Jim Gilchrist B.E.S.

Used properly, assessments can help leaders improve by identifying gaps between desired and perceived behaviours.

Organizations today are increasingly concerned about measuring their returns on the major investments of time and money that they have made in leadership development for both the individuals involved and the organization. In recent years, assessment instruments of all shapes and sizes have been actively marketed, measuring everything from employee attitudes to personal listening styles. The intent of all of these instruments, tests, inventories and tools is supposed to provide information to help improve management and leadership effectiveness.

Instead, the result is often everything except improved effectiveness. When asked how effective assessments and training programs have been, managers often respond that "the process was fun and the feedback was interesting," but they don't know how to use what they have learned. Others try to find reasons why the information is "incorrect", blaming the instructions in the survey, the norm group that their scores were compared with, or any number of other excuses. Others say that the information will not make any difference what they do as their organizations will not support the desired changes. The bottom line is that too often very little, if anything, happens as a result of leadership assessments.

Assessment as Part of the Developmental Process

Assessing leadership skills is an important undertaking that must be understood as an integral part of a developmental process. From the beginning, it must be introduced and treated as part of something larger than "an assessment," or a "program." If assessments are understood as part of an ongoing process, they become part of a company's continuous improvement efforts. They connect to past improvement efforts and they provide a basis for managing future individual and organizational change efforts. Properly integrating assessment activity will help foster management and employee commitment to making appropriate changes.

Leadership Success Factors

Research indicates that the number one reason people find themselves in management or leadership positions is that they are good at what they do. But while they may have strong technical skills, it is often falsely assumed that they will be good at leading other people to achieve the same level of competence. Whether private or public sector, lower, middle or upper management, we need to recognize that most managers are not as effective as they could be. One reason is that many of them have not developed critical interpersonal skills, especially the abilities to get along with others and to influence them in positive ways. Another more widespread reason is that, in actuality, they have not developed their management and leadership skills. You may be surprised at this statement, and you would not be alone. Some would argue that... "we have people in this organization who have been managers for 15 years or more. They have business degrees from big-name universities. They attend the best seminars and workshops available. Why haven't their management and leadership skills developed?"

Most likely this is due to the fact that there is not a clear and useful model of management for them to reference and use as a practical framework to visualize and evaluate performance. Further, they need objective feedback so that they can identify their performance successes and failures and to help them understand their overall impact on the organization. Without feedback on how their behaviour affects others, managers sometimes achieve stated objectives even while causing costly problems elsewhere in the company.

Getting Feedback

For the feedback from assessment data to be useful, it should be current, accurate and specific. It should provide a clear description of people's perceptions of present behaviour, and to be most useful, it should clarify people's expectations of desired behaviour. Often, however, feedback is vague, frequently relating to gross performance. In other cases, feedback is virtually nonexistent.

Overcoming these obstacles is one of the reasons 360 degree assessments have become so popular. The concept is not new, and has recently gained prominence because these assessments seek feedback from the full circle of people who interact with the manager, and who can provide first-hand input on their behaviour. Done properly, it includes people's perceptions of what the leader is doing and what they would like them to be doing. From this, the assessment will reveal gaps between perceived behaviour and expected or desired behaviour, and can supplement relevant information that was gained from any written assessments and interviews.

How many people should complete the 360 degree assessment in order for the results to be valid? Obviously, the most complete and accurate picture will be formed if all the person's direct reports complete an assessment. Economically, logistically and practically, this may not be possible. A general rule is to have a minimum of four or twenty five percent (which ever is greater) of a person's direct reports complete the assessment. Never have just one direct report complete a survey on the target manager, even if there is only one direct report. When there are only two or three direct reports, you may be better off with input from peers. Also, when selecting people to complete an assessment, it is usually a good idea to avoid someone who was recently disciplined or who is about to be discharged.

In gathering data from bosses, remember that a person may have more than one boss (ie: a functional boss and a project boss). Both could be included. Occasionally, it may be advisable not to have the boss complete an assessment, using instead responses from the manager, direct reports and peers. This can be useful when animosity or tension is evident between manager and boss. In this situation, if the direct reports' feedback is negative, the manager may be more willing to respond to the input from "the many" rather than to feedback from someone he is having conflict with. On the other hand, if the direct reports rate the manger as being strong in most behaviour with very little need to change, it may provide an opportunity to bring the manager and boss together for positive dialogue. In most cases, however, a person's boss should participate in the survey.

The key point is that no one assessment provides sufficient information. Personal interviewing combined with appropriate written assessments and personal, peer and management observation is critical for accuracy.

Work Flow Process Model

With the advent of self-managed work teams and total quality management, the emphasis for leaders and managers shifted from vertical relationships to collaborative relationships and to empowering people at all levels to do the right things at the right time. The following model offers a contemporary perspective for achieving excellence that can have long lasting benefits for individuals and entire organizations.

The Work Flow Process Model is well known and is frequently used for strengthening management and leadership skills. It consists of six phases and fifteen dimensions, outlined briefly below. Note that at the center of the model is the need to focus individual and collective efforts on the mission of the organization and the work team to satisfy the needs of the customers, both internal and external.

PHASE I - CLARITY OF PURPOSE

For desired results to be achieved, leaders first of all must be able to define the desired results with his or her team of people. Lack of input, vague goals, and poor communication can cripple a company.

Goals clarify purpose by providing guidelines toward which planning, effort and energy are directed. Without clear, meaningful, challenging and attainable goals, people may be operating by the seat of their pants and doing a lot of things, but they may not all be purposeful activities. Communication is integral to clarifying purpose and getting input from appropriate people early in the process. Successful leaders regularly seek input from others, including their direct reports.

