Quote of the Week: 70 percent of employees in the typical company are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged.” Gallup Poll

Humor Break: How to properly engage with employees reminds us of this old “how not to engage” story:

For 30 years Al had arrived at work at 9 AM on the dot. He had never missed a day and was never late.

Consequently, when on one particular day 9 AM passed without Al’s arrival, it caused a sensation. All work ceased, and the boss himself, looking at his watch and muttering, came out into the corridor.

Finally, precisely at 10:00 AM, Al showed up, clothes dusty and torn, his face scratched and bruised, his glasses bent. He limped painfully to the time clock, punched in, and said, aware that all eyes were upon him, “I tripped and rolled down two flights of stairs in the subway. Nearly killed myself.”

And the boss said, “And to roll down two flights of stairs took you a whole hour?”

Stat of the Week: The same techniques for earning customer loyalty also work when engaging employees. After all, both efforts depend on treating people with respect. Here are two ways to use customer service tactics to improve relationships with employees.
1. Get real-time feedback.
2. Make engagement a priority for frontline managers.

Action Tip: Be your own Mystery Shopper.  Want to really know about your company’s customer service practices.  If you have outlets for your goods or services, conduct a visit.  Check out the Methodology Section of Mystery Shopping for some basic ideas of what to look for.  If you want to test your organization’s telephone customer service, here are two ideas: (1) count the number of times you are asked to push a number before you can order something that is not on the telephone menu; (2) try to order something pretending that you do not have your own telephone (and telephone number) … see if you system can handle a customer who chooses not to have a telephone (50% chance this technique won’t work with a telephone provider)!

Volunteering: Today is National Wear Red Day in the United States.  It is the combined efforts of many organizations to raise awareness about Heart Disease, especially in women.  It may be too late to change your wardrobe today, but it is not too late to check out the NWRD website.

“Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.” -Japanese Proverb

“Best practices” in using 360-degree feedback suggest that having someone debrief the report is important to manage potential negative emotions surrounding the data, increase the understanding of rater differences, and facilitate developmental planning (Nowack, 2005).

However, the process of discussing feedback results appears to be more important than who facilitates the discussion assuming the manager, coach, or client has an understanding of the 360-degree feedback assessment, the competencies being measured, and basic helping skills.

Thus, it is not necessary for an external coach to provide effective feedback. WHO does the coaching is not as important as whether it is done to help the client effectively interpret their 360-degree results. In fact, there has been very little research about who is providing coaching and the qualifications that make for the most effective coaches. A recent survey by Joyce Bono¹, revealed that a coach’s background will provide only limited information about the coach’s ability or approach to executive coaching. Another recent article in the New York Times, suggested that the face of the coaching profession is moving in the direction of some clients receiving motivational guidance from coaches young enough to be their children! It is a myth to believe that an experienced, external coach with a doctoral degree is the best alternative for coaching and debriefing 360 results.

Sometimes, having managers facilitate discussion of the results can have a distinct advantage in helping translate insight into developmental planning to support job performance and career growth (Rehbine, 2007)².

Coach’s Critique:

In my experience, I have found that how 360-degree feedback is interpreted is KEY to the effectiveness of the process. I believe that a participant is not likely to interpret 360 results in a meaningful, constructive, and proactive way without the help of a coach. Now, when I say “coach”, I mean an individual that can be a coach in the process, or an individual that can demonstrate coaching skills.

If the organization has the ability or means to hire an external coach, that would be great, as they are trained to effectively interpret 360-degree feedback. Otherwise, a participant’s manager would need to play the role of the coach in helping him or her “proactively” interpret the results. In other words, if a manager is helping his or her direct report to interpret results, he or she would need to avoid being directive and punitive with the results. This can inevitably lead to more damage than benefits in terms of promoting development and behavioral change. Therefore, the manager would need to utilize coaching techniques to minimize defensiveness of the participant and increase likelihood for positive change. If the manager acts as a “coach” in the process, the benefits may even be more advantageous than solely interpreting the results with an external coach, in that collaboration, support, and accountability can be created for the participant in his or her development process.

Who do you believe should facilitate the 360-degree feedback results? The manager? Or, an external coach?

1. Bono, J. et al, (2009) A survey of executive coaching practices. Personnel Psychology, 62, 361-404.
2. Rehbine, N. (2007). The impact of 360-degree feedback on leadership development. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Capella University

“Have you ever referred to yourself as talent? [aside from as a descriptor on your CV/Resume - a talented ........ looking for a new opportunity etc] “

Wally’s Comment: This post is not about “talent development,” but it is about the way we use the word “talent.” It’s always important to pay attention to the language we use, how it opens up some vistas and closes off others and how it shapes our thinking.  Thanks to William Tincup for pointing me to this post.

