Assessment is a sensitive field. Behavioural assessing, such as DISC Personal profiling is expensive, time-consuming and not easy to manage because it deals with personality variables. Perhaps, most telling is that it is becoming part of the emerging application of predictive analytics for business.
Testing employees' competencies and their abilities to carry out operational assignments, like recalling information and using it to successfully complete tasks, is fundamental for organisational and business success.
Behavioural assessments typically focus on competencies related to managing priorities, managing others, managing for results and managing change. These are important aspects of life at work, but more difficult to measure.
Cognitive skills are less affected by changes in the work environment than are behavioural traits. It is easier to teach people how to operate or repair something than it is to help them understand the complexity and consequences of interpersonal behaviour.
Behavioural assessments aim to uncover interpersonal abilities, the subjective realm. What is sometimes underplayed in business is that behaviour is driven by value systems: assumptions and beliefs, values, vision/mission and guiding principles, which I have discussed in previous business tips.
As people become more self-aware, they are usually amazed at the abilities of the conscious mind to choose, handle situations with deliberation, and behave appropriately for different occasions. On the flip side, the unconscious mind is a powerful force driving our behaviour. Within our unconscious lie veiled assumptions and beliefs that formulate what is called default behaviour. The dictionary defines default as the “failure to perform a task or fulfill an obligation,” which means that default behaviours are reactive responses that occur when we fail to consider the appropriate response.
Becoming aware of our personal reactive tendencies is crucial if we want to make sense of our toxic behaviours, understand why we have permitted these gremlins to continue, and develop a plan for taming them.
Our attitudes are choices, some of the most important choices we will ever make.
Attitudes are reflections of what goes on inside our heads. They affect everything we do - positively or negatively. A negative attitude acts like the accelerator of a car. When we put our pedal to the metal, we learn very quickly that driving can indeed be dangerous to our health and to our career aspirations. Default behaviours occur when we decide not to act, but to react. And default behaviours may not represent our best side or our ideal self.
Talking in the language of behaviours and outcomes, which managers understand, is the key to addressing the relevance of the data or people intelligence found in an assessment. It is how the results of self-assessments should be reported and incorporated in an organisation's analytics around its people capabilities.
For further information about DISC Personal Profiling and Team Management Systems, Team Profiles, visit, www.pinnaclebusiness.com.au
Sources: Human Resource Executive, November 2012
