to hiring new team members, they are non-negotiable.

The importance of fit

The low hiring success rate clearly demonstrates that if the right potential employees who share these critical success qualities are not found and employed, and you select a person who doesn’t fit, it’s unlikely this person will deliver top performance for your business. In fact, it’s estimated that 46% of newly hired employees won’t survive for a year because they aren’t a good fit for the job. Poor DNA matches are the number one reason why people become disengaged, dislike their managers or colleagues, and eventually fail or leave their jobs.

 

Modify your process by benchmarking your top performers

Unless you understand your top performers’ DNA success attributes, then the traditional selection process will continue to deliver less than 25% of top performers. The science-based Great People Inside customisable profiling tools we recommend will enable you to identify and quantify the success attributes they share greatly contributing to your business. When recruiting, you can measure your potential new recruits against these attributes to ensure they also have the required success DNA fit for your business.

Our easy-to-read plain language reports will also help you take your interviewing approach to new heights. Our Management Coaching and Onboarding reports will make sure your new team member contributes as quickly as possible.

Great People Inside assessments are customisable – so what?

Compared to assessments you may have used or taken yourself previously, Great People Inside assessments are the next generation – think original Nokia phone and iPhone 12!

You may be familiar with assessments that have been around for many years where you measure the dimensions the assessment provider has configured; you have no choice and no control. As a result, you may be measuring (and paying for) what you don’t need. Our customisation feature allows you to design an assessment that measures what you want to measure best suited to your business, which means you are in control, and most importantly, you decide what you want to pay. Even with its unique customisation features, GPI will usually be at the cost of comparable assessments (where they exist).

Don’t just take our word for it

For the second year in a row, the Great People Inside platform has been in the top 10 best rating tools in the world.

It is a huge honour for us to find ourselves among the best yet again this year.  In July 2020 Great People Inside was also ranked #16 assessment tool in the world by AHRI.

If you’d like to find out more please click here to contact us or email [email protected]

 

What attributes do top salespeople have in common?

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Better sales staff equals more sales. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Increasing the productivity of your salespeople, however, is a complex task fraught with misunderstanding.

Finding high performing staff involves a specific hiring approach which targets those with precisely the right attributes for the job in hand.

Once you have the right players, it doesn’t stop there. It’s a question of matching them to the right sales roles, managing them and developing the sales team in an ongoing way to ensure maximum efficiency and results.

Remember the old maxim ‘If you can sell, you can sell anything’?

Well, times have changed. Not all sales positions – or reps – are created equal.

According to studies analysed by Herb Greenberg, Harold Weinstein and Patrick Sweeney in their book How to Hire and Develop Your Next Top Performer, around 50% of those working in sales lack the fundamental traits necessary in effective salespeople. A further 25% are selling the wrong thing, for the wrong managers, in the wrong place.

That leaves just 25% of salespeople operating to full capacity and producing great results.

So one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to finding the right salesperson to sell your product or services.

Financial benefits of hiring the best salespeople

Having a sales team composed of star performers can make a significant difference to your bottom line.

In a study of 100 businesses, Sales Force of Top Producers – A Manager’s (and Owner’s) Dream, reported in Employer’s Advantage, the company’s top performer outsold the bottom performer by a whopping average of 5.7 to 1 – with a range of 3:1 to 9:1.

Just imagine what kind of results you’d get if your entire team worked at the lower margin of 3:1, not to mention 5:1 or higher.

Salesforce Work.com and the TAS Group drew some more shocking statistics from their research. These include:

  • Two-thirds of salespeople miss their quota.
  • More than half of all salespeople close less than 40% of potential deals.
  • Top-performing sales reps are 250% better at qualifying leads.
  • High performers are 2.5 times more likely to be effective qualifiers than the general population.
  • Around 40% of salespeople don’t understand their customer’s ‘pain’, addressing problems they don’t even have.
  • Revenue can be up to 25% greater at companies where sales and marketing are well integrated.
  • High performers are 57% more likely to come from companies where sales and marketing work in harmony.

Measuring an individual salesperson’s productivity

All this begs the question, just how productive is your own sales team? Can you measure individual productivity? And once you’ve measured it, how do you replace or improve poor and fair performers?

The answer is using the advanced science from the next generation of smart assessment tools. Our award-winning Great People Inside assessments will help you identify those essential success attributes for each sales role, enabling you to match it with the right employee.

Great People Inside’s dimensions assessment will tell you:

  • what makes your top performers so great
  • why your average performers are less effective
  • how to improve your least successful performers

How to hire the best people

 

The right assessment tools can help you find the right people for your sales roles.

Applied correctly, Great People Inside tools can  make your recruitment of future high performers up to three times more successful and also significantly reduce sales department turnover by more than 27%.

These results should be music to any employer’s ear when considering the statistics.

Figures reported in Employer’s Advantage, show that three out of four new sales employees don’t last the distance. They have, in fact, only a 25% chance of staying with the company for a full year.

Of those that do stick, only one in 10 go on to become a genuine top performer within three years.

So what is the essential DNA of these star performers? Many have fundamental traits and attributes in common, which help drive their peak performance for the longer term.

