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With so many people WFH right now, there’s been a huge increase in the volume of content around this topic.
But I’m not here to talk about how to optimise Zoom interview calls, or how you can optimise your schedule if WFH with kids running about.
Instead, I want to look at how Personality Profiling Assessments (PPA’s) can be a Management Teams best friend right now.
I want to show you how they can help Management Teams to not only understand their employee’s behaviours better but how they can enhance performance and satisfaction for everyone.
Hey, I’m Leigh Murray…?
I’m one of the Client Project Leads here at Solutions Driven.
And Personality Profiling and Emotional Intelligence measures are powerful tools when effectively applied.
These insights can deliver the following benefits:
- Managers to understand, support and enhance the motivation of their remote team members and hence performance…
- Informative management strategies to build individual resilience and increase group cohesion in a virtual environment…
- Adoption of tailored techniques to increase team performance and satisfaction…
- Employees can understand their own as well as peers’ behaviours and communication styles increasing relatedness and support networks
Let’s dive in a little more.
It’s fair to say the world today is no longer as we know it. What’s unfolding now has changed the way we work.
Due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 many businesses have found themselves plunged into a world of remote working, almost overnight. Most unprepared for the impact this will have on us as individuals, never mind the way businesses operate.
We’re very much in uncharted waters!
At an economic level, business leaders are faced with huge uncertainties about the future. Some have experienced temporary closures, whilst others have dramatically changed their operations. Most are adopting new agile ways of working or significantly ramping up on their workforce needs, as they provide essential services.
Let’s be clear – this rapid change has brought about a vital need for leaders across all sectors to redesign how they operate; how their teams work; how they communicate, and how they maintain performance in these difficult times.
And this must happen fast – business survival depends upon it.
On a personal level, people are dealing with emotions on a scale most have never experienced in our lives. Emotions which will undoubtedly impact the way we communicate and relate to others. Research studies demonstrate when we are under pressure our behaviours can be pushed to extremes.
For example, someone with a high dominance tendency will typically become more assertive, forceful, and direct which can distress or alienate others. Additionally, with social distancing measures and the isolation of remote working the resilience of our mental health has never been more important.
The good news? ?
With behavioural insights introduced into your workforce, managers will be able to adopt effective strategies to support their teams, counteracting some of the risks associated with operating in pressurised environments. The insights can also be helpful in empowering team members. Enabling them to employ coping strategies, helping them to maintain focus and effectively manage their own emotional well-being.
The aim of this article is to illustrate the benefits of personality profiling.
To do this we fall back on data and the wealth of knowledge which resides in the field of Occupational Psychology. You don’t just need to take our word for it, there’s a wealth of research out there. Solutions Driven will just help you navigate and apply it quickly to deliver faster results.
4 Ways Your Company Can Take Advantage of Personality Profiling Right Now:
#1 – REMOTE WORKING
Under normal circumstances there’s many benefits to remote working.
For example, overhead costs can be reduced, companies can select the best talent from a global playing field, and employee stress levels can be reduced with greater flexibility. However, within the current context we face several challenges with remote working.
It’s suggested at least 19% of remote workers will experience the negative effects of loneliness and depression. Whilst over 22% are at risk of experiencing stress and burn-out as they struggle to switch off. ?
Therefore, it’s important employers put frameworks in place to reduce these risks and maintain their employee’s emotional well-being.
There are a range of collaborative tools to support remote team working and engagement. We’ve seen many examples of this on social media such as LinkedIn. The range of tools available will not be discussed here but there are many. What platform you choose to bring your teams together is less important. What’s important is you enable connectedness and collaboration across your remote teams.
To move effectively to remote working and maintain performance levels, managers also need to understand how their team members will react under extreme pressure. Some will rise to the challenges they are confronted with, whilst others will struggle.
Where Solutions Driven can help is with the profiling of your teams.
Through the insights we share with you, you’ll be in a much stronger position to provide the tailored support your people will need and help you put strategies in place to mitigate some of the behavioural risks.
“Personality Profile Assessments can determine whether individuals respond favourably to challenges or
whether their response patterns become passive”
#2 – BEHAVIOURAL PROFILING
There are numerous psychometric tools available on the market which can quickly assess behavioural and communication preferences although some are more reliable than others!
For the data insights to be useful it’s important questionnaires are high in validity. Measures need to be reliable, consistent, and have the ability to be applied globally. And last but no means least, they also need to be effectively administered and results accurately interpreted.