PHASE II - PLANNING AND PROBLEM AVOIDANCE

Leaders, who plan properly and involve others appropriately in the process, will make better decisions, and they tend to avoid problems more often than managers who fail to plan or are inconsistent in planning.

Planning should be a dynamic process. Plans must be flexible to allow for change during the course of achieving specific goals. Relevant factors must be monitored continually so that the organization can adapt to new situations. Leaders must include others in the planning and decision-making processes as often as possible. Decision-making is the prerequisite to action, as it involves selecting one choice and eliminating all other possibilities. Good leaders are decisive when necessary.

PHASE III - TASK ACCOMPLISHMENT

The third phase of leadership involves implementing plans -- getting the right people, on the right jobs, at the right time, and doing the right things. Task accomplishment means making sure that people know who is to do what, when it is to be done, and what standards of performance are to be achieved.

A leader's ability to be effective requires competent knowledge of his specific job and of his organization, including products, services and business operations. Competence encompasses general management skills and the specific abilities to facilitate meaningful meetings, to be well organized, and to handle stress and stressful situations. Leaders are highly motivated and can create an environment that allows the people around them to be highly self-motivated. They facilitate work through actions that ensure that tasks are accomplished according to plan. Work facilitation includes training, coaching and otherwise developing competence and confidence in others.

PHASE IV - PROVIDING FEEDBACK

As tasks are performed, successful leaders provide feedback to others in a frequent, open, honest and constructive manner. Both individuals and teams need feedback and support on their performance as it relates to specific tasks and to other areas of the organization.

PHASE V - EXERCISING CONTROL

The fifth phase of leadership, in the standard assessment model, has to do with how much emphasis the leader puts on controlling people and processes. Many managers have a very high need for control, and of course, control can be either positive or negative. What is important to leadership is how control is exercised in relation to each phase of the model and the impact it has on people.

All leaders need to manage performance in positive ways. This requires leaders to communicate in advance what work will be assessed and how it will be assessed. Accountability is multi-directional. Direct reports need to be accountable for those results that their team and they, individually, have direct control and responsibility for. The leader must also be accountable for his/her actions. There is no room for dual standards.
Too often, managers use delegation as a way to get rid of unwanted jobs. Appropriate delegation involves identifying the tasks that are a better match for the skills, abilities and work preferences of other employees. This requires identifying people's strengths and capitalizing on them. Delegation must include assigning the appropriate degree of authority to accomplish the delegated tasks.

PHASE VI - INDIVIDUAL AND TEAM RELATIONSHIPS

This phase of the leadership model recognizes that how a person interacts with people in their immediate work team, as well as with those in other teams, has tremendous affect on their overall effectiveness as a leader.

Effective leaders will build appropriate and positive relationships with members of their immediate work group, with others in the organization, and with individuals outside the company. Leaders who are skilled at "linking" identify the interdependent relationships that exist between the leader's work group and other work groups. Teamwork is the result of purposeful effort on the part of all team members. The leader's role in effective teamwork is to encourage diversity and manage the conflict that emerges from diversity. Teamwork involves openness of communication, camaraderie, and conflict resolution within the team.

Feedback Reports

No matter what model an organization uses, feedback of assessment data is critical. Too often, organizations collect information and then fail to share it with the people it was collected from or with those who have the power to make changes.

Characteristically, effective assessment instruments and processes describe desired behaviour, actual behaviour and the underlying causes behind the difference between the two. Having multiple groups of people describe present behaviour helps to clarify perceptions, and having them describe desired behaviour helps to clarify expectations. As a result, differences in perceptions can be identified, and the leader can effectively adjust their behaviour appropriately. When the assessment focuses on accurately identifying behaviours, and their true causes, the feedback data will produce faster and clearer decisions, a greater commitment to change, and a greater likelihood that the change will be effective.

Feedback reports must provide people with understandable and believable feedback, thus enabling the manager to focus on areas where the largest gaps exist between present behaviour and desired behaviour. Generally, the larger the gaps, the more immediate the need for attention.

Benefits and Conclusions

Most people, when presented with objective information about their behaviour, will change appropriately, provided the information is presented in a non-threatening manner and provided the manager/ leader knows that the organization will support the change. If the initial and follow-up support systems (coaching, counseling, and training) are not in place from the beginning, any change is unlikely to last. Indeed, if people know that there is no support, the desired changes may never take hold at all.

For optimum results, assessment should be performed with a clear purpose and with anticipated benefits in mind. This allows you to plan for the resources and support systems that will enable you both to strengthen weak spots, and to maximize and capitalize on individual and collective strengths.

Each person has blind spots that may be obvious to others. Assessment of leadership skills can help people understand their behaviours that need development or change. Individual and collective organizational needs can be identified. Examining the differences between individuals and groups can determine whether those differences are a function of training variations or some other factor.

Probably the most important benefit of assessing leadership skills is being able to clarify leadership concepts for people who want to develop their skills and thereby, help them focus their energy. The end result is improved effectiveness.

Jim Gilchrist B.E.S.
President
CAES Career Advancement Employment Services Inc.
North American Search and Recruitment Specialists
www.careeradvancement.on.ca

Established in 1997, CAES Career Advancement Employment Services Inc . is a privately owned Canadian corporation. We have built our reputation by successfully satisfying the requirements of a wide range of clientele, with demonstrated expertise in the environmental, consulting and manufacturing arenas. By utilizing a consultative, research-oriented approach that ensures the identification and attraction of managers and staff who truly 'fit' with our clients, we have not only met their expectations, we have exceeded them.
CAES truly helps to build organizations.