Using our validated and reliable customised sales assessments, we work with you and scientifically evaluate your current top-performing salespeople.

These measures enable us to create a customised job profile benchmark specific to your company based on your company’s top performers, not a random benchmark based on a collection of external organisations. A company customised standard means you can clearly see what sets your top performers apart from the rest.

This benchmark can also be used to significant effect when recruiting new sales staff, ensuring that candidates fit these rigorous criteria and carry the ‘work genes’ critical to success in their roles.

What to look for in sales job candidates today

There are plenty of things to consider when hiring, but it’s vital that new employees are a good fit with company culture and embrace their new work environment.

They must be able to cope with challenges, build strong relationships with work colleagues – especially in the marketing department – and understand the needs of your customers.

As if hiring salespeople wasn’t challenging enough already, in this new world we live in, where face to face selling may not always be the accepted way, how do you know if the candidates have what it takes to sell remotely. Interestingly, psychologists tell us the many attributes for in-person sales success don’t work effectively when remote selling!

So what attributes do star sales performers typically have? Behavioural science tells us that they commonly possess the following traits:

  • Agreeableness: Tendency to be friendly, approachable, and easy to get along with.
  • Conscientiousness: Tendency to strive for perfection, sometimes at all costs.
  • Stability: Degree to which one reacts positively to negative or stressful situations.
  • Openness: Willingness to try new ways of doing things.
  • Tenacity: Tendency to be determined and persevere.
  • Control: Tendency to take charge of people and situations. Leads more than follows.
  • Entrepreneurial Approach: The tendency to quickly seize and tenaciously pursue new opportunities for the organisation, taking calculated risks at a high level of autonomy. The right recruitment tools help you weed out unsuitable candidates and identify the cream of the crop.

Other benefits of hiring star sales performers

Revenue benefits are not the only advantages of building a high performing sales team.

By adopting a more scientific approach to recruitment, you remove much of your operational downside costs; costs that don’t always show up on your P&L:

  • Frequent employee turnover – even from good people
  • Time spent recruiting and training of replacements
  • Lost sales through an empty seat during recruitment and induction training
  • Wasted investment in salary and training for someone that doesn’t make it.
  • Inability to close deals when not face to face.

Try us for FREE

You probably wouldn’t make a significant purchase without doing your research and acquiring objective data about your future potential investment. Then why would you hire a new salesperson costing more than $100K per annum using nothing more than your “gut feel” and highly subjective references?

At the end of the day if you’re happy with your current sales team’s success rate don’t change anything.

However, if you want to significantly increase your business performance talk to Great People Inside about our sales assessments – we’ll even let you try us risk-free and fee-free. Just click HERE, and we will be in touch.

HOW TO GET THE RIGHT (REMOTE) PERSON FIRST TIME WHEN HIRING

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Thanks to https://unsplash.com/@wildlittlethingsphoto for the great photo

During the past nine months in Australia, many people’s businesses have been hit hard by the pandemic. Here at GPI, our thoughts are with the more than 900 families who lost loved ones during this crisis and for those whose livelihoods have been negatively impacted.

Recently though, some green shoots of hope have begun to sprout with domestic flying making a return, vaccines becoming available, and borders reopening in time for Christmas, it appears business conditions will significantly improve in 2021.

With increased demand will come the need to hire additional people, but how can you increase your success rate and hire the right people the first time? And what about the new way of working from home? How will you identify those who will thrive and be productive in a work from home environment?

The traditional recruitment process leaves a lot up to chance. You might sift through a stack of resumes and possibly cover letters trying to narrow down the people with the right experience and qualifications and get a sense of other relevant aspects. You’ll then perform a round of interviews to gauge which candidate sounds and acts right for the role.

You might ask yourself, “does this person have the right skills to perform the job?.. the right credentials?.. enough experience?.. will they fit in with the workplace culture?.. can they bring anything to the table to benefit the business?” While some of these questions can easily be answered with a CV and interview, others are trickier. Some key questions are difficult to answer through the traditional hiring process such as “Will this person be engaged in their work and a great in this role?” “Will this person be capable and productive working remotely?”

Engagement is critical

Great managers and business owners know that higher employee engagement levels in the workplace translate to higher productivity and better company performance. So especially in this current environment, how can hiring managers improve the likelihood of selecting highly engaged top performers?

It all starts with thinking about how potential employees will “fit”, rather than experience, qualifications, and even age and gender. Studies have shown that these factors are not statistical indicators of future top performance in a job, but that ‘fit’ is what counts if you want a high performer.

Following a recruit being let go during probation many of us have heard comments such as “we had to let them go – they just didn’t fit” but what does this actually mean?

‘Fit’ refers to how well a person is suited to their job role and the surrounding workplace culture. Whether or not a person ‘fits’ in a particular position depends on a few factors, for example, their attitude, personality and enthusiasm for the work at hand. To find out which candidate is the right fit for the job and culture, hiring managers must check their biases at the door and use objective information to make their decision. Making this type of decision can be trickier than it sounds, but it is possible.