From Jon Ingham: What is now business critical on the HR Director’s agenda?

“We’ll be following up on the issues raised in the HR Directors Business Summit unconference, and discussed in the final unpanel, at the organisers’ new community forum, HR InSights. However, I thought my summary as chair at the beginning of day two covered both days of the unconference quite well.  The three main issues for me were:

Performance. Of the business, and of the HR function too (eg in Ed Lawler’s presentation, and also demonstrated in the HR with Distinction awards).
Leadership development. In business (particularly given the passion expressed in the unpanel about ‘toxicity at the top’) and in other areas, particularly sports (eg in Sir Clive Woodward’s presentation on coaching in rugby and basketball which suggested some interesting opportunities for business coaching too).
Planning and analytics. Eg I liked the way that David Clutterbuck suggested that we need to be analytical in order to remain caring for our people.”

Wally’s Comment: I love Jon Ingham’s posts from various conferences because they’re like having a good and knowledgeable friend tell you want the presentations were like and what the key ideas were and what that friend thought of it all.

From Fortune: Executives to new grads: Shape up!

“Note to recent college grads and the Class of 2012: You may not be as ready for the working world as you think you are. At least, that’s the opinion of about 500 senior managers and C-suite executives in a study by Global Strategy Group, on behalf of worldwide architectural firm Woods Bagot.”

Wally’s Comment: OK, let me drive a couple of stakes in the ground on this one. I don’t think it’s the job of a college or university to pop out pre-formed graduates with all the relevant skills that a CEO could want. I do think it’s the job of parents and the educational system to develop young people in a way that lets them show up at their first job with reasonable communications and critical thinking skills. Now, go read what the CEOs think.

From Sean Conrad: A Lesson from RIM’s Succession Plan

“The announcement that the Blackberry maker’s co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis  and Jim Balsillie were stepping down from their shared top post was not only interesting because of what it did to the stock volume and value, or the buzz it generated, but also from the perspective of a strong, internally groomed successor being named.”

Wally’s Comment: You may not think that Thorsten Heins is a great choice or even the right choice for CEO of RIM right now. Fine. You’ll still learn a lot from Sean Conrad’s post about how Sean thinks a good succession plan should work.

From Charles Jennings: MANAGERS AND MAD HATTERS: WORK THAT STRETCHES

“In this final article I want to address the challenge with which many L&D and HR departments struggle. This is how to enroll managers in the practice of people development, how to engage with them, and how to ensure learning activities are aligned with their priorities.”

Wally’s Comment: Over the last couple of months, Charles Jennings has rolled out three thoughtful posts about how learning should work in your talent development scheme. I’ve highlighted each of those posts as Jennings published because each one was superb on its own. Now that the series is finished, I suggest you read all the posts, one after the other, to get the full impact. The other two are “Learning in Wonderland: the untapped potential of workplace learning” and “Through the 70:20:10 Looking Glass.”

Title: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Competency: customer service 

Who benefits: all levels of an organization

Consultant Usage: idea generator for organizational consultants and customer service trainers

What’s it about? As strongly hinted in my last post, I am declaring February as Customer Appreciation Month (CAM).  Very little peeves me more that poor customer service.  I shall use this forum to express personal opinions both positively and negatively.  I urge the readers of this Blog to add their 2-cents in the comments section.  Who have you had a great experience with?  Poor experience with?  Rant or Rave, let’s hear from you.

Public enemy #1 on my list of least favorite customer service experiences (and there have been several frustrating ones) is Direct TV.  Good thing they have the products I need or I would be long gone.  They test my limits and endurance.

Which is why I begin this mini-series with Lame Customer Service Excuses and Hidden Masterminds (dedicated to you, Direct TV).

This is the way Robert Plant (hey, isn’t that a famous musician?) begins his excellent recent post on his Blog:  “The next time a customer service rep says, ‘The computer won’t let me do that’ or ‘The system tells me what to do,’ remember this: Behind every such phrase is a set of processes designed, or at least endorsed, not by computers but by human beings somewhere in the corporate hierarchy. The system may tell the reps what to do, but someone told the system what to do.”

His post deserves a careful read.  There are many nuances deserving of our prime thinking time.  Senior executives who issue “efficiency” directives that may increase short term profits at the expense of customer loyalty.  Mid-level decision makers without direct customer experiences designing the wrong systems that effectively turn customer service representatives and agents into devolving employees who often are provocateurs instead of problem-solvers.  Pity the first line employee drenched under a waterfall of inaccurate or non-existent information.  The powerless employees who create enemies of the very customers they are hired to serve.  The next-to-useless application of technology frustrates and angers even the most loyal of supporters. 

