The paradox of COMMUNICATION – what it can look like when the balance between FRANKNESS and DIPLOMACY is off-kilter, and what it can look like when balance is achieved.
Leaders need to be able to balance these two seemingly opposite traits – one dynamic and one gentle – to achieve optimal behavioural performance and balanced versatility and effective communication.
What examples of leadership communication spring to your mind?
Harrison Paradox Technology is embraced by organizations world-wide as the best means to determine leadership capability and job performance by providing a reliable map of the paradoxical balances that make or break leaders.
Great leaders possess specific strengths outside of their technical knowledge of the job they do.
As a rule leaders tend to gain their positions through demonstration of exceptional skills in the operational side of their roles together with an enthusiastic and optimistic attitude and relevant experience. Operational expertise and experience are relatively easy to measure and as such dominate the decision making process of leader selection.
But what about the rest?
Most people would agree they would like their leaders to be competent, knowledgeable, visionary, progressive and decisive with excellent interpersonal skills, innovative and open to new ideas.
How about a propensity for self improvement, a desire to lead, an outgoing personality, a reasonable level of self acceptance, a balance of analytical and intuitive skills, a balance of diplomacy and frankness and a balance between assertiveness and helpfulness. There is an endless list of traits we would like our leaders and upcoming leaders to possess.
Here are 10 Leadership competencies you can be measuring and developing in your leaders…
Communication
Promotes & presents clear vision & initiatives. Speaks up regarding concerns, listens effectively, provides timely and helpful information, and takes responsibility to confirm communications are received.
Energising People
Motivates others to achieve goals, articulates a common vision, engages team members, relates openly, and empowers others to achieve.
Learning Agility
Gains knowledge from experiences, successes, and mistakes, and applies that knowledge to new situations or responsibilities.
Problem Solving
Perceptive and logical when identifying problems, finds the source or cause of problems, and thinks through potential difficulties of the solution steps.
Resilience and Perseverance
Persists in the face of adversity, obstacles, or setbacks including effectively managing a crisis and quickly adapting to change.
Achievement Orientation
Consistently achieves objectives, accepts difficult challenges, seizes opportunities, and has a high level of energy and enthusiasm.
Impact and Influence
Influence others to achieve goals, enlists their cooperation, appeals to their interests, builds trust, and negotiates mutually beneficial and sustainable agreements.
Innovation
Experiments with different ways to improve processes, efficiency, and/or effectiveness while maintaining focus on the desired objective or result.
Leading People
Takes responsibility to achieve the organization’s mission, provides clear direction, promotes team participation and cooperation, and accepts decision-making authority.
Problem Solving
Creates effective strategies and long-term plans to seize opportunities, anticipate issues and risks, draws from previous experiences, explores industry information, and collaborates with the right Individuals.
The Harrison Assessment Leadership Behavioural Competency framework measures people’s individual skills and areas for development against 10 essential Leadership Competencies in an objective way.
Each competency is made up of a series of essential traits, desirable traits and traits to avoid. Development candidates complete a short, online SmartQuestionnaireTM. Responses are then mapped against each of the Harrison Leadership Competencies which can then highlights areas of strength and areas for development both for an individual and for a team.
As well as the Leadership Behavioural Competency other standard, pre-defined behavioural competencies are available. Bespoke behavioural competencies can be developed according to the requirements of your organisation and built around your own set of required traits and behaviours.
You can download a sample Behavioural Competency report here.
If you would like to find out more about the Harrison Leadership Behavioural Competency, other pre-defined competencies, or indeed about creating a bespoke competency, please call us on 07768 922244, email pat@quadrant1.com or leave us your details and we will contact you.
With improvements in workplace technology and the effects of lockdown restrictions, the number of people working remotely in the UK increased dramatically from 4.6 million in 2019 to over 20 million in 2021. This figure has settled in the last year; 30% of the UK workforce was working remotely at least once a week in 2022.
Whether remote work is new to your organisation or you’ve been doing it successfully for years, your employees have likely experienced both the benefits and the challenges of getting things done away from the office.
Harrison Assessments Remote Workforce Analytics allows you to measure and understand employees’ capacity to work remotely and how leaders need to adjust their management style to help employees succeed in a remote environment.
Measure, understand and coach your employees’ ability to effectively work remotely. Includes two behavioural competencies for Remote Productivity and Remote Communication and can be combined with Behavioural Success Analysis and Engagement & Retention Analysis.