Assessment tools that allow you to develop a customised profile or model for the role you are hiring for bring objectivity into the hiring process. They validate data on existing performance, job tasks and results so that you hire individuals who are indisputably right for the role.

How does it work?

Hire someone who is objectively the right fit

Choosing the right person for a role can influence how long they stay in the job and how engaged they are with their work. According to Willis Towers Watson, employee engagement is defined as “employees’ willingness and ability to contribute to company success”. According to studies they conducted, businesses can expect a 13.7% rise in net income with engaged employees; I am sure most CEO’s would take this net income increase as a Christmas present!

While this knowledge is widespread with business owners and managers, the wrong people still get hired for roles time and time again. Why? Hiring someone using the traditional interview process and reference checks alone can be a bit of a guessing game. Someone might be highly proficient at talking their way through the interview process, but their skills at talking the talk mightn’t translate to walking the walk in the job.

Validated benchmarkable assessments take the guesswork out of the hiring process. They evaluate information about a person that cannot be determined by a traditional job interview. Instead of solely relying on opinions or a hunch, the assessments we recommend provide you with tools which use objective data to determine whether your candidate is right for the role.

Use your top performers as a benchmark for new talent

When a top performer walks out the door, it often feels like you’re back at square one, scrambling to build your team from the ground up again. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Companies, teams and hiring managers can make the process of replacing top performers easier, while improving their hiring process each time.

The Great People Inside customisable assessment tools we recommend not only provide you with a menu of dimensions you can choose from to measure those key attributes important for your business, but they can also significantly increase your success rate of identifying future superstars. These tools extract information on your best talents’ abilities, personality traits, behaviours, and preferred learning styles. Using this information creates a customised profile for hiring new people who can successfully fill the shoes of your existing and past top performers.

So how do you find out who is best suited to homeworking?

Buffer.com published an annual global survey (FIG 1) on homeworking and discovered in 2020 (like in previous years) that the top 3 difficulties people experience with homeworking, worldwide, are not necessarily related to the pandemic and lockdown:

  • collaboration and communication
  • loneliness, and
  • not being able to unplug.

It suggests that many individuals will either need help to overcome these problems or even that, for some people, Working from Home is not a viable option.

Figure 1

Most employees, when asked if they would like to work from home, will answer yes – because they are only looking at the positive aspects of doing so. But this is the homeworking equivalent of asking someone ‘How are you?’ and accepting the answer ‘Fine.’ as confirmation that all is well.

You need a much more scientific approach if you are embarking on an enterprise-wide plan to introduce home working. Certain factors will help employers understand if, and where, their people will need help.

But what are those factors? And how do you measure them?

The Great People Inside difference

 

 

As an assessment business, Great People Inside specialises in creating assessments for the development of employees and teams. Although the size of the homeworking challenge is unprecedented, the essential work of analysing and developing your WFH team hasn’t changed – it’s what we do, all day, every day.

And because we customise assessments for specific purposes, we’ve developed a series of new assessments, informed by extensive, independent research, into the characteristics required for people to work, successfully, from home. These validated assessments will allow you not only to undertake a ‘health check’ of all your existing people, but also to identify whether that potential new hire has the capability and attributes required to be a star performer even when they are remote. Most importantly, these assessments will also enable you to respond to what they tell you. With our Partners, we offer individualised online development, provided by subject matter experts, to help your people cope with a new way of working.

The range of fully customisable Great People Inside assessment tools we recommend will enhance your selection process so that you can choose candidates that will help drive team and company performance and answer the question you had when starting the hiring process – “will this person be outstanding in this role even when working from home?” Which, after all, is what recruitment is all about!

If you would like to learn more about the Great People Inside assessments specifically designed for work from home employees and teams please click here to contact us or email [email protected]

 

 

www.greatpeopleinside.com/australia

Five key tips to encourage new growth in your HR business

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Thanks to https://unsplash.com/@artic_studios for this image

 

By David Leahy, Director, Great People Inside Australia

In my recent conversations with HR consultants, encouraging new revenue growth, scaling their business and managing business downturn between Melbourne Cup and Australia Day are the challenges that loom large for 2021. However, especially in this uncertain world we live in, there are some unique challenges and barriers for consultants which can stop growth in its tracks.

As an Irish migrant in the 90’s, I was always fascinated when business owners and salespeople told me that “not much” happens business-wise in Australia between Melbourne Cup and Australia Day. When I socialised this generalisation at BBQs, contributing factors such as school holidays, time with family, and great weather were mentioned, nevertheless many heads nodded in agreement.

Forewarned is forearmed, they say, and each year I paid close attention to this period in my planning and introduced various strategies to overcome this decline in “normal” business activity.

A genuine business or a consultancy?

When you take a step back and look at your HR business, is it a consultancy or a genuine business?

In a consultancy, you are paid for your expertise and your time. You may work alone, or you may employ one or two people. Even when you have a constant stream of clients, profitability is a constant struggle. Why? Because there are only so many hours in a day that you and your team can work. There will always be a cap on what you can earn.

There are also diminishing returns. As your workload expands and you employ people, you earn less per hour than just doing the work yourself. It’s a catch 22. You’re either doing too much work yourself to remain profitable or earning a lower margin on your team’s work.

