Book Reviews
Top Ten Ways To Use In-depth Work Style and Personality Testing
Review by Dana Borowka, MA, CEO of Lighthouse Consulting Services, LLC
While personality testing
can be a valuable resource before you hire,
perhaps the true value of any assessment comes in using the insights it
provides along the entire spectrum of employment, states a new business
management book.
"A proper personality
test should reach beyond simple profiles and
decipher an employee's underlying needs," says Dana Borowka, who
co-authored the book Cracking the Personality Code (Book Surge, 2008)
with his wife Ellen Borowka. "This is key for employee development, team
building, conflict resolution and succession planning."
The book chronicles an
expanding body of knowledge that some businesses
have discovered to improve their hiring practices. For example, one
cited study of 13,000 executives at 120 companies found that the top
one-fifth of companies that do the best job of attracting and attaining
top talent earned, on average, 22 percentage points higher return to
shareholders than industry peers.
The book's research shows
that to improve hiring decisions, many
companies have found out how to crack the personality code by using
robust personality testing. Personality tests are now a standard
recruiting practice for many branches of the government and military, as
well as many Fortune 500 companies when assessing potential hires for
key or critical positions.
Cracking the Personality
Code analyzes why so many managers get it
wrong and then provides the diagnostics to help businesses recruit and
retain top-notch talent," says Rafael Pastor, Chairman of the Board and
CEO of the CEO peer organization, Vistage International.
Below are the authors'
top ten ways to use personality testing in the
workplace to help bring out the best in your employees at all levels in
an organization.
1. Get the real picture.
Of course every candidate wants to put their
best foot forward during an interview. However through a personality
test, you uncover a great deal about their ability to work well with
other personalities, their problem solving abilities, their thought
processes and their ability to tolerate stress. Personality testing
gives you objective information that can help you make an informed
decision about if this person is a good fit for the job and for the
team. If you decided to hire the person, the questions you ask during
the hiring process will reduce your learning curve as a manager on how
best to manage this person from day one.
2. Help them be all that
they can be. Everyone has strengths and
weaknesses. Find out the real truth with an objective measure. Once you
pinpoint the good and the bad, then you place them in the right position
and coach them on where to improve.
3. Take me to your leaders.
Personality testing gives the manager and
employees a common language about how they like to interact. The
assessments can help you train future managers on how to get the best
out of the team.
4. Know how to manage
difficult people. Face it, there will always be
difficult people and flare ups on the job. Use objective personality
assessments to diagnose potential sources of workplace conflict. The
best way to deal with a problem is to prevent it in the first place.
5. Get everybody to play
nice. Sales and marketing, operations and
financial people have to interact to make the company run smoothly. Too
many employees get frustrated with other co-workers and just wonder why
everyone doesn't act like them. Through the use of personality profiles
managers can coach employees how to interact better with peers.
6. Treat co-workers the
way they want to be treated. In today's
fast-paced world of business there is little time to get to know many of
your co-workers. Using personality assessments as the basis for team
building exercises can quickly get everyone to have a healthier respect
for other ways of seeing the world.
7. Make managers better
leaders. The days of seat of the pants
leadership are over. When managers understand what makes their people
tick, then they can be better leaders. Knowing personality traits can
help with motivating teams, communicating change and delegating
authority.
8. Pick better teams.
Today so much work is done by ad hoc teams that
come together for a specific purpose. Before you assemble a team it
pays to know the strengths and weaknesses of the team members.
Sometimes this can be the difference between a productive team that gets
the job done and one that pulls apart at the seams.
9. Set employees up for
success. Sometimes we hire the right employee
and put them in the wrong job. Understanding preferred work styles and
where a person would be happiest goes a long way to improving retention
and productivity.
10. Knowledge is power.
Cracking the Personality Code explains the
essentials of what managers and business owners need to know about
hiring and managing employees with the help of personality testing. The
authors firmly believe the personality code can be cracked. If that
sounds like a bold declaration, consider this: Studies show that
personality tests are a far more reliable predictor of performance than
interviews and resumes.
To get a free copy of
the Personics Matrix form that can help in
working with your team and for new hire selections. Please visit the authors'
website at:
http://www.crackingthepersonalitycode.com
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