Mr. Plant has some pointed and poignant observations and some answers. 

Here is a quick summary of his solutions.  But don’t stop here.  Go read his post and take in the magnitude of his concern and the details of these solutions:

1. (Organizations) should support their customer agents with technologies that are flexible and adaptive and that use case-based intelligent reasoning to anticipate customer and agent needs.
2. (Organizations) should reduce the experiential gap between employees and customers. With much of the corporate world’s customer interactions handled by offshore call centers, reps are often incapable of relating to customers’ needs.
3. (Organizations) should recognize the value of dialogue with customers.

Good advice for companies that prefer to stay in business.

Catch you later.

This free exercise, and dozens of others, were created for our book, Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It. You can learn more about Clueless by visiting our site or you can buy it from amazon.com today.

Purpose of Exercise: Helps clients visualize the life they want in the future.

How to Administer and Use this Exercise to Facilitate Behavior Change: Often times, individuals attempt to progress with their development fail, but fail to sustain their motivation for progress, because a lack of a clear picture of how they see themselves in the future. This exercise can help your clients paint a picture and visualize their life in 10 years. Specifically, it provides reflective questions for clients with how they foresee their future in terms of relationships, work, career, and legacies. With an awareness and clear vision of how they see their life in the long run, they can better identify how to pursue their development plan.

To download “My Life 10 Years From Now”, please click here. To view the table of contents, preview a free chapter, and order Clueless please go to: http://www.envisialearning.com/clueless_book.

Josh Bersin has done a stellar job of sketching several possibilities in his post, “The End of a Job as We Know It.” You should read this post more than once.

I want to pull out two quotes with direct talent development implications. Here’s the first one.

“Today, thanks to communications technology, people can do their “jobs” everywhere and anywhere. We collaborate across the globe just as easily as we can in the same room. People don’t necessarily progress “upward,” but often “sideways” or “deeper” in expertise.

And as a result of this shift, if you let your skills atrophy, you’re dead.  Your employer can likely find those skills elsewhere by hiring a contractor, bidding out work, or finding another internal expert.”

This means that the personal knowledge management that Harold Jarche writes about will become more important as individuals take responsibility for their own learning. It also means that the people in your company who are responsible for learning and development will shift the focus of their activity. They will do less training design and delivery and more facilitation, resource identification, and coaching.

The organization will change, too. Here’s a summary quote from Bersin.

“What this all means is that in today’s high performing companies, people now take on ‘roles’ not ‘jobs.’ They are responsible for ‘tasks’ and ‘projects’ and not simply ‘functions.’”

This means what Susan Finerty has been saying for a while. Whether you name it so or not, every organization is becoming a matrix organization. That means your talent development efforts will need to include helping people “Master the Matrix,” the title of Susan’s forthcoming book.

Don’t read this as some kind of futurist prediction. It’s not. It’s a good description of what’s already beginning to happen.

“….Ain’t it good to know you’ve got a friend”

Carlole King

What exactly do relationships at work do for talent? Do close relationships with one’s boss and colleagues have any impact on engagement and productivity? Current research suggest strong relationships with one’s boss and direct reports are associated with:

1. Less inflammation measured as C-Reactive Protein¹.
2. Enhanced immunity².
3. Less burnout in professional working women–lower depersonalization and higher personal accomplishment³.
4. Decreased depression⁴.
5. Enhanced job satisfaction⁵.
6. Greater longevity and less illness during our life based on meta-analytics reviews of over 148 studies⁶.

Work Relationships and Job Burnout

A recent study by Claude Fernet at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières explored the relationship between friendships at work and job burnout⁷.

A total of 533 college employees participated in this study. Data were collected at two time points, two years apart. Their prospective study suggests that high-quality relationships with coworkers are crucial to minimize job burnout (emotional exhaustion, cynicism/depersonalization and negative self-evaluation, and personal accomplishment). So, having strong relationships at work certainly seems associated with preventing psychological distress and enhancing our level of energy over time.

Work Relationships and Longevity

People who have a good peer support system at work may live longer than people who don’t have such a support system, according to new research⁸.

The researchers, at Tel Aviv University, looked at the medical records of 820 adults who were followed for 20 years, from 1988 to 2008. The workers were drawn from people who had been referred to an HMO’s screening center in Israel for routine examinations. (People who were referred because of suspected physical or mental health problems were excluded from the sample). The workers came from some of Israel’s largest firms in finance, insurance, public utilities, health care and manufacturing. They reported working on average 8.8 hours a day. One-third of them were women; 80 percent were married with children; and 45 percent had at least 12 years of formal education.