A genuine and sustainable business, on the other hand, is different. Your revenue isn’t limited by your time. There may be multiple income streams that cushion the business from the ups and downs of winning and losing business. It’s possible to grow without chipping away at profitability. Best of all, as a business owner, you can work less while earning more.

If your business is still a consultancy, you’re not alone. Many HR businesses will never evolve beyond that. But if your aspirations are to own a genuine business, it is possible to evolve.

So how can you evolve your consultancy into a sustainable and thriving business in 2021?

Scrutinise your costs

Managing your costs effectively will help you claw back profitability. That may include negotiating a reduction in your rent, sourcing more competitive suppliers, or outsourcing lower-level work to a more junior rather than a senior staff member.

Become more time-efficient

Consultants need to understand how their time is spent and reduce that time where possible. If you or your team are spending too much time on a job, it can blow out costs and make that job unprofitable. Consider ways to bring the time down: improving your systems, processes, and technology are good places to start. Look at whether there are any tasks you can automate or outsource at a lower cost to help you focus more on your clients improving their customer experience with your business.

Price strategically

I’ve written before about how trading time for money is a trap.  Consultants often find their earning potential is limited because they are paid for their time, and there are only so many hours in a day.

The answer is to price based on value or outcome instead of time. Create service packages at a fixed cost, which you know will be profitable. This also makes it easier to raise your prices. Don’t get stuck in a race to the bottom on price. By charging what you’re worth, you can earn more while working less and attract a better client.

Target the right clients

Do you know which clients are your most profitable clients and a good fit for your business? By better understanding this, you can focus your energy on those clients, upsell or cross-sell to them, and seek other potential clients with similar profiles. Having fewer more profitable clients is worth more to your business than having more clients who are less profitable.

Diversify your offering

Diversifying what you offer is an excellent way to grow both your top and bottom line. Are there additional revenue streams that fit well with your existing offering? A great option is to offer a product in addition to your usual services, such as an assessment, survey, or report. These offerings require less of your time, can be sold at a higher volume and with a more reliable profit margin.

There are many online tools out there. You may even have a product already in your portfolio but is it a “me too”? Does it differentiate you from your competitors? Is it the latest technology? How does it support your ability to earn revenue without constant active involvement by you?

Are you looking for ways to differentiate your business?

Great People Inside services are offered in over 20 countries globally. We recently launched in Australia, and we’re in the process of growing and extending our channel and referral partner network.

The Cloud-based GPI People Intelligence Platform is a next-generation platform that provides you with the ability to provide key strategic HR insights and analytics to your clients. Its flexibility is unique as it’s the only fully-customisable psychometric profiling and 360° feedback platform in the world.

For example, are you interested in helping your clients:

  • Identify people who will be productive in a work from home environment?
  • Analyse employees’ alignment with organisational values?
  • Develop a robust selection, onboarding, and development process?
  • Understand the business impacts their top performers contribute?
  • Manage all the generations effectively?

Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick and Tick the GPI platform can do this and more.

 

These days everyone wants choice, and that is precisely what we deliver with GPI. The unique ability to easily customise assessments means you are not restricted to offering assessment tools that measure or analyse what the test provider wants you to measure….you can help your clients measure precisely what’s important to them.

With GPI, you’re not restricted by the status of the role either. Our assessment dimension range is so vast. Our unique pricing models mean you can develop client-focused valid customised assessments regardless of the role position or status in the business. At GPI, we believe everyone in the organisation should be happy in their job and have the same opportunities to ensure they “fit,” and they love their work.

In fact, our mission is “To develop and offer the future’s talent and assessment solution – the Cloud-based GPI People Intelligence Platform – to anyone working with people: Ready-to-use, customisable to meet every need, and affordable to everyone.”

If you’re interested in implementing a strategy that will drive revenue to your business – regardless of the Melbourne Cup or Australia Day – please click here to contact us or email [email protected]

 

www.greatpeopleinside.com/australia

 

Morph your leadership

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Thanks https://unsplash.com/@davidclode for this amazing image

Practical ways to adapt your approach

By David Leahy, Director, Great People Inside Australia

Many of us can easily recall precisely when key events occurred around the world and in our own lives. It is fair to say that the current pandemic is one of those events and is well and truly etched in our memories for as long as we shall live.

In March 2020 you can probably recall the moment you first heard the word “lockdown”. It likely stopped you in your tracks as you were confronted with the thought, what does this mean for me and my family? Then came the closure of businesses, JobKeeper, Jobseeker and a mountain of eye watering debt, the likes of which we have never seen before in this country.

Except for Victoria, most states have since relaxed the restrictions imposed, however the constant media reminders and escalated infection control procedures practised daily in businesses across the country are a constant reminder of what running a business looks like in the year 2020.

This period marks the greatest challenge to leaders. Many of your peers and employees are likely worried about their future. Now more than ever, your people need the steady hand and re assurance of your leadership.

The problem though, is that leaders are human too and are not immune to the anxiety, stress and sleepless nights caused by the uncertainty we have lived through for the best part of this year.

