Profiling for performance
Profiling potential members of staff during the recruitment process can really help to see whether an individual has the right skills and personal attributes to be able to not only deliver the job at hand, but also fit in with the culture and unique nature of your organisation. This is something we recently touched upon in our blog about getting recruitment right.
But what about existing teams? You probably think that once a team is in place, there’s not a lot that profiling can help with. We say, time to have a re-think…
Here’s how can profiling help to get the best performance out of an existing team.
Understand behaviours and reactions better
Any form of personal profiling gets to the root of an individual’s personality; what drives them, what affects them, the areas they excel in. The process of undertaking a profiling exercise on yourself and your team brings these traits to your attention, allowing you to think about them and how they may interplay in the work environment. After undertaking a profiling questionnaire, which usually takes less than ten minutes, you also receive a personal analysis for each individual. This contains a whole host of useful information to help you better understand a person’s behaviours and personality traits.
Identify areas for development
The results of a personal profile can be particularly useful for identifying the training and development needs of an individual. Although there are no right and wrong results, there are certain traits that you might expect to be present in an individual that is tasked with a certain role. For example, you might expect a business development manager to have strong influencing ability, or a customer service representative to have good organisational skills. Profiling can sometimes throw up surprise results and identify obvious skills gaps, which in turn will allows you to develop a set an agenda for development and training.
Spot gaps within your team
Profiling identifies behavioural styles, motivational styles and communication styles of the individuals within a team. When presented with the full suite of reports from all of the members of your team, it becomes easy to see where there are gaps. All of us have both strengths and weaknesses, the key is to ensure that within your team, you have all the different pieces covered. It is common for businesses to have too much of one factor, not providing enough of a mix to make a fully dynamic team.
Communicate more effectively
When it comes to work, we all have different styles and preferences, particularly when it comes to communication. Some of us are detail people, needing time to analyse and plan before getting to work. Others are happy with only a brief overview, being happy to take the initiative from there. Imagine being someone who likes clear direction and detail and all you get from your boss is briefly barked instructions?!
Having the knowledge about an individual’s preferred way to communicate and how they like to be managed allows managers to adapt their style and get the most out of each individual team member.
At Agenda, we’re big advocates of profiling – particularly for working with existing teams. We use the DISC system for personal profile analysis and have worked with several companies to be able to identify areas for both team and personal development, with the end result delivering a measurable impact on productivity.
For more information or to discuss employing our services to conduct profiling on key members of your team, please get in touch.
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