Past Issues
Mat, 2005
Keep The Good Ones
Employee Retention Techniques
April, 2005
What We Measure Part III
Why we measure Sociability.
March, 2005
What We Measure Part II
Some perspective on Readjustment.
February, 2005
Are You Being Served?
Profiling in the Restaurant and Hospitality Industry.
What We Measure Part I
A deeper understanding of Ascendency.
Motivating Termites
Selecting the most motivational rewards for job performance.
We Don't Care What Your Think
Because We Measure Behavior Instead.
Of Course It's Legal
To Use Personality Profiling in Hiring.
Do Unto Others (Or Not)
Good Advice for Sales People.
The Paul Principle
Give employees what they need to succeed.
After I'm Gone ...
Using Profiling to sell or buy a business successfully.
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The MRA Team Spirit Newsletter - April, 2005
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What We Measure Part III: Sociability
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By John Loven
President
MRA Team Spirit
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There are "people people" and "thing people". Both can be very valuable on your staff.
Having the right kind of person in the right job makes all the difference. How can
you tell who's who?
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People Who Need People
Put aside the daily grind of business (mentally, anyhow) and think of the
delights of family life. You're having a birthday party for a dozen kids at
your house, the twelve cupcakes are on the table and arrivals have begun.
Suddenly you look out the window and see thirteen (unlucky thirteen!)
youngsters coming up the walk. So what's the problem?
This is where it gets interesting: Some parents will say "A child will be
disappointed." Others will say "There are too few cupcakes." Will both parents
solve the problem? Sure. And after all, it's a made-up story, so it ends
happily if I say so. <Grin>
But consider the difference in the approach to the problem. Parent number 1
started with the "people" side of the situation: a disappointed kid.
Parent number 2 started with the "thing" side of the situation: a cupcake
shortage. This difference in approach is deeply ingrained in most people.
In the workplace, both tendencies are very valuable when they're in the
right context. In the wrong context, they cause misunderstanding, poor
communications and lost productivity.
Let's take two workplace examples. Everyday, panicked parents come into their
pediatrician's office carrying, pushing or dragging a child who is crying and
miserable with an ear-ache. My friends in the business tell me that " job one"
is calming the parent and the child. Every kid gets ear-aches and the treatment
is routine. The real doctoring lies in convincing parent and child that there
is no medical catastrophe afoot, death is not near and care is on the way. This
task calls for "people" skills first.
Some of my banker friends work under a different set of conditions. A customer
who calls the hot-line because $10,000 is missing from his account wants the
respondent's attention to be on the $10,000, not on his own upset. Bank
call-center workers cannot get caught up in the "people" side of things.
If a bank's position was "Don't worry about the money, just calm down,"
then that bank would soon be out of business.
Can you measure this quality ? Can you thereby position your people
in the best role? Yes, you can, using MRA Team Spirit Profiles. One of the four
key behavioral traits we measure is called "Sociability" or "S". It is a measure
of how involved with others the subject tends to be.
High S people like to be part of groups. They enjoy taking
the social initiative with strangers and relish group acknowledgement and group
achievements. When a challenge arises they like to "circle the wagons" and
work through it with the team. These High S individuals usually approach
decision-making from the "people" side of the issue.
Low S people, by contrast form very close relationships with a few individuals,
one at a time, and they don't enjoy new social situations. They prefer to be
acknowledged for individual achievements and for being experts in their field.
When a challenge arises, they prefer to work out a solution or strategy alone,
and then bring it back to co-workers. As you might expect, low S individuals
usually approach decision making from the "thing" side of the issue.
How does this measurement play out in hiring and job placement? We mentioned a
bank call-center example earlier. Lets take a look at the "call-center" worker as
an example. Many people ask, "Is there a correlation between a particular career
and a particular set of profile measurements?" The fact is that generalization is
tricky because careers or job description that, at first blush, seem comparable,
often have real differences below the surface. "Call-center worker" is a good
example of these less-than-obvious - but very important - differences.
We profiled the phone folks at a technology company, where the majority of calls
have to do with problems, from billing to bugs. The assignment was to solve the
problem as quickly as possible and move on to the next caller. The problems mainly
have to do with mechanical problems: a misprint in a manual, an improper installation,
a lost invoice, etc. Here, low Sociability phone folks prevail. They don't get caught
up in the callers upset, they want the facts first and they want to get on with the
problem solving. The training obligation is to make sure the detachment from
the customer's upset doesn't become rudeness.
We also profiled callers for a healthcare company that recruits patients for clinical
trials and recruits physicians to attend conferences. Here the assignment is to keep
somebody talking, bond with them and get buy-in. In the case of recruiting physicians,
the effort is doubled because the caller has to get through the nurse or
administrator "gate keeper" before talking to the doc. Trying to wrap-up
any of these transactions quickly based on factual propositions is poor
strategy. Here the top performers were all high Sociability people. They want
to meet others and talk. They are honestly interested in whatever the stranger
might want to talk about and they gladly give all the time needed to bond. The
training obligation is to keep these gregarious individuals talking to customers
and not among themselves.
What kind of Sociability ranking will make your top performers shine?
We'll be glad to discuss it with you. Or get profiled yourself at no charge and
see what your Sociability ranking is and how this valuable tool can improve your
productivity and employee retention.
Questions or Comments? Let Me Know.
Copyright © 2005 John Loven
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