The researchers controlled for the physiological, behavioral and psychological risk factors of total cholesterol, triglycerides, glucose levels, blood pressure, body mass index, alcohol consumption, smoking, depressive symptoms, anxiety and past hospitalizations. They obtained the data on the control variables from each person’s periodic health examinations, including tests of physiological risk factors and a questionnaire completed during the examinations by all participants.

So, it appears that relationships with one’s boss can have direct and important associations with the physical health and psychological well-being of talent. 

Social support with other colleagues and non-work peers also talent affect health and we all know that we bring work stress home with us as well as transfer family problems back to our jobs (known as spillover effects).  We also know that gender plays a role in the relationship between social support and well-being.

For example, we have taken a look at some social support research results from our stress and health risk assessment called StressScan by analyzing availability, utility and satisfaction of social support by gender. We tested gender differences by using a statistical test called analysis of variance (ANOVA) and found some interesting differences in gender with a sample of almost 800 professional working men and women.

1. In general, women reported greater availability and use of their social support network (supervisor/boss, colleagues/co-workers, partner, family and friends) than their male counterparts (all p’s < .01).
2. Women reported using their boss or supervisor significantly more frequently than men which was surprising as research suggests that more successful women indicate that mentoring was less important to their career advancement than did less successful women.
3. Women reported significantly more availability, use and satisfaction with their friends compared to males. They also reported greater availability and use of their partners, families and friends (all p’s < .01) which is consistent to what Shelly Taylor, Ph.D. has suggested as part of the female “tend and befriend” response to coping with work and life stress⁹.

What else do we know about social relationships, psychological health and physical well-being?

So, it seems pretty convincing that support and friendships are independent risk factors for mental and physical health…..The bigger question, as the Beatles asked, is “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty four?”….Be well…..

1. Suarez, E. (2004). C Reactive Protein Is Associated With Psychological Risk Factors of Cardiovascular Disease in Apparently Healthy Adults. Psychosomatic Medicine 66:684-690
2. Schwartz, G.E., Schwartz, J.I., Nowack, K.M., & Eichling, P.S. (1992). Changes in perceived stress and social support over time are related to changes in immune function. University of Arizona and Canyon Ranch. Unpublished manuscript
3. Nowack, K. and Pentkowski, A. (1994). Lifestyle habits, substance use, and predictors of job burnout in professional working women. Work and Stress, 8, 19-35
4. Stroetzer, U. et al. (2006). Problematic interpersonal relationships at work and depression: A Swedish prospective cohort study. Journal of Occupational Health, 51, 144-151
5. Simon, L., Judge, T., & Halvorsen-Ganepola, M. (2010). In good company? A multi-level investigation of the effects of coworker relationships on well-being. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 76, 534-546
6. Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB (2010) Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review. PLoS Med 7(7): e1000316. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
7. Fernet, C. et al. (2010). When does quality of relationships with coworkers predict burnout over time? The moderating role of work motivation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31, 1163–1180
8. Shirom, A. et al., (2011). Work-Based Predictors of Mortality: A 20-Year Follow-Up of Healthy Employees. Health Psychology, 30, No. 3
9. Taylor, S. E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T. L., Gurung, R. A. R., & Updegraff, J. A. Behavioral Responses to Stress: Tend and Befriend, Not Fight or Flight” Psychological Review, 107(3):41-429

Written by Sam Alibrando, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and president of APC, Inc. his own consulting firm that works with organizations and senior executives.

There are few things more important to the success of an organization, than getting the right people into your organization (and then keeping them). The costs of a bad hire are enormous in terms of the financial investment in the hiring process, cost of poor performance, lost time and energy in needless management, decreased morale and employee retention (there is growing evidence that good employees don’t leave organizations, they leave bad bosses).

When you think of the worst things about your organization, you can probably trace it back to a bad hire. Likewise, when you consider what is working well, you will probably trace it back to a good hire. 

There are three ways to get the Best People into your organization. You can Hire them, you can Inspire (or develop and retain) them or you can Retire (reposition or fire) them. Firing people is necessary but difficult and at times carries with it risk. Repositioning is often a good alternative as long as the problem was poor fit rather than poor emotional intelligence or incompetence. Developing is always good but you can only develop people within their capacity to truly learn. It is hard to take an average employee and develop them into a star (and even more difficult to take a low-performing employee even to only the next level). By far and away, the best option of getting the work force that you want is to hire them. It is easier to hire a star than attempt to develop them over years. And let’s face it, not everyone is teachable.

One of the favorite things that I do as a consultant is to help organizations hire good-fit, emotionally intelligent leaders and then to help integrate them into their new position (and possible new work culture). Below is the five-step choreography that I use, let’s D.I.S.C.O.

