Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us. To know men thoroughly, to judge events sanely, is therefore a great step towards happiness.
-- Stendhal --
Working with Individuals
Assessments of individuals are a cornerstone of our work. Assessments provide an honest, in-depth evaluation of the individual. Without this information, all future plans will inevitably use guesswork. With this information, we can help individuals, and groups of individuals, deal realistically with what they want to achieve at work. Specifically, assessments are used pre-employment, before internal job changes or for the personal development of key managers. Here are some examples where this element of our approach has proven value:
Changes
Changes in the organisation resulting from merger or acquisition mean employees have to be reshuffled. Assessments which identify individual qualities, and goodness of fit, inform this complicated task.
Individual Fit
Individuals must fit not just to role but also in teams. The starting point from which to consider and understand team dynamics is the individual objectives and characteristics of the team members. By capitalising on strengths and minimising weaknesses, individual contributions can be repositioned to achieve the best from an existing team.
Succession Planning
Individual assessments are used to initiate the process, by structuring and categorising information. We order data that busy senior managers find hard to capture and we do so in a manner which facilitates objective decision making. We help organisations make the difficult decisions upon which the future of the business depends.
We assist our clients in coaching their executives to become more effective and efficient managers. Our approach consists of creating, together with the individual and their superiors, a personal coaching plan that will enable the manager to become more effective in providing their contribution in accomplishing the organisation's business goals.
We will focus with our result oriented coaching approach on:
The PDE is a psychological assessment of an executive or manager. A report is produced describing the strengths, weaknesses and developmental challenges of the interviewee. The report is based mainly on a four or five-hour interview of the individual carried out by a consultant.
Before carrying out a PDE it is important to know the environment in which the individual operates. Therefore we put a lot of emphasis on getting acquainted with the company culture and the requirements of the position. This enables us to determine the right fit of an individual in a given position.
The PDE process and in particular the interview are conducted in a non-threatening way. It is critical that the individual feels comfortable and relaxed in order to remain open to our developmental suggestions.
We believe it is possible both to influence and modify human behaviour and also to adjust responsibilities in keeping with the job holder's personal attributes and company requirements. The desired result of these two approaches is to increase managerial effectiveness, and the PDE can be a new start in developing the skills of an executive or manager.
1 The PDE Process
A typical PDE Process consists of the following steps:
*In the case of a PDE with an existing employee, the feedback to the individual precedes feedback to the supervisor.
2 When To Use A PDE
A PDE is recommended in a variety of situations, some of which are:
In some cases PDEs are used by a CEO or top management to familiarise themselves as quickly as possible with the management team below them. This approach can be used in the following examples:
3 The PDE Interview
The Interview takes 4 or 5 hours and is conducted in an open and unrestricted way. The interview is semi-structured and covers the following issues:
4 The PDE Report
The main body of the PDE report describes the following dimensions of the interviewee's personality:
In the conclusions of the report we provide a balance of the strengths and weaknesses of the individual. We only take into account their psychological profile. Technical skills are not assessed. Finally, we also make a number of recommendations about how the subject of the evaluation can improve managerial effectiveness.
5 PDE: Conclusion
The PDE process is a tool for evaluating the managerial effectiveness of the interviewee within a particular company context. However our approach differs from others in that we aim to go beyond a pure assessment by (re)launching the development of the individual in the context of their present and future roles in the company. In this sense the PDE process is also a powerful tool for influencing the managerial climate in an organisation.
Our ultimate goal is to increase the competitiveness and profitability of corporations by optimising the performance of their leaders and managers.
Based upon the output of the Personal Development Exercise (PDE) we will be able to assist our client in creating effective management teams.
We are convinced that success for the organization will depend on teamwork. We will therefore assist the client in creating more effective and efficient teams based upon a better understanding of the collective objectives.
In developing a common understanding of the business goals and in clarifying the roles and responsibilities of each team member the effectiveness of the team will improve.
With our team building exercise we aim to:
In our approach we will focus on increasing the teams cooperation, trust and cohesiveness.