Right now, as a business owner or leader you have a lot on your plate and sometimes it may even seem too much. This can impact your ability to think clearly or may cause you to lash out (metaphorically) at team members or even become short tempered with your customers.

But how can you morph and adapt your leadership to cope with the current demands? To help, we have outlined five practical approaches you can adopt.

1. Lead self

It was Charles Manz who first used the term ‘Self-leadership’ in 1983; and from this we know that to be a successful leader we must lead ourselves first, before we can lead others. The current situation calls for in-depth personal reflection to truly understand who we are, how we got to where we are today and what our natural tendencies and behaviours are when we are in a crisis and under pressure.

Self-awareness is one of the key elements of emotional intelligence (EI), which Daniel Goleman, a renowned psychologist, refers to as a person’s ability “to identify and manage their emotions and identify and influence others’ emotions”

Self-awareness provides a leader with key personal insights and enables them to self-manage those circumstances when triggered by a situation, an event, or a personal interaction. At the end of the day, we cannot control the occurrence of “stuff” that triggers us, but we do get to choose our reaction. As leaders we are constantly on display, and our people and our clients are making decisions about us and our leadership based on what they observe.

2. Get ‘real’

Many leaders tend to think that showing vulnerability is a weakness- in fact, it is a strength of leadership. When leaders stop wasting energy trying to conceal what they think other people should not see, it allows them to start showing their “real” self. By accepting vulnerability as a strength, leaders can stop worrying about having every answer and realise it is okay to not know. True wisdom comes from stepping away from the fear of not knowing.

The idea of being “real” was popularised by American management guru Warren Bennis in his 1989 book On Becoming a Leader, and gained further attention through the 2003 publication Authentic Leadership by Bill George, a professor at the Harvard Business School. Such leaders know and accept themselves and present a genuine and empathetic face to their teams.

They communicate truthfully and directly, and lead with the heart, not just the mind. But they are no softies. Truly ‘real” leaders always keep their goal in mind – the good of the organisation they are responsible for and lead. Mission-driven, they can separate out personal feelings from work imperatives.

3. Model the behaviour

Peter Drucker a renowned management consultant once said that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.  He did not mean that a great strategy is not important but rather that an empowering culture was a more certain route to organisational success.

Culture can be described “as the way we do things around here”. It includes leadership, communication, people, policies, vision, values, onboarding, and hiring and firing processes. Especially during the current situation, people like to work for and with leaders and managers who make them feel good, and these positive feelings result in improved performance. When leaders and managers do not promote these positive feelings throughout the business, performance decreases and mediocrity increases.

Most of us are familiar with the proverb that “a fish rots from the head”, which means that leadership is the root cause of an organisation’s failure and demise. This is true whether that organisation is a country, a company, or a business unit – toxic leadership can poison the emotional climate of a business quicker than you can say profit and loss! Modelling the type of leadership behaviour that you expect in your business is critical as it sets the tone, creates the environment, and builds your unique culture.

4. Communicate

George Bernard Shaw once said, “the greatest issue in communication is the illusion it has taken place”. As we know, great communication is much more than just getting your message across. It has to do with understanding the emotion and the intentions behind the information contained in the message. Leaders need highly advanced communication skills, not only to clearly convey a message, but to also listen in a way that gains the full meaning of what is being said and makes the other person feel heard and understood.

This is where favouring your right ear is important. While this may seem quite unusual, experts tell us that the left side of the brain is where the primary processing centres for both speech comprehension and emotions happens, and as the left side of the brain is connected to the right side of the body, favouring your right ear can help you better detect the emotional nuances of what someone is saying.

Many of us despite our best efforts to get the message across, on occasions find that the listener has heard differently to what was intended, the message somehow was blown off course and landed on a different landing strip than we intended! Adopting a non-judgemental approach and crafting powerful questions can help a leader explore deeply and increase their success of more effective communication.

5. Get data, get results

Leading others is difficult. Its fair to say you would not purchase a piece of capital equipment for your business without the benefit of objective data, so why would you attempt to lead your highly valued (and costly) team without the edge that scientific objective insights can give you? As a good friend of mine in Dublin used to say, “Are you stupid or what?”

Your team members are made up of vastly different personalities, all with their own unique passions, backgrounds, views, and work styles. With the best will in the world, misunderstandings and differences of opinion can create friction within the group.

Left unchecked, this can put a damper on performance and enthusiasm, leading to conflicts which may be hard to resolve.

This is the last thing you need right now. So, how can you harvest the best each team member has to give, using their attributes to maximum benefit, while managing those behavioural traits with the potential to upset team dynamics?

The answer is behavioural assessments, which give you detailed information about you and each of your employee’s skills, behaviour, and personality traits. These next generation of unique customisable smart tools from Great People Inside that we recommend, provide leaders with heightened self-awareness and valuable pointers about the way their employees can function to optimum capacity at work – both as individuals and within the team.

Your choice

We appreciate that every business is unique, and that in the 21st century, businesses invest in defining, developing and implementing that very specific culture, that state-of-the-art customer service, those distinguished values and dynamics that deliver their business advantage and success. In other words, we understand that a business’s uniqueness and greatness cannot, and should not, rely on a “one size fits all” approach.

