LEADERS – What can you do to be more effective?

Invest time in discovering which of your personality traits can help you to succeed and those that could hinder you.

We offer a completely confidential assessment.

How it works:

1. We send you an invitation to complete a short questionnaire (typically 8 to 10 minutes)

2. We arrange a one to one initial feedback session with you via video conferencing (Skype/Zoom/FaceTime) or face to face (if preferred)

3. Following the session you will receive a detailed report that suggests how you can develop your leadership style Invest in the effectiveness of you and your team now.

To find out more see our article here

LEADERSHIP CAPACITY – SELF-DEVELOPMENT – TOP TIPS

Understanding your own capacity to lead as well as this in that of others can significantly add value to your organisation and its stakeholders.

What is a leader?

“A person who influences others because they willingly do what he or she requests”

(Armandi et al 2003)

I like the simple idea that if you are not followed then you cannot be a leader.

Having trained, taught and coached people both in leadership roles or those aspiring to be leaders for many years, I have a strong interest in what it is that makes a person an effective leader.

There are numerous ways in which individuals can find out about their capacity to lead others. For some, this is being given responsibility for people and finding out the hard way. Increasingly though, organisations are far more aware of the risks of doing this and they will provide development programmes, coaching and training to grow their own leaders and if recruiting from outside will look at an individual’s track record as an indicator of likely success.

What is potential?

“A person with potential is one who can grow to maximise or optimise their talent”

In the context of leadership we are looking at the factors that, when combined, give an individual a high probability of success.

If we know what these factors are, we can begin to make key decisions about our own and others’ future roles and development.

Research has shown that personality traits predict approximately 20% of potential at work. Personality can be described as ‘the way we think’. Our personalities are largely shaped by our early twenties and become less variable as we get older.

There is no simple or single measure of potential. As with all things, some are better suited to certain situations than others.

Key questions around leadership

Anyone with more than a passing interest in leaders will have the heard the question:

“Are leaders born or made?”

Answers on a postcard please!

There is no doubt that training or development can increase leadership potential which is good news. However, clearly there are some people that will be more naturally inclined to thrive in senior leadership positions than others.

What else can help?

I have long been a fan of psychometric assessments in a leadership context as an aid to self-awareness and to give insight for personal development. For you or your existing leadership team they can help with developing positive relationships through being more aware of each others strengths and weaknesses and being able to play to them.

Critically, psychometric assessments can also provide real insight to aid decision making around people development, building leadership teams, succession planning, recruitment and internal promotion.

High Potential Trait Indicator (HPTI)

I use the HPTI from Thomas International as one of the key assessment tools for leadership development.

The HPTI assessment looks at six personality traits. It assumes that certain personality trait levels can indicate a high potential to succeed and be considered ‘optimal’ based on the requirements of a senior executive leadership. Too much or too little of a trait can indicate characteristics that could ‘de-rail’ an otherwise successful person.

The six personality traits measured by the HPTI are as follows:

  1. Conscientiousness – combines self-discipline, an organised approach to work and ability to control impulses which others might give in to
  2. Adjustment – indicates how individuals react emotionally to stress, external events, pressures and relationships
  3. Curiosity (novelty) – how individuals approach novelty, innovation, change, new information and methods
  4. Risk Approach – how someone deals with challenging, difficult or threatening situations
  5. Ambiguity Acceptance (complexity) – an individual’s reaction to complexity and contradictory information
  6. Competitiveness – the relative desire to win, need for power and reaction to winning and losing

Why is HPTI so useful?

  • It provides a subjective assessment on an individual’s leadership capacity based on their personality traits. This adds valuable insight to career development decision making.
  • It highlights strengths and weaknesses in the context of where the person is currently in their career and in terms of where they see their future direction.
  • It can provide an excellent basis for discussion around issues from an organisational leadership perspective.
  • It aids understanding of how and why some internal conflicts arise and what could be done by modifying behaviour to reduce the impact of these

To find out more on the HPTI assessment go to https://www.thomas.co/assessments/workplace-personality-tests

Our top five tips are:

  1. Do the HPTI assessment yourself or use it to aid recruitment and selection in your organisation

It is unique. There is nothing else like it.

As an existing leader, you can discover what your potential trait indicators are and where they help you to succeed and those that may hinder your effectiveness. Use it to aid decision making for recruitment and selection of successors or to identify potential leaders in the organisation.

If you are keen to take on a leadership role, it may be something that you could ask your organisation to arrange as part of a training or development programme. If this is not possible, consider doing an assessment on your own behalf. It would invaluable for your personal and career development.

When you do the assessment, avoid the temptation to try to answer in a way that you think you should rather than your instinctive response.

  1. Get feedback

Get feedback from an experienced practitioner. This will give you far more insight than a report on its own can. It also avoids you having to try to interpret the findings on your own.

  1. Take the opportunity to discuss the issues that you or the organisation are facing as part of your feedback session

The opportunity to explore organisational culture, leadership and strategic issues as part of this feedback is worth taking. You are able to talk openly in a confidential setting. Sharing issues may generate potential solutions to issues that you have already identified.

  1. Remember there are no good or bad scores!

When looking at your results, think about how your personality traits do and don’t work for you in your current situation and where you might want to modify your behaviour in certain situations to be more effective or to realise your leadership potential in the future.

In a recruitment or selection situation, consider how a candidate’s traits could interact with others in your organisation. Where could there be synergies and how could they improve existing team performance, for example?

  1. Act!

As an existing leader, decide which elements of your HPTI results are priorities for you to focus on. Your feedback and the report will provide suggestions on how to develop your leadership style. Don’t try to do it all at once. Act on the key ones first.

