Editor’s note: This is the first of an occasional series of articles that will examine the fundamental truths about management theory and practice that have persisted over time. Future installments will deal with talent management, motivating employees to peak performance and creating a positive culture. The authors, Bruce Griffiths and Bob Power, are experienced management consultants who have done leadership training and assessment for a wide variety of agencies and organizations, including Nike, Disney, Hallmark, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Energy.
Our culture is fascinated with novelty—we eagerly await the next version of our smart phone, the coolest new tennis shoes or the latest flavor of coffee. This same obsession with anything new also produces constant pressure on organizational theorists and writers to present new ways of thinking about fundamental managerial challenges such as leadership development, motivation and employee engagement. (And it provides an irresistible invitation to every new generation of managers to succumb to the latest fad.) The past few decades have seen any number of these seemingly fresh ideas come and go, including “one minute managers,” the total quality movement (TQM), emotional intelligence (EQ), management by objectives (MBOs) and business process reengineering (BPR). They all surfaced as the solution, many of which faded over time as even newer approaches eclipsed them.
Still, there are steadfast theories and ideas, proven over time, that you can count on to provide insight and guidance, bucking the notion that new is better. After a lifetime in leadership development, working with hundreds of public and private-sector organizations, we have identified a few basic principles that have emerged from organizational science to consistently inform our decisions, techniques and knowledge.
Hiring the best
We’ll start the discussion with the challenge of finding excellent employees. While scores of hiring tests and dozens of interviewing tips have been invented to guide managers as they screen job candidates, a persistent truth is this: The best predictor of future job performance is recent job performance in a similar context. We’ve all heard of this fundamental principle, yet it can get neglected in the excitement of a new selection test or interview technique.
While internal applicants can (but not always do) leave a clear performance trail, the most effective practice in interviewing external candidates involves having each applicant prove competence through “behavioral examples of historical performance.” That is, you should ask questions that force the candidate to identify past actions that tell you about performance in the form of a story, such as, “Can you tell me about a time you’ve been effective (or ineffective) in the workplace?” Fairly general questions like this can be revealing about the candidate’s choices, and when combined with more specific questions related to the job at hand, they are much more likely to be effective.
For external hires it’s also important to carry out reference checks and to pay close attention to the quality and tone of the endorsement. References represent the performance history of an applicant, and careful questioning can disclose whether the candidate has been on the right trajectory for your role.
Defining ideal job performance
Another truth: To ensure that an organization has the best talent, there is an absolute need to provide robust behavioral definitions of ideal job performance. This is the so-called “criteria problem” in defining a model of job performance that can be used to compare and contrast candidates for job readiness. While there have been many attempts to identify this ideal state through complicated definitions of knowledge, skill, ability, personality, beliefs, values and attitude, the one most reliable description remains behavioral—that is, not what people say they believe, but a description of how they act.
This truth was discovered in the 1940s and ’50s in the classic managerial assessment centers that successfully identified front-line leaders. If you want your talent evaluators to be reliable judges of future performance, you need to define that ideal performance in behavioral terms. Experts clustered performance indicators into behavioral criteria and called them “dimensions” or “variables.” These criteria included descriptions like “forcefulness,” “organizing and planning,” “problem solving and decision making,” “sensitivity/relationship building” and “drive/energy” and were strictly defined in behavioral terms. These dimensions were then effectively used to evaluate candidate readiness using realistic job simulations like leaderless group discussions and in-basket exercises. The current incarnation of these “dimensions” is found in the term “competency” which, in its best form, still employs a behavioral definition as a primary characterization of the ideal state. (By the way, the classic dimensions listed above have also stood the test of time as still defining exceptional performance in front-line managers.)
Being “people smart”
Much has been written recently about the need to be “people smart,” or emotionally intelligent, to be effective in leadership roles. But once again, any good set of behavioral dimensions (a.k.a., competencies) has always contained a subset of criteria that recognize this need. Indeed, any first-rate competency model based on exemplar leader performance typically contains all of the essential criteria of sensitivity/compassion, self-objectivity, confidence, relationship building, conflict management and integrity that define an emotionally intelligent leader. They’ve been there all along—the EQ label is just another way to present it.
A return to hands-on learning
Finally, a universal truth in the talent-training realm is revealed in the current infatuation with computer-based or video training in leadership-development circles. After an over-reliance on computer simulations and exercises for learning, the notion that a skill must be learned in the context in which it is performed has resurfaced as essential. Simply put, it’s perfectly fine to teach a knowledge-based competency such as financial analysis using a computer- or video-based teaching approach. But developing more nuanced leadership abilities, such as influencing people, requires performance-based learning and practice. Learning leadership is like learning golf: There’s only so much to be gained from videos, books and computers. Ultimately, you need to practice the skills, either as an apprentice or in a behavioral simulation.
In summary, the timeless truths surrounding talent all involve the importance of a behavioral approach to testing for, and training for, a needed competence. If someone historically has performed a needed skill at the proficiency, and in the context, required, he or she is more likely to perform at that same level in your organization. And if you need to train a performance-based skill, you’re much more likely to see behavior change if you teach the skill using a behavioral approach.
Our next column will address the most durable theories in what is currently called employee engagement. There has been much made of the need to cater to the different motivational needs of different generations, but we’ll propose that the best companies have created motivating environments that provide engaged employees from any generation.