The assessments we recommend are unique as they offer a menu of more than 60 validated dimensions from which you choose to measure precisely what is important to your business.

If you’d like to learn more, or if you would like a FREE trial, please click on this LINK and we will get back to you promptly.

 

David Leahy

Great People Inside

How to navigate the new working normal

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By David Leahy, Director, Great People Inside Australia

Someone once said that “eighty percent of success is showing up” perhaps we should add “in your pyjamas” and it would fit better with how some employees are experiencing the new reality of working from home.
We all know that this pandemic left employers with no alternative other than to direct their employees to work work-from-home.While some companies may have existing work from home policies the current work from home regime has been forced upon us and comes complete with many headaches, regardless of whether existing work from home policies were in place or not.

During COVID-19 many organisations across the globe experienced significant increases in the number of employees who were required to work remotely. Now, as the world slowly comes to grips with this new working reality, companies are finding that many existing and potential new employees are expressing a desire to continue working remotely into the future.

Twitter was one of the first companies to go to a work from home model. In fact, they have stated publicly that they “don’t anticipate being one of the first to return to offices” but instead “if (their) employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they wish to continue to do so forever, (they) will make that happen”.

We can all agree that we are in the middle of an age of great technological advancement and we are also facing fundamental changes in the way we live and work. If we zoom out, the spotlight is on how businesses will adapt to a world where it is increasingly difficult to travel overseas and trade relationships between nations are changing. How will we adapt to this disruption to globalisation? Can technology save us in the long term? Businesses like Zoom, Skype and Slack are a few of the many online solutions to our current levels of separation which allow us to communicate as teams, but questions still remain around how this will play out in the long term.

What does it mean for your business?

Much has been written on how remote working will mean a reduction in office real estate and significant cost savings. Many employers are also finding themselves already offering the flexibility of remote work as a benefit to existing and new employees. Millennials who currently represent around 50% of the workforce, and are expected to represent 75% by 2025, place great importance on this type of flexibility when deciding whether they remain with or join a new employer. The fact is that technology and the latest tools make people working remotely effective and means that the need for physical proximity has been greatly reduced. This shift is a test for all businesses robustness, agility and ability to make decisions quickly. “People are our most important asset” is a well-worn cliché, but now more than ever people are front and centre in these key deliberations.

It’s our belief that gradually, organisations will likely transition to a type of hybrid working model, with some employees working from the office and others working from home, or a mixture of the two. This sounds relatively straight forward but as we know us humans are complex beings. Many employees today, conscious of the fragility of their employment in the current environment will go with the flow to ensure job retention. The fact is that not everyone can or is suited to a remote environment.

The real challenge facing employers of all sizes is how will they support their people and keep their team cohesive. Once you are sure that the home environment is safe and appropriate for your potential remote workers, how do you:

  • Objectively identify those existing employees, managers and teams that possess the required attributes to productively work long term in a hybrid model?
  • Identify and support those who may struggle?
  • Recognise potential new hires who can successfully deliver long term in a hybrid environment?
  • Help the “command and control” manager move from industrial age work practices?
  • Ensure the effectiveness of remote teams in the long term?

Robust information will be key to your success

As an assessment business, Great People Inside are experts at creating tools for the development of existing people and teams as well as recruitment. We provide the objective data you need to make informed decisions for practically every people situation you are dealing with now and in the future.
Given that organisations can no longer rely on things they very recently took for granted, the psychologists at Great People Inside have recently developed a series of new assessments around working remotely. These assessments are, informed by extensive independent research, into the characteristics required for people to work productively from home. With our partners, we also offer individualised online development, provided by subject matter experts, to help you support your people whilst they transition to this new way of working.

Don’t let this shift, shift you. We can help you support your people to adjust.

For more information
Contact: David Leahy
E: [email protected]
Or call on 04-05691845

About David Leahy

David Leahy is the Director of Great People Inside Australia (GPI). GPI Australia provides state-of-the-art and fully customisable assessment and development solutions to help select, match, onboard, manage, develop, engage and retain top talent. Recently launched in Australia, GPI is seeking a limited number of Australian Channel Partners, so this is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor. If you’re interested in being part of our mission, why not enquire and learn about our unique and exciting Channel & Referral Partner program. Contact David at [email protected].

www.greatpeopleinside.com/australia 

THE NEW REALITY

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By David Leahy, Director, Great People Inside Australia

Someone once said that “eighty percent of success is showing up” perhaps we should add “in your pyjamas” and it would fit better with how some employees are experiencing the new reality of working from home.
We all know that this pandemic left employers with no alternative other than to direct their employees to work work-from-home.While some companies may have existing work from home policies the current work from home regime has been forced upon us and comes complete with many headaches, regardless of whether existing work from home policies were in place or not.

THEN AND NOW

There’s lots of research published pre COVID-19 regarding the positive impact having your employees working from home could have. Typically the studies demonstrated double digit productivity growth and significant increases in staff retention. Usually thou a number of environmental requirements were specified to deliver these types of results.

