Speaking of Business: Take different angles when assessing workplace

As we have been doing for the past few months, we are continuing our series of columns devoted to answering a previous question regarding why it is so difficult for business managers to agree on improvement priorities.

The initial part of our answer to this question, as well as the topic of our first column on this issue, was that you should first conduct appropriate diagnostic assessments to guide improvement efforts. In our most recent column, we presented an overview of the various business aspects that can fruitfully be assessed: Human, organizational and business. As we continue to answer this question in depth, the focus of this column will be to expand further on the human aspect of business.

At the core of the human aspect of a business are individual people, their working relationships with each other and their individual relationships to the nature of their jobs. Personal assessments are very useful for helping people function more effectively at work. Therefore, it is both a win for them and for the business. It is probable that most people reading this column have been exposed to some type of personal assessment at one time or another. Unfortunately, these assessments are often conducted in superficial ways and not applied in depth to meaningful workplace improvements.

Usually the assessment process is to fill out a survey, review a feedback report and sometimes participate in a short class. While this experience can be interesting and fun, the knowledge gained usually is not integrated into actual work life. Hence, the result is generally very little change. In our work, we apply a variety of assessments when exploring the human aspect of a business: the behavioral assessment, the value and beliefs assessment and the management assessment.

Behavioral assessment

One assessment we have used with great success with our clients is the Personal Dynametrics Profile. PDP has been validated through research and application to virtually all types of businesses and organizations.

It measures characteristics of:

” Dominance.

” Interactivity.

” Patience.

” Conformity.

” Satisfaction.

” Energy level.

Additionally, it provides a useful measure of how well-matched your current situation is to your natural self and how much stress the difference is causing. When used correctly as a management tool, behavioral assessments can:

” Improve interpersonal and managerial relationships.

” Facilitate creating meaningful development goals and activities and implementing motivating changes.

” Enhance hiring and selection decisions.

” Better match people to jobs.

” Raise job satisfaction.

” Provide objective insights for coaching individuals and managers.

Values and beliefs assessment

An individual’s values and beliefs determine his or her outlook on life and work. Values and beliefs are deeply held and usually fixed, so issues related to values and beliefs can’t be dealt with through negotiation, process changes or efforts to modify behavior. They must be dealt with through mutual understanding, respect and accommodation.

In our work we have seen incredible resolutions of interpersonal issues once the values and beliefs of individuals involved are known.

Naturally, values and beliefs play a critical role in how people manage and how people prefer to be managed. Our managerial clients have been able to make huge strides in their relationship with subordinates when they manage from understanding values and beliefs. For example, an individual’s values and beliefs are either group-oriented or individualistic. An individualistic manager may not recognize the importance of group activities to his or her group-oriented subordinates. Conversely, a group-oriented manager may label an individualistic subordinate as a “loose cannon.”

We’ve also seen great improvements in sales performance or in a business’s attractiveness when the various values and belief systems of customers are understood and used to design the sales approach or business environment.

Management assessment

Another type of assessment is the 360-degree management behavior and activity assessment. It is a compilation of management behaviors and activities that are universally acknowledged as representing good management practices. The assessment is called a 360-degree assessment because the manager gets feedback from his or her subordinates, superior, peers and from themselves.

With this assessment, each management behavior or activity is presented as a positive statement. The person taking the survey rates the degree to which they agree or disagree with each statement. The results are usually an eye-opener for managers. Situations that are unknown or not talked about are brought to light, and the manager can then be coached through a process for positively dealing with them and to create an improvement action plan. The manager’s action plan is revisited through ongoing coaching sessions.

When businesses utilize this assessment, we generally see tremendous shifts in management relations and organizational culture in just a few months. Oftentimes these shifts are in areas that have been problem areas for years.

Greeley resident Russell Disberger is a founding member of Aspen Business Group, a Northern Colorado-based specialty consulting and venture-capital firm assisting businesses in obtaining strategic growth. He can be reached at (970) 396-7009 or by e-mail at russell@aspenbusinessgroup.com.

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