For these reasons we favour Marston’s DISC framework.
? Dominance
? Influence
? Steadiness
? Compliance
Using this framework, Solutions Driven’s trained consultants can analyse typical behavioural trends, providing insights and management advice.
For example, we know in the context of high stress environments, some people will “naturally” view change as an opportunity to overcome the perceived challenges. Whilst others will view the same challenges as hostile and be fearful of change. These individuals may default to avoidance – becoming anxious and withdrawn.
These states are referred to as active or passive threat responses.
At this point, it’s worth noting peoples’ behaviours are more complex than this, but psychometric tools provide high level insights and explorative framework to qualify our understanding of individuals, thus enabling us to make evidenced based recommendations around management strategies.
#3 – PRACTICAL BENEFITS
The tools we use at Solutions Driven take account of behavioural complexities and measure responses in 3 key areas:
⚙️ People’s perception of their behavioural style;
⚙️ How that adapts to environmental context or demands;
⚙️ How their behaviour changes as pressure increases.
How people react to extreme conditions will impact upon how individuals relate and communicate with others as well as how effectively they perform day to day. In this remote working environment we find ourselves in, operating with effective communication, relatedness, focus, and drive has never been so important.
- High D profiles will favour being involved in multiple activities and focus on the strategic level or big picture. With remote working they may feel disempowered and with the current crisis be unable to deliver the results they desire. Communication will become direct and blunt.
- High I profiles who normally have high energy, share ideas, and favour story telling may experience reduced productivity as they are unable to bounce off others in the workplace. They may also become bored or lonely without regular contact with others.
- High C profiles like to focus on facts and detail but in these uncertain times may experience frustration due to the rapid changes and lack of clarity. Their productivity may also drop due a lack of processes and guidelines to follow.
- High S are good listeners, people focused, and concerned about the needs of others. They too will feel isolated with remote working, and adapting to the dramatic changes could make them more anxious without their support networks.
At Solutions Driven we can quickly help you to mitigate behavioural risks by identifying the most effective coping strategies based upon your team members’ behavioural types. We can also predict, to some degree, how your employees will react as we move further into remote working.
For businesses to survive COVID-19 we must enable and empower our teams by demonstrating trust and building team resilience. Solutions Driven can help your business achieve this goal.
#4 – EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Emotional Intelligence is no longer a luxury for companies. It’s now a vital aspect of supporting and maintaining your employees’ well-being. ?
By understanding our emotions and how they can drive behaviours, team members can be armed with coping strategies to build their resilience and extend compassion to others. Furthermore, when managers or leaders understand the emotional profiles of their teams, they’re in a much stronger position to maintain and drive productivity through effective motivational techniques.
Emotional Intelligence patterns may also affect how work is distributed across team members or how individuals are managed, to maximise everyone playing to their strengths.
Ultimately, you want to ensure your teams feel supported during this difficult time and given focus through task based activities. At a time like this, small wins really count!
As mentioned previously, human behaviour is a complex area but we know there are two key areas which influence peoples’ resilience:
✅ Their adaptability or capacity to deal with change
✅ Levels of motivated or how driven a person is
We have access to a range of tools which will measure trait levels of optimism, self-esteem, empathy, relatedness, motivation, and adaptability. These insights will enable you to understand how your teams will respond to home working over the long term.
? Insights which will enable you to successfully adopt an operationally
productive, remote working model.
SO, IN SUMMARY…
Globally we’re hearing similar stories of how companies are “saying we need to change fast…our business needs to adapt and transform…”.
But there are so many urgent priorities.
Knowing what critical needs to address first can be overwhelming. Now more than ever the decisions businesses make will determine their future survival.
So, what is critical to your business?
What will make the biggest impact if managed effectively?
The answer. Your people. ?
It will be your teams who unite and rise to the challenge placed upon them. So how do you make sure you implement the right strategies quickly to enable and empower them?
The answer is simple, you collaborate with the right partners and you share the burden.
This is why Personality Profiling and Emotional Intelligence measures are powerful tools when effectively applied.
These insights can deliver the following benefits:
- Managers to understand, support and enhance the motivation of their remote team members and hence performance
- Informative management strategies to build individual resilience and increase group cohesion in a virtual environment
- Adoption of tailored techniques to increase team performance and satisfaction
- Employees can understand their own as well as peers’ behaviours and communication styles increasing relatedness and support networks