Firstly, the employee had to work from a home office, secondly, nobody was allowed into the room during the workday except for the employee, and thirdly a “home office “could not be a bedroom!
Pre COVID-19 most homes certainly provided an acceptable level of solitude for the work from home employee; children were safely tucked away at school, kindy or Nana’s place! In the good old days, the biggest distraction to a good day’s work at home was likely to be catching up on a Netflix episode, or taking time away to carry out a few home chores.

In this new reality in which we live, three key elements have changed; children, space,and choice. Employees are at now home and likely working alongside their children and in some cases their partner, in unsuitable spaces and they have no choice about it.

Its not hard to see how this impacts people’s anxiety and stress levels and affects their ability to perform their roles efficiently. It’s likely if you ask you’re people how they’re coping with this new reality, they will not complain to much or own up to increased stress and anxiety. Most employees are highly conscious of the fragility of employment at the moment….so they’ll put their best foot forward, soldier on and leave you guessing.

HOW WE HELP

As an employer, you can’t change the work from home directive, this won’t change until the Australian government provides direction on the next steps of easing the lockdown restrictions. However, there are certain factors that could help employers understand if and where their employees may need support without relying on employees owning up.

But what are those factors and how do you measure them without adding to the stress and anxiety?
As an assessment business, Great People Inside is used to creating assessments for the recruitment of new people and the development of existing people and teams. Although the size of the challenge is unprecedented, the essential work of analysing and developing your work from home team hasn’t changed. It’s what we do all day every day.

And because we customise assessments for specific purposes, we’ve developed a series of new assessments, informed by extensive, independent research, over many years, into the characteristics required for people to successfully work from home.

These assessments are hugely relevant to the current global situation and will allow you not only to undertake a ‘health check’ on all of your people (not singling out those you think are struggling), but to respond to what it tells you. With our Partners, we can offer individualised online development, provided by subject experts, to help your people cope with a situation that is far from their ‘old normal’.

OUR NEW ASSESSMENTS

The Remote Employee assessment helps you discover if your current employees have the skills needed to be productive and motivated when working remotely.

The Remote Manager assessment provides key information on the efficiency of managers leading a remote team, assesses their ability to manage different work styles and create vision, motivation and momentum in a remote team.

The Remote Team assessment provides important information regarding the efficiency of a team when working remotely. It shows the way members interact with one another and, at the same time, presents the optimal conditions in which that team can reach the highest level of productivity.

The VUCA Manager assessment identifies leadership potential in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment. By measuring capacity and potential, it highlights an individual’s strengths and development gaps relative to the leadership needs of the organisation.

Is your team working remotely? Do you know that they’re coping OK with the isolation? Would you like to know?
Contact Great People Inside on [email protected] or call us on 0405-691845 and let us help you maximise the impact you have on your organisation AND your people.

About David Leahy

David Leahy is the Director of Great People Inside Australia (GPI). GPI Australia provides state-of-the-art and fully customisable assessment and development solutions to help select, match, onboard, manage, develop, engage and retain top talent. Recently launched in Australia, GPI is seeking a limited number of Australian Channel Partners, so this is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor. If you’re interested in being part of our mission, why not enquire and learn about our unique and exciting Channel & Referral Partner program. Contact David at [email protected].

www.greatpeopleinside.com/australia 

Dealing with Layoffs during the Pandemic

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By David Leahy, Director, Great People Inside Australia

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to expand, the damage done to the job market looks ever more likely to be deep and long lasting. Worldwide, managers are not only dealing with the stress and remorse of having to let go a number of their co-workers, but many of them will also be feeling an underlying anxiety about their very own positions. If laying off employees is the only way to keep the business going, how do you handle feelings such as guilt, remorse and sadness? What is the best way to deliver the news when you can’t meet face-to-face? What do you say to the employees that have made the cut? And what can you do to overcome the fear about your own future?

Normally, layoffs have mostly been cut and dry with showing off as little emotion as possible. They were carried out in such a manner that made employees feel like they were just another number due to how they were being treated. Obviously, the difference between a good layoff and bad layoff is all about how they’re handled.

Layoffs that are being done during this uncertain period of time should not be any different than the ones that were normally done, there shouldn’t be any discrepancies. Many organisations make spontaneous decisions to fire their people due to fear and uncertainty. It’s only after they’ve sent their workers packing that they recognise they have made a mistake. This leads them to mass rehires afterwards. To prevent this from happening, companies should first evaluate their cash flow to see whether layoffs are the only way forward.

What the Experts Say

Firing people is difficult in normal times; but given the Covid-19 health crisis, the task is “emotionally and cognitively overwhelming,” says Joshua Margolis, professor at Harvard Business School. He continues by stating: “This experience for most of us is unfathomable. There’s a great deal of uncertainty and people’s minds are whirring. As a manager charged with dismissing a wide swath of employees, you’re pulled in different directions: Your heart goes out to people, but you have a responsibility to the company.” Furthermore, the tension that employers are experiencing right now is at least doubled given that they are worried about their very own fate. Kenneth Freeman, Dean Emeritus at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business has said: “You’re human and you’re going to have a lot of those anxious moments. But the key is to try as best you can to separate your personal worries from the task at hand. In your role as a manager, you need to be there for your people.”