In a recruitment and selection situation, the suggestions in the report can be used in discussion with the prospective candidate.

We can provide the HPTI assessment questionnaire and deliver feedback for you. To find out more contact us today.

Note: We offer Thomas International assessments including PPA, TEIQue and HPTI. For more information click here

With thanks to Thomas International for some of the trait descriptors

 

SELF DEVELOPMENT – TOP TIPS

Emotional intelligence (EI) is very topical at the moment. It is often discussed as part of effective leadership but is equally important for interactions with all people at work. Understanding emotions can be very advantageous in helping you to realise your potential.

What is emotional intelligence?

A practical definition is:

“Emotional Intelligence is a collection of traits that can help people gauge social and emotional situations and interactions with others”

The elements of EI include:

  • Self-awareness
  • The ability to perceive your own and others’ emotions
  • Self-motivation
  • Being able to control your impulses
  • Empathy
  • Ability to manage stress effectively
  • Optimism
  • Modifying your behaviour to suit a situation

There are different ways of measuring EI and these fall into two broad categories – trait and ability.

  • Trait – measures place people on a continuum for each of a series of self-perceived traits. This allows for shades of ‘grey’. There are no right or wrong answers.
  • Ability – this considers EI as a cognitive ability that can be measured using performance tests with right or wrong answers.

Why does EI matter?

Self-awareness is a good start point for any development. From my experience of giving feedback sessions on EI assessments over the last couple of years, one of the most powerful ‘light-bulb’ moments for many is discovering that our emotional traits can be visible to others and the potential impacts that this can have. Once you are aware of your own traits you are also more likely to see them in others.

Understanding this and how it affects behaviour can help you to achieve your goals. It is important in work areas as varied as leadership and management, team and project work, selling and customer relationship management but it also matters in our personal lives. It helps us to understand how we appear to our family and friends too and why they behave as they do.

How do I find out what my EI is?

There are various tools available for discovering this. We favour looking at emotional traits assessments rather than ability. We believe this enables a more contextual based set of feedback. In other words, how your ‘scores’ relate both to your current situation and to where you want to be in the future.

We use the Thomas International TEIQue (Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire) psychometric assessment. For more on the TEIQue go to https://www.thomas.co/recruitment/assessments/emotional-intelligence-tests

Our top five tips are:

  1. If you get the opportunity to find out about your EI – take it!

An assessment may be available to you within your organisation or as part of a training or development programme. If not, think seriously about doing an assessment on your own behalf. It is invaluable for your personal and career development.

When you do the assessment, be truthful in your responses. The first response that occurs to you is usually the right one so don’t overthink it! The TEIQue assessment can identify if there is an indication of ‘impression management’ so avoid the temptation to try to answer in a way that you think you should rather than what you actually feel.  It is not a test!

  1. Be open to the results

We would always strongly advocate getting feedback from an experienced practitioner. This will give you far more insight than a report on its own can. It also avoids you having to try to interpret the findings on your own.

  1. There are no right or wrong answers!

We say this a lot during feedback. If you have followed the suggestions in Tip 1, the results will reflect your EI – they will be about you. Think about how your EI does and does not work for you in your current situation and where you might want to modify your behaviour in certain situations to be more effective or to realise your potential in the future.

Avoid looking at scores definitively. A score of 99/100 is not necessarily good and 20/100 isn’t bad! What works in your situation may not be right for others in theirs.

  1. Act!

Decide which elements of your EI results are priorities for you to focus on. Your feedback report should provide suggestions of helpful tips to consider. Don’t try to do it all at once. Act on the key ones first.

  1. Find a ‘sounding board’

Find someone in your organisation, that you can trust, who can give you feedback on how you act and appear in certain situations. Use this to assess where you can improve your interactions with others and how you are doing against the areas that you have identified to focus on.

Steve Bax is an accredited TEIQue Practitioner.  Click here to read more and hear his interview with Cambridge Marketing College. For more help and advice on psychometric assessments including TEIQue please contact us today.

Bax Interaction adds to its Thomas assessments portfolio

Bax Interaction adds to its Thomas assessments portfolio

Steve Bax, our MD, has been accredited as an Internationally Certified user of Thomas International’s Personal Profile Analysis (PPA) and its related instruments.

Steve commented: “The PPA is an invaluable tool  for a wide range of assessment needs in any organisation.   It provides an accurate insight into how people behave at work”.

The PPA assessment can be used for:

  • Recruiting the right person using job profiling
  • Improving communication
  • People development
  • Teambuilding

For more detail on the assessments that Bax Interaction can offer click here

 

Thomas International Psychometric Assessments

Our MD, Steve Bax, has completed training with Thomas International and is an accredited practitioner for HPTI (High Potential Trait Indicator) and a certified user of TEIQue (Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire).

TEIQue is an emotional intelligence assessment designed to help individuals to understand and manage: their emotions; how well they interpret and deal with the emotions of others and how they use this knowledge to manage relationships.

HPTI helps identify leadership potential by exploring an individual’s personality traits and provides an insight into how suited they may be for a given job role or position such as senior executive leadership.

Steve talks to Kiran Kapur on Cambridge Marketing Radio about the TEIQue assessment.

Radio interview with Cambridge Marketing College on Thomas HPTI (High Potential Trait Indicator) Assessments


The second part of my radio interview with Kiran Kapur, CEO of Cambridge Marketing College. This time I am talking about the Thomas International HPTI (High Performance Trait Indicator) assessment, which identifies leadership potential by exploring personality traits. The second part of the programme looks at marketing communication with the millennial generation.