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RYDER CUP CAPTAIN USES PERSONALITY TESTS TO SELECT SQUAD!
Utilizing Assessment Tools Can Pay Huge Dividends

Recently on WEEI, Brad Faxon of the PGA Tour revealed that Paul Azinger utilized personality tests to help decide which players to select for the winning US Ryder Cup Team.  Azinger even went so far as to utilize those tests to plan his pairings for the entire tournament!  He didn’t rely on experience.  Instead he wanted aggressive and optimistic personalities to work together to secure one of the greatest upsets in Ryder Cup history.

Assessment tools, similar to Azinger’s personality tests, are often used in the business world.  For today’s business executives, it is critical to understand who their employees are and how to effectively communicate with them.  Change occurs rapidly and the ability to lead and adapt is of paramount importance for executives.  When used effectively, employee assessments can pay huge dividends for companies and individuals looking to enhance their performance, especially when dealing with change.

The purpose of these tools is to provide hard data to help gauge a candidate’s or employee’s abilities, personality, motivation, leadership, and  performance by gathering feedback from that individual, and at times anonymously and candidly from others with whom he or she frequently interacts.

What Types of Tools are Available?
Personality Tests - There are numerous types of assessment tools but some of the most well known are personality indicator profilers.  Popular examples include DiSC, which measures how people respond to their environment, and Myers-Briggs’ MBTI, which looks at perception and judgment.  All these tools provide helpful personality type feedback and how employees are different from others so communication and interpersonal relationships can improve.

Personality feedback can be very helpful for both parties to better understand the employee and others in the company.  Many businesses use this information to match individuals to jobs, improve organizational effectiveness, identify company-wide culture, uncover managerial styles and resolve conflict and increase dialogue.  They are also valuable as ways to improve communication, enhance teamwork and interpersonal relationships, create consistent decision-making techniques, and enhance job satisfaction, team harmony and diversity.

Performance Tools – Individual performance tools are also widely used in the corporate environment.  Many utilize what are called “self-assessments” which provide businesses immediate insight of specific competencies, including financial knowledge, decision making, intelligence, sales effectiveness, time /organizational management, etc.  These tools, which include the widely used Campbell Leadership Descriptor, can include job assignment opportunities that challenge the employee to enhance their skill levels or leadership abilities.  They also provide employees with a valuable opportunity to compare their individual self-perception against what others managers in other organizations feel is important.

Multi-rater or peer appraisals (also known as 360 degree assessments) collect the opinions about an employee’s performance from a range of co-workers that have daily interaction with, including bosses, supervisors, managers, vendors, clients and even some cases family members.  They are rated on skills that are thought to be critical for success.  This provides a comprehensive, realistic view of an individual’s current value to his or her organization, how his/her current behaviors impact others, and what skills and competencies need to be developed to be effective and successful.

Organizational Assessments - The final popular assessment tool measures team dynamics.  Team and organizational assessments utilize all the employees and provide insight into how conflict, creativity, leadership, work environment, and work climate impact team performance.

What are the Risks?
When providing feedback, there is always a risk that it can upset an individual, especially if it is open and honest.   While it can be enormously useful to gain the insight of one’s weaknesses, hearing what others view as shortcomings can be quite jarring.  It is imperative that a neutral, empathetic, and objective coach guide the individual through the findings.

Utilizing a third-party coach can also help employees make the desired efforts to improve administration and comprehend the feedback in these assessment tools, ensuring the tool is used in the right manner to achieve the desired results.  Working with an empathetic coach can help maintain and ensure the lessons learned and act as a positive catalyst for change.  Employees can chart a new developmental course quickly and gather momentum to recognize immediate opportunities, change unproductive behaviors, take actions toward achieving developmental goals.

Some businesses can also get fixated on one tool and fail to gain the insights they truly need.  Since there are a variety of choices out there for almost ever employment topic, it is important to identify the best tools and understand the criteria needed to make sure they get the insights they require.  Some things to remember when reviewing assessment tools is to make sure they are:

• Backed by rigorous research, current validation and legally deemed to have "no adverse impact".
• Formative (related to an absolute) rather than relative.
• Designed specifically for employment purposes.
• Customizable if that is an important factor given your organization’s situation and the purpose of the assessment.

What Are the Clear Cut benefits? Catalyst for Change
Once armed with this feedback, the subsequent awakening knowledge often creates within the individual an intense desire to change and to focus on setting and achieving personal/professional development goals that align with and help individual meet his or her business imperatives and strengthen relationships with and perceptions of others they work with.

Identifies Future Leaders
Helps organizations identify, target, cultivate and promote team leaders who are good role models, highly trusted, and/or seen as strong motivators.

Accurately Benchmarks One’s Performance
Offers greater self-awareness & self-knowledge of an individual’s current level of effectiveness as a leader, worker, learner and/or master of job critical competencies and skills through open and honest feedback of others 45. Viewing one’s effectiveness within such a context enables an individual to reflect on where he/she is as viewed by themselves and others and then compare to where he/she WANTS to be.

Reduce hiring mistakes
Many organizations use employee assessment tests to better evaluate candidates before making a job offer. Several of our clients regularly use pre-employment assessment tools that rate the personality and motivation of potential employees, qualities that are difficult to judge in an interview alone.  When used in conjunction with an interview, a solid skills test and a leadership style assessment tests are excellent for looking below the surface information presented by a seemingly top candidate.  In fact, using several assessment tools in the pre-hiring process allows companies to test rigorously to increase accuracy and thus screen out high-risk candidates with career derailing quirks that could potentially hurt your company’ ROI and instead hire top candidates who are truly the best fit for the position, company and culture based on critical competencies, attitude, behavior, and personality and are most likely to be successful and want to stay with the company long-term. Using assessment tools at this stage addresses the problem of chronic high turnover that some companies face.

By
Betsey Dalbeck – Senior Consultant at Mage, LLC