Articles
Personality Testing: After the Hire
"My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too." – Jack Welch "If you don’t invest the time to do it correctly today, you will spend more time and money in repairing mistakes tomorrow." -- Don Paullin My last two articles have explored the value of personality testing primarily as a pre-hiring tool for businesses. Now let’s take a look at how it can be used once a candidate has been hired. Onboarding To recap from my last article, [...]
9 Steps for Family (and other) Business Succession
The Family Business Center at the University of New Hampshire has put together “Nine Helpful Steps Toward Succession in a Family Owned Business:” You will notice that all of the steps' major components are “human capital” issues. These steps are valid for family owned business but most are also valid for any closely held business. 1. All family members, whether active in the business or not, need to be put on notice by the family head, that the process is about to begin. 2. Family members active in the business can become a committee to examine the issues. Key executives [...]
Personality Testing: Don’t Hire Without It
“Having the most talented people in each of our businesses is the most important thing. If we don’t, we lose.” –Jack Welch while CEO of GE "If you don’t invest the time to do it correctly today, you will spend more time and money in repairing mistakes tomorrow." – Don Paullin Would you describe your employees as Google-y, Apple-ish or Microsoft-esque? In other words, what do you know about the personalities that drive performance in your workplace? Studies on personality assessments as predictors of job performance consistently demonstrate their merit, confirming a significant improvement in job match when a personality assessment [...]
Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople
As a consultant specializing in helping businesses align great people with strategic initiatives, it always intrigues me when smart business leaders ignore or disdain the use of personality assessments as part of their overall talent management strategies. Usually it is because of ignorance as to the value of such tools. When I run across research in support of these tools, I feel compared to share them. In his Harvard Business Review blog, Steve Martin identifies his research that led him to identify seven personality traits of effective salespeople. I highly recommend reading this brief blog. If it is not a [...]
Personality Testing, the Swiss Army Knife of Talent Utilization
“Having the most talented people in each of our businesses is the most important thing. If we don’t, we lose.” ─ Jack Welch while CEO of GE "I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.” — Larry Bossidy Many years ago when I was first beginning the transition from psychotherapist and president/owner of a very complex mental health, family counseling and substance abuse organization, I was piloting a particular personality profile tool that I thought might be of value to [...]
When Was The Last Time…..?
The New Year always gives us a sense of renewal and focus. It provides us with a time, albeit frenzied, to reflect on what happened last year and what we can do to improve upon our performance, our systems, and our “working on our businesses” as opposed to “working in them.” Many times, when we reflect, we think about what we should have done or could have done better. That type of reflection can often lead to asking ourselves a very important question, “when was the last time …(you fill in the phrase).” Asking the question is a direct response [...]