Define the position.  Not enough time is spent on thinking about the position to be filled. What exactly are you looking for and what kind of person would fill it?  We often assume that we should just fill the same position that is vacated. If you think like that you will at best get what you already had. Think about what you need now and into the future. We are currently helping the president of a company hire a COO. We are suggesting to him to think 2-3 years ahead. Who do you want or need this person to be in two years? Consider the position that you are looking to fill, a new position that is aligned with your current strategic plan (if you have one). Once you do that, describe the KSA (knowledge, Skills and Aptitudes) of the ideal person. As consultants we use a system that profiles that ideal candidate, one that we later use for assessment and interviewing purposes and even later for measuring success after they are hired.

Identify the best (and fewest) candidates. There are many ways to identify the best candidates. You can identify candidates as simply as advertising the position on the web (e.g. Craig’s List or Monster.com) for lower level hires to employing a search firm for C-level executives. Although very expensive, the advantage of using an executive search firm is that they can locate people who are already working and currently not-looking. Although we do not identify and recruit we help you determine the best way to do it. We also partner with recruiters and search firms as well. What is important in the Identification process is to get the best prospects, and not one more. This involves not just identification but also good screening.   You can screen candidates by reviewing their resumes, doing a standardized phone screen or hire a search firm to do the screening for you.

• Selection.  Once you have a final group of good candidates you now need to go through a thorough selection process. Here are the ABCs of this process:
• Assessment. We put candidates through a battery of assessments that assess fit to ideal profile, strength assessment, their team role, cognitive capacity and personality fit. We then use this information to guide the interviewing process.
• Behavioral Interviews. The typical interview has about a 50% accuracy (might as well flip a coin) for predicting success.  Do you want to improve your odds? Then you need to do what is called a behavioral interview. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. In the interview, you want to assess how a person performed and therefore will perform in your organization. If you do this, you improve your predictability to 80%. I would take those odds. As consultants, we have both guided this process and will actually sit in on interviews. And speaking of sitting in on interviews, generally speaking the more touches (the more people in the interviewing process)–up to a certain reasonable amount, the better chances of making a good hire (and avoiding a bad one). 

 Confirm. You want to confirm what you are told. This includes actually following up with references, confirming allegations and doing background checks. We worked with one company that was hiring a very important general manager. The chair of the hiring committee found someone who was a friend of a friend (not the best way to identify a candidate) and he had everything that they were looking for in a GM. The chair of the committee loved him was ready to hire him on the spot. Fortunately, three other people interviewed him. One seasoned executive who interviewed the candidate had a “bad feeling” about this prospect. The assessments that we did indicated an average to poor fit for the position. This instigated enough concern that a background check was done. And when they did a background check, they found that he had a history of serious problems that would likely follow him into this next position.  If the chair selected this person–in a manner that most organizations do– without following the ABCs of Selection, they would have hired their next huge headache and unnecessary expense.

Choose.  This is the shortest but obviously most important decision you will make in the DISCO process. Bring together all the stakeholders, interviewers, data from assessment, information from references and background check and make a decision. Honor people who have a “bad feeling” about someone.  Don’t necessarily trust “likeability” (remember narcissistic people are notorious charmers).  You need to tie likeability to performance and fit. And when you choose someone, think emotional intelligence. You can have a very talented person but if they cannot regulate their emotions or they relate poorly to others, you will get more than you bargained for.  After having the basic KSAs in place, few things are more important than emotional intelligence, especially if this person works with clients, needs to work in a team or manage or lead others.   

Onboarding. The hiring process does NOT end with the hire. This is a mistake that many organizations make. In our process we will stay with the new hire over the course a several months helping them integrate into the new position–and the new culture if they are an outside hire. Monitoring and assessing their progress and enhancing important communications along the way. We will use all the assessment data to both coach the new hire and direct his or her boss on how to mentor the new hire. The purpose of onboarding is to instigate a soft landing (integration), detect any issues early that might be problematic down the road and hone in the performance to the strategic needs of the position. 

If you are going to cut costs in an organization, do not cut costs in the hiring process. It will come back to haunt you for years.  Instead learn to do the D.I.S.C.O. and you will not regret it for a minute.

Quote of the Week:

“Well if this is the wrong number, why did you answer it” James Thurber (How come wrong numbers are never busy?)

Humor Break: Remember “Laugh-In”? “One ringy-dingy….” aimed a spoof of customer service at the phone company and concluded with the message, “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Phone Company.”