Are layoffs required?

If you’re the one making the decisions about layoffs, Margolis recommends asking yourself one question: is downsizing your workforce truly necessary? The impulse to cut costs is understandable, but this is not a recession that takes place every few years. Significantly, this pandemic will live in the memory of people for years to come and the psychological impacts of it are yet to be comprehended at their full capacity. As a leader, you are required to show resourcefulness, creative forward thinking about how your company can save as many employees as possible. Talking with the management team and discussing every other possible alternative is also an important, logical step to make. Firing people should represent a last resort kind of situation and if you absolutely have to do it, try and avoid multiple rounds of letting people go.

Research

If you decide layoffs are necessary or others have made that decision for you, then make sure you’re prepared before you reach out to the affected employees. Figure out what and how to say to each and every one of them. Talk to them on a personal level. People are likely going to have a lot of questions regarding the why, the timing, their benefits, and severance package (if applicable). These conversations may need to happen fast, but you’ll have a better chance of easing both yours and employee’s anxiety by providing them answers of what happens next.  Reach out to HR, your legal department, and any other senior leaders who might be able to help you prepare answers to questions such as: When will I receive my last salary? and Am I receiving an unemployment benefit?

Communicate Openly and Often

Be honest. Transparent, open and timely communication help increase employee trust instead of them being blindsided. Companies should organise constant meetings in order to hand out valuable information and address any existing concerns. Due to the pandemic, organisations should use online video conference apps such as Google Hangouts, Zoom, Maestro or Tele-Town Hall. While employees have the option to call in or attend without video, leaders are recommended that they keep their cameras turned on. It helps create a more human experience.

Communication during a crisis should never be spontaneous and should always have a plan. In fact, it’s crucial that everyone, from leadership to management, is on the same page and wants the same things. Otherwise, employees will receive paradoxical information that can lead to distrust and rumours. Leadership should take the time to explain how the business is currently being impacted, what changes are there to be made and why. When employees understand the why behind the decision it increases their trust in the company and doesn’t take a toll on their self-confidence or increase their anxiety levels.

The worst possible thing imaginable that an organisation can do is blindside their workers and conduct layoffs through email. If in-person isn’t possible, given the social distancing requirements we all have to follow, employers should opt for video calls instead. Furthermore, they should be proactive in providing their now ex-workers with options for them to move forward such as unemployment benefits, a severance package or other benefits. This helps put employees’ minds at ease regarding survival and the next few steps.

Lead through Empathy

This is a sensitive time for many. While it is understandable to protect the company, the layoff process usually lacks the empathy and compassion needed during a stressful time.

Therefore, employers should lead with empathy when laying off their workers. Employees will remember how they’re treated during this time. If they’re treated poorly, they’re more than likely going to speak poorly to their network and through online reviews about the company and their experience. Consequently, when business picks back up again and the company is hiring, they’ll struggle to win over quality talent due to a damaged reputation.

Be direct and human

The message you present to them must be crystal clear and concise. For example: “I’m sorry, but at end of the month we are going to terminate your job.” By communicating this information directly, it may come off as a tad cold but it actually allows the employee to have a grasp of the whole new situation he or she is in. It is vital that you express your recognition for all of their hard work and dedication. Afterwards, explain to them that they are being laid off due to the exceptional economic climate we are all in and that it has nothing to do with their job performance. It’s important that at the end of the discussion your future ex-employee feels appreciated and loved.

Focus on your wellbeing

Last but not least important, take care of yourself. If lucky, this is the only time managers will have to face something of this magnitude. However, it is highly unlikely it will be the only time managers deal with a challenge during a period of great uncertainty. Although it may sound like a truism, the best coping mechanism there is when things are uncertain is self-care. Try and eat as healthy as possible, exercise regularly, try meditation or yoga, get a good night’s sleep and read a good book in your spare time, do not change the screen from your laptop to your phone, disconnect. We are all together in this situation, nobody is alone. The problem here is to make people understand that they are not alone whatever their specific circumstances are.

How can Great People Inside help you assess your ‘remote working’ workforce?

Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?

Request a free demo:

Sources:

https://www.prnewsonline.com/layoffs-pandemic-tips
https://www.forbes.com/sites/heidilynnekurter/2020/03/31/3-ways-to-layoff-employees-with-dignity-during-a-crisis/#7b762a252f7f
https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/how-to-lay-off-employees-with-empathy-decency-during-a-pandemic.html

About David Leahy

David Leahy is the Director of Great People Inside Australia (GPI). GPI Australia provides state-of-the-art and fully customisable assessment and development solutions to help select, match, onboard, manage, develop, engage and retain top talent. Recently launched in Australia, GPI is seeking a limited number of Australian Channel Partners, so this is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor. If you’re interested in being part of our mission, why not enquire and learn about our unique and exciting Channel & Referral Partner program. Contact David at [email protected].

www.greatpeopleinside.com/australia