People By Brad Wolff

It’s All About the People – 7 Steps to Turn Employee Potential into Peak Performance

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magine on Monday, you discover that your meticulous, rule-following accoun- tant and your creative, eccentric marketing person have switched positions. How’s this likely to work out? In truth, some variation of this misalignment is common in most organizations.

If you’re being honest, business today is about profits over people and quotas over customers. So what is missing in people that keeps them from striking a balance to make companies and sales more human? Have we lost our humanity? If so, how do we regain it? The Waybeloe Potential Corporation was operating at the breakeven point for the past five years. The CEO, Harvey Waybeloe was frustrated. Another CEO told him about an employee-alignment process that was delivering amazing results for other companies. Out of desperation he decided to try it. Within two years, profits increased from breakeven to $3.2 million! The fix? Putting the right people in the right seats! Most business leaders say that 80 per- cent of the work is done by only 20 percent of the workforce. This 20 percent are the top performers. They usually produce three to four times more than the others. The main reason is due to job alignment rather than attitude or drive. Here’s evidence: It’s common for top performers to be moved or promoted and then become poor per- formers. Likewise, many poor performers become top performers when moved to appropriate roles. Bottom line:

everyone can be a top or poor per- former depending on how well the work aligns with their innate characteristics. How do you deliberately create an organization where people’s work is aligned with their innate charac- teristics (abilities)?

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Here’s an overview of a proven process that was used above.

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Shift your mindset from focusing on skills, experience, and edu- cation to innate characteristics first. It’s common for people who are “great on paper” to get hired and become poor performers. In that same vein, many top performers started off lacking in the “required” skills experience and educa- tion. When people’s work aligns with their innate characteristics, they can utilize their natural abilities and unleash their passion for their work. Also, the best training and management will not turn poorly aligned employees into top performers.

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Select the right assessment tool. Many organizations use personality assessments in the hope of gaining more objective information about people to set them up for success. However, the results are usually disappointing due to four inherent pitfalls: a. What you think of as personality is mostly surface-level, observable behav- iors; not what’s underneath, driving these behaviors. The drivers of behavior are more accurate, predictive, and stable.

b. Assessment-takers usually provide different answers based on which of the following they consider: how they actu- ally see themselves, how they believe others see them, and how they want to see themselves. c. Assessment-takers use a specific con- text or situation to answer the questions. For example, answers to questions related to “extroversion” (sociability and talk- ativeness) may vary depending on context differences: small vs. large groups, familiar vs. unfamiliar people, level of interest in the topic of conversation, etc. d. If an assessment is used for a job application, the applicant often has an opinion on what traits the employer is looking for and skews the answers accordingly. What’s a better option? Select an assess- ment that delves beneath the personality into what is more core or innate with people. This eliminates the biases of per- sonality assessments and provides more valid and reliable data.

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Establish trust with the employees. Inform the employees about the company’s commitment to align their work with their natural gifts. Don’t hide things or surprise people. People want to do work they’re good at and enjoy.

Develop an understanding of the innate characteristics being

measured. Before you can align people’s innate characteristics with their work, it’s essential to understand what these charac- teristics mean. In other words, how each one impacts the way people think and behave. Now you have the basis to identify which characteristics are needed for different types of positions within your

organization. 5

Develop clarity on the job duty break-down.

It’s important to know what people will do on a

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