Stat of the Week: February is around the corner. It is the month of Love (Valentine’s Day). I thought I would declare the month “Customer Appreciation Month” and focus on the customer. Since it isn’t quite February, I will begin a “Customer Unappreciation Article”. Pepperdine University Professor David McMahon wrote a scholarly yet very readable article about how to manage customer waiting time. My Stat of the Week is pretty loose this week, but in the article he lists a number of ways to deal with wait times. The whole article was so logical and well-reasoned that I couldn’t help but sit back a feel satisfied…until I started to challenge some assumptions. Two in particular stood out. (1) the organization’s time is more valuable than the customer’s and (2) the purpose isn’t to minimize or eliminate wait times, but to make wait time more palatable. On second reading the article is all about how to trick the customer. My favorite example, how a telephone company kept customers waiting and charged them for the waiting time.

Action Tip: If you haven’t lost your sanity but want a quick way to voice a complaint and (maybe) even get a response, try the 3rd party website MeasureUP .  If you have lost your sanity and really want to rant, google “ihate(name of company)”. Here is one of the most popular rant sites. I have even considered using on several occasions: ihatedirecttv Blog. (Not well done, goes from earliest posts to latest post???, lots of literacy issues, but lots of posts.) I have read that Direct TV monitors this site for statistical purposes and according to one source on the site, action was actually taken.

Volunteering: One place being put on hold could be deadly is with teenagers in trouble. Every town needs consiencious adults as telephone volunteers. Google “teen telephone crisis hotlines” for a crisis center in your area. Don’t wait. Don’t leave them waiting.

“What one hides is worth neither more nor less than what one finds. And what one hides from oneself is worth neither more nor less than what one allows others to find.”  -Andre Breton

In most 360-degree feedback processes used for developmental purposes, the participant is the only person who gets to keep a copy of the individual summary feedback report.

Sharing reports can come in multiple parts, so that only some portions can be shared in one chooses to and feel more comfortable. The different parts of the report/results can include content of the report, executive summary, distal portion of the results, and the action plan. For example, if a participant is uncomfortable with sharing results, he or she may feel more comfortable to share an executive summary, rather than details of the content.

In some cases, the report might be made available to an internal or external coach the participant is working with or a trainer or facilitator who is conducting an organizational workshop. It is typical for talent management and succession planning purposes that a copy of the feedback report might also be made available to one’s manager or the human resources department.

Of course, a participant who has a good relationship with his or her manager and engages with the manager as a performance coach will be expected to openly share his or her feedback report, whether formally part of a 360-degree feedback intervention or not.

Coach’s Critique:

An issue of concern that often comes up in my coaching practice has to do with the sharing of the 360-degree feedback report. Generally, the only person that can see the report is the participant. However, in many cases, the HR representative and/or participant’s manager wish to see the results of the report. This may lead to the participant feeling anxious and uncomfortable to feel exposed by his or her manager. My clients have shared concerns that showing their 360 results place them in a position where their manager can hold anything against them. Furthermore, they feel that they were promised confidentiality and would prefer not to share their results. On the other hand, managers would like to see the results in order to be involved in their development and hold them accountable. So, how do we balance the two?

For one thing, it is important to clarify all boundaries regarding sharing 360 degree results during the contracting phase in order to avoid any conflict of interest after the 360 feedback results.

In addition, if a participant is uncomfortable to share all aspects of the results, it’s a good idea to encourage him or her to share only aspects of the report. For instance, many participants are comfortable with their manager to see their quantitative data, but are reluctant of sharing the open-ended comments.

What has been your experience with sharing 360-degree feedback results?

From Kate Sweetman on the HBR Blogs: One Talent Strategy Isn’t Enough for Asia

“I posed this question to a group of executives in a successful Asian-headquartered bank during a recent consulting engagement: ‘Considering for the moment only our current set of employees, where do we devote development resources to get the leadership talent we will need in the next three to five years?’ The bank operates in almost 20 Asian countries, employs tens of thousands of employees and makes very good returns on a substantial asset base. The company’s strategy is to take full advantage of being a local player in emerging Asian growth markets while deepening their leadership pool and strengthening their talent pipeline.”

Wally’s Comment: Don’t pass this up just because you’re not doing business in Asia. Kate Sweetman (named an “Emerging Guru” by the Times of London) points out that managers in different countries have differing perceptions of their talent development needs. Your company has countries, too. There may be a “marketing country” and a “manufacturing country” for example, or, perhaps, a “New York country” and a “Kansas City country.”

From Josh Bersin: The Business Case for Talent Management: Steve Ballmer Agrees

“Talent management makes money. If you are trying to build a business case for a corporate talent management program, here is some astounding data: Of the 700+ organizations we studied in 2010 and 2011, only 7% told us that they have a “strategic talent management” program.”

Wally’s Comment: Read this post to find out how big the difference is between those with a “strategic talent management program” and the others. You’ll also see how talent management plays out at Microsoft.

