Getting to Aha! Utilizing Assessments to Achieve Breakthrough Results

By Chris Ihrig

With ever-increasing demands on resources, organizations are laboring to find innovative ways to identify and utilize high impact tools that assist in maximizing their human capital investments.  Some leaders are achieving just that by using an old standby, personality assessment, in fresh ways.  The assessments themselves may be familiar, but the application – how when and where they are used- has changed dramatically in recent years as a direct reaction to the changing demands.

Identifying the right assessment tools and deliberately using them throughout the employee life cycle builds an adhesive for talent management.  Working seamlessly with other essential people practices, our clients are utilizing assessments tools for…

Creating Connections: By creating a common language and connection points, assessments expedite relationship building between new hires and existing employees.   They provide a context to compare styles and characteristics while finding common denominators to fostering deeper understanding of individual strengths.

Providing Leadership Insights: Woven into Leadership Development programs, results are analyzed to distill success factors that help guide training and development initiatives as well as coaching needs. They also assist in making sure the right talent is on board to drive desired business results. New leaders, or those with increased responsibilities, can supplement their own judgment for talent on the ground by gaining important insights about their direct reports.

Igniting Change: Team collaboration activities become more distinctive and focused allowing for a multi-layered review of how the many personality types process information, communicate and adapt to change differently. Assessment tools can also set benchmarks from which to measure impact of change at the individual, team and cultural levels.

Resolving Conflicts: By depersonalizing conflicts between employees, assessments distill key characteristics of personality into broad motivational categories that can be easily understood and communicated.   Disputes become less about personal attacks and more about identifying ways to work around differences.

Assessment tools can be a catalytic resource for reaching the personal and team “Aha!” moments that are so critical. When used effectively these tools spotlight an individual’s “hard wiring, ” for dealing with various situations and other people while supporting teams in high-performance connectivity. The insights gained from the right assessments, combined with tangible people investment as part of organization life, are proving to be invaluable to successful talent and business momentum.

At Fired-Up! Culture we pride ourselves on a comprehensive toolbox of resources including outstanding assessments, including the Birkman and our Leadership Impact-360.  Contact us today to learn more.