Remote Leadership Analysis
Leaders often need to adapt their style for remote working. Includes two behavioural competencies for Managing Remote Productivity and Managing Remote Communication.
If you would like to know more please contact me at pat@quadrant1.com
Many organisations assume the responsibility for talent management lies solely with HR. An effective and well-organised business will take a collaborative approach, sharing the responsibility across all core functions. This enables the talent strategy to be linked to the core business objectives. (more…)
Employee Remuneration Expectations – managing for engagement
In this article on employee expectations we look at ‘remuneration expectations’ and how they impact employee engagement.
We all want to be paid a fair wage for a fair day’s work and remuneration is certainly near the top of employee expectations. It is not, however, the primary motivator for a good many of us and vies for position with the quality of the workplace environment, being appreciated and having a competent, responsive manager.
The organisational view
Most employees understand that a company has different pay grades and that they cannot expect to earn more than someone else who does the same job. Having said that, the increasing problem of those being paid below the living wage can create tensions for many companies.
If you want to earn a higher salary, the excepted way of doing it is to take on more responsibility and possibly undertake further training.
For those who want higher pay, this can often be the sticking point, particularly if they are not self-motivated enough to develop their own careers.
The individual’s remuneration expectations
Asking the right questions, and analysing each individual employee’s real engagement factors ensures managers and the wider organisation provide an environment that retains their best talent.
Remuneration Expectations
Employee remuneration expectations can vary depending on the amount of pressure they are under, the type of work they have to do and the environment they work in. Even individuals in a particular office might have different views about whether they are paid enough or not.
Wants High Pay
The desire to earn greater remuneration
A competitive and career minded individual will more likely see their worth in the amount that they are paid, or have the potential of earning, compared to someone who just wants to come in and get their allotted work done.
Wanting higher pay can be a signifier of personal ambition which could mean that a top performing team member may look elsewhere if they don’t achieve what they hope for. It can also be a pipe dream where an individual wants more pay but is not prepared to get the work and study done to reach their target.
Wants Quick Pay Increases
The desire to have an employer who offers relatively frequent pay increases
Linked to the desire for higher pay, is the need for them to be delivered quickly. Most businesses have a yearly incremental increase in salary but that might not be enough for some employees. This could be a sign that they are moving quickly up the ladder or it could be that their ambitions are outstripping their actual ability.
Impatience can be a virtue but it can also signify that an employee is more likely to look round at other companies rather than stay put and contribute to the development of an organisation.
Self-Motivated
The drive to achieve including taking initiative, wanting challenge, and being enthusiastic about goals
Those who want to develop their own careers necessarily have to be self-motivated. This can be a difficult one to gauge particularly if the employee is deluding themselves about just how much they have in the tank for climbing the corporate ladder.
There may well be good signs for self-motivated behaviour such as learning new key skills and being open to challenges and these can mark out an employee as someone who needs to be handled sympathetically and nurtured if they are to stay with the company.
Does everyone in the group have the same remuneration expectations?
Finding out what employee’s remuneration expectations are can be highly enlightening; by using Harrison Assessments engagement and retention analytics we can explore them in detail.
What can we interpret for this group?
This group considers earning higher pay levels to be only moderately important and thus, it is only moderately important to carefully explain how higher pay can be achieved.
This group considers quick pay increases to be unimportant. Consequently, this group is probably not going to be too impatient about achieving higher pay.
This group has a strong tendency to be self-motivated independent of consideration about remuneration.
Using Harrison Assessments Talent Solutions to understand remuneration expectations
Managers can measure an number of key employee expectations, the intrinsic behaviours that drive individual and group engagement. This helps to understand any differences between an employee as well as looking at the overall group or team’s expectations. These insights facilitate the essential dialogue between employee and manager, fostering a shared responsibility for engagement to build a culture of employee engagement.
Managers can use the Manage, Develop and Retain report as a guide to getting the best performance out of an individual member of their team, and shows how mis-matched communication and management styles could potentially demotivate a talented employee. Instead the report suggests how best to develop and engage the employee, what type of tasks to delegate and behaviours to watch out for that could impede performance.
Employee Engagement White Paper
This employee engagement white paper will outline why this is the case and what is needed to achieve a greater impact on organisational performance.
It includes some key areas relating to engagement in the workplace and a crucial 3-step guide to assist with the application of engagement analytics.
Written by Dan Harrison, Ph.D. – Organisational Psychology, developer and CEO of Harrison Assessments, this white paper is a must read for anyone involved in employee engagement. Request your copy here –