From Hay Group: Converting existing managers into future-ready leaders

“For future-ready leaders, there is a critical need for organizations to convert their existing managers into leaders who can leverage their team’s potential and ensure a proactive workforce. Companies need to redefine their business models, customer relationship models and workforce models to translate future business expectations into results.”

Wally’s Comment: This post is here because of the term “future-ready.” The best talent development programs prepare people to be able to succeed in whatever future shows up, not in a single, painstakingly-specific future predicted by the planning department or a high-priced consulting firm.

From Ron Thomas: Managing Talent: Why You Should Treat it Like a Marketing Portfolio

“While reading a recent issue of Advertising Age, I came across an interesting article about branding — not from a qualitative state but from an analytical and quantitative approach. The article was based on work done by Stengel (along with Millward Brown) identifying the 50 fastest growing brands in terms of value and consumer preference.”

Wally’s Comment: Portfolios have been a staple of strategic planning for a few decades now. Ron Thomas suggests they’re an effective tool for talent management, too.

From TLNT: Maximizing the ROI on Employee Training with Mobile Learning

“No executive in their right mind would argue with the fact that employee training is a basic business necessity. When organizations experience growth, change or competitive pressure, gaps emerge between what employees know and what they need to know in order for the company to remain relevant in the marketplace.”

Wally’s Comment: “Mobile learning” is one of those buzz phrases with substance. Mobile learning is also a way to summon information when you need it.

Title: Values and Visions

Competency: visionary leadership

Who benefits: primarily employees in leadership positions, secondarily anyone with an interest in the future of work

Consultant Usage: should be on every organizational consultant’s reading list … this is where your clients are going

What’s it about? January is an optimistic month.  Everything is new and fresh.  We still believe this year will be better than last year.  (Well, despite efforts to the contrary, most of us aren’t ready to acknowledge that it is one of those awful and gloomy election years. Why can’t we do elections in September through early November and not ruin a perfectly good summer?)

Back to a new and fresh January.  Might be a good time to look at some new and fresh ideas from the upcoming generation.  How about a newly published book on what is on the minds of young leaders today?  The book cover summarizes it this way: “Globalization. Sustainability. Technology. Diversity. Learning. Convergence of the public and private sectors.  These are the big issues on the minds of young leaders today—the challenges they most want to, and must, pursue.”

I am old.  There are several generations chasing me.  No generation yet has solved the biggest problems facing countries and industries.  I keep hoping there will be a generation that “gets it”.  I want to know what the youngest working generation is thinking.  I tried to catch a young executive recently, but I was too slow and he slipped away.  I guess he figured my generation had its chance he wasn’t going to be slowed down by an old codger.  (Oh yeah, just wait till Clint Eastwood gets a hold of him!)

Fortunately I don’t have to continue to run in futility.  Three distinguished recent Harvard MBA grads, along with some very well-known and impressive advisors have written Passion and Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders.  They write from their own passions and insights gained from a survey of 500 students from top U.S. business schools. 

Those young’uns sure are an optimistic bunch.  They seem to think they have what it takes to make the world a better place.  I get the feeling they don’t waste too much time watching the nightly news or listening to the talking heads.  The media does an excellent job of telling us what is wrong.  These young folks seem a lot more interested in showing us what is right. 

Well bless their pointy little heads and I hope they are right.  It’s January, the optimistic month.  Give a read to what these 20-something optimists have to say.  Wouldn’t hurt if our older generations would get behind them.  Just maybe they can fix what we didn’t.

Catch you later.

This free exercise, and dozens of others, were created for our book, Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It. You can learn more about Clueless by visiting our site or you can buy it from amazon.com today.

Purpose of Exercise: With this form, clients can identify areas of procrastination and commit to taking action.

How to Administer and Use this Exercise to Facilitate Behavior Change: Often times, individuals procrastinate what they have always wanted to do in their work and life. This can demotivate clients, as they may not feel like they are accomplishing what they are set out to do. This exercise embraces the idea that life is short, and as time goes by, people are less likely to do the things that they value. It can help them think about and identify the different aspects of their work and life they have always wanted to achieve. Once they identify those areas, they can commit to taking action, NOW!

To download “Do It Now”, please click here. To view the table of contents, preview a free chapter, and order Clueless please go to: http://www.envisialearning.com/clueless_book.

The list itself is fascinating. Six of the ten companies are more than a century old. The youngest is almost forty. That’s impressive, since the “average lifespan of a multinational-Fortune 500 company or equivalent” is forty to fifty years. You could conclude that attention to leadership development and succession planning might have something to do with that longevity.

Three of the CEO’s have been with their company for their entire career. One other, Jeff Immelt, spent a brief time at Proctor and Gamble (#1) before moving to General Electric (#3). In an era with lots of job-hopping, that’s pretty impressive and may say something about the quality of the longer-lived leadership development programs.

When you look at these “top ten” companies in depth there are three red threads that run through the profiles. These top companies give leadership development time and attention and they address leadership issues vertically and horizontally.

Give It Time and Attention

This is nothing new. We’ve said it about top companies for leadership development for years. They make it a priority. Top management gives it time. 3M CEO George Buckley, for example, “spends over a fifth of his time on talent issues and teaches strategy and leadership to executives who meet twice a year.”

Vertical Development Thinking

For many companies, succession planning is something you only pay attention to for your top executives. These companies have a more “hire to retire” approach. At IBM, for example, the company creates “Success Profiles” for all leadership roles and considers both “pipeline identification and development.”

Horizontal Development Thinking

These top ten companies seem to recognize that some leadership roles require deep technical expertise and special leadership practice. At Caterpillar, the Leadership and Technical Development Program (LTDP) includes:

• Product Development
• Manufacturing Engineering
• Metallurgical Engineering
• Welding Engineering
• Supply Chain Management
• Environment, Industrial Health and Safety

I take two thoughts away from this. First, the basics of paying attention, involving key executives, and intertwining development and succession planning are still the way top leadership development companies operate. Second, the major trend is to think more broadly and deeply about talent development than ever before.

“Nearly 80% of people believe they are among the top 50% most emotionally intelligent people”

Peter Salovey

There are at least three distinct approaches to measuring EI and emotional and social competence representing different models.

The first, delineated by Reuven Bar-On, was influenced by his interest in the aspects of performance not linked to intelligence; the second, often tied to Daniel Goleman’s interpretation, approached EI through competencies; and the third, represented by Mayer and Salovey and colleagues, was influenced by their interest in the relationship between cognition and emotion.

These three approaches have led to diverse and non-overlapping measures of EI characterized as: 1) Personality oriented (e.g, Bar-On Emotion Quotient Inventory); 2) Competency or “Mixed” model oriented (e.g., Emotional Intelligence View 360); and 3) Ability or skill oriented (e.g., Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test; MSCEIT).

Issues with Ability Based Measures of Emotional Intelligence

• Independece from personality measures (e.g., five factor models)
• Weak convergent validity with other cognitive ability measures (i.e., they don’t highly correlate with IQ)
• Scoring issues (i.e., lack of agreement and some controversy on how these assessments are scored)
• Confounded with a measure of knowledge (i.e., they seem to be measuring what someone “knows” as well as emotional intelligence)

Problems wiht Self-Report (Mixed) Measures of Emotional Intelligence

• High correlations with five factor personality measures (i.e., the overlap is so high it suggests that some measures of EI are really nothing more than another personality inventory)
• Limitations of 360-feedback (e.g., inflated self-ratings, moderate correlations between and within rater groups)
• Limitations of self-report (how do you measure EI in people who lack emotional intelligence?)
• Tend to ignore context, situation and setting (EI is not a useful predictor of performance in jobs that don’t have high emotional labor or are socially demanding)

Our own “mixed measure” of ESC called Emotional Intelligence View 360 based on the Goleman construct has some strengths and limitations as all measures. Our EIV360 appears to be statistically unique from ability based measures (very low correlations with the MSCEIT), correlated with the most popular measures of transformational leadership and predictive of both academic and work performance.

In a review by Joseph and Newman (2010), they found a negative association between measures of EI and work performance when jobs do not require strong social skills. Although the sample sizes for this analysis were rather low (N = 220 and N =223, respectively) it does suggest that EI is important for positions like sales, customer service and leadership and less important in predicting performance and success when high levels of interpersonal interaction are required¹.

A newer 2010 meta-analysis by O’Boyle et al. included 65% more studies and twice the sample size to estimate EI and job performance outcomes².

Their findings extent those of Newman (2010) and suggest that trait, personality and mixed measures demonstrated corrected correlations ranging from 0.24 to 0.30 with job performance. Their research also shows that all measures show incremental validity over cognitive ability and personality measures.

Measurement of emotional intelligence (ability based) is most likely different from other approaches (personality and mixed) but all techniques tend to significantly predict job performance, health and social competence particularly in roles and positions requiring high interpersonal interaction. So, depending on your purpose (e.g., selection versus development of talent) some approaches to measuring EI might be better than others.

The one big lesson from the confusion in the measurement of emotional intelligence is that “it’s not HOW smart you are that counts, but how you are smart…Be well….

1. Joseph, D. & Newman, D. (2010). Emotional intelligence: An integrative meta-analysis and cascading model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95, 54-78
2. O’Boyle, E., Humphrey, R., Pollack, Hawver, T. & Story, P. (2010). The relationship between emotional intelligence and job performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 10.1002/job.714