Today’s elite athletes are performing at levels few can hope to achieve, yet with each race, each competition, they consistently demonstrate the capacity to push themselves and reach heights once thought unobtainable. In the business world, it should be the goal of every leader to emulate world-class athletes. This is a reachable objective and we see examples of exceptional adaptability and agility as chief among common traits shared by leaders of high performing organizations.

Outstanding leaders have traditionally been associated with coaches rather than athletes. They guide, teach, motivate and inspire. But they are not usually thought of as demonstrating the dynamic, heroic effort of sports figures in the course of leading companies. But that’s changing quickly.

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 Sourced from: HRM Today Featured Posts

The American Management Association (AMA), in conjunction with the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), is conducting a study to examine leadership initiatives that organizations have taken to coordinate actions across global locations. We’re looking for your input on the topic. In return, you’ll receive the preliminary results report once available. Please take this survey now.

Estimated survey length: 5 minutes

You’ll receive: Preliminary results report

Survey closes: Wednesday, March 17

Receive a complimentary results report

In exchange for completing the survey, you’ll receive a copy of these valuable results, which otherwise are exclusive to i4cp members. Thank you for your participation.
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 Sourced from: HRM Today Featured Posts

A derailed executive is an previously-named high-potential employee who has reached the middle management level, only to find that there is little chance of future advancement (as previously thought) due to a misfit between job requirements and personal skills. Thus, the executive either plateaus or leaves the organization altogether. That is the original CCL studies definition. Sometimes the term also refers to leaders who experience big failures after reaching the executive spot and, more recently, those involved in ethical scandals.

Whatever your definition of a bad leader is, most have several of the following 10 leadership shortcomings:

Lack of energy/enthusiasm: OK so some people are less visibly enthusiastic than others, thanks to a personality trait called introversion. But there’s an effort to be made, no matter what your personality style, to covey and inspire energy and enthusiasm in your team. And there is NEVER an excuse for complaining. Either do it, change it, or leave it.

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 Sourced from: HRM Today Featured Posts

Pick a leader – any successful leader. Then search Amazon and see how many books and other publications come up on that person. Abraham Lincoln? 83,642. Gandhi? 61,923. Even Barack Obama, who was widely introduced to the world just five years ago, has 8,670. People love studying successful people.

In the same way that many people have an insatiable appetite to study successful leaders, we in the business world tend to be fascinated with high-performance organizations. What are they like? What do they do differently? Is there a secret recipe that allows them to outperform their competition?

Of course, many books have been dedicated to this subject. From Tom Peters’s and Bob Waterman’s early 80’s best seller In Search of Excellence to Jim Collins’ Built to Last and Good to Great, there has been a succession of books that leaders and managers across the globe have devoured. Programs such as GE’s Six Sigma have trained countless people in how to achieve top performance and consultants have built entire practices around elements of high-performing companies.

While business professionals want to learn more about high-performance organizations in the hopes that they can apply some of the secret sauce to their own organization, many of the companies profiled within the pages of the aforementioned books were unable to sustain high performance. In fact, the number is about half. While much has been written on the subject, the truth is that the ingredients to high performance remain something of a mystery.

Part of the reason is the definition – what exactly do we mean by high performance? Is there a difference between simply surviving (which was the fate of some of the companies profiled in Built to Last, for example) and performing well over a long period? Do we mean companies which outperform others in their own industry or across industries? Over how long a time period does an organization need to perform exceptionally well in order to be considered a “high performer”? And which measures, financial or otherwise, are the best ones to use?

Over the last three decades, i4cp researchers have looked at various ways to define high performance and the traits that separate the consistently top organizations from the rest. Through that time, we have come to recognize high-performing organizations as ones that consistently outperform most of their competitors in four primary areas:

• Revenue growth
• Market share
• Profitability
• Customer satisfaction

And, over the years, our research team has examined well over 100 different core human capital areas and tried to determine the differences between high-performing and low-performing organizations. The research has clearly shown that no single ingredient guarantees organizational success. Rather, high performance is like a delicate entrée – based on a staple of core ingredients any one of which, if left out or of inferior quality, will ruin the entire item.

The Five Domains of High Performance

Our research has shown that there are five basic ingredients which separate higher performers from their lower-performing counterparts:

1. Their strategies are more consistent, clearly communicated and well thought out. They are more likely than other companies to say that their philosophies are consistent with their strategies and their performance measurements mirror their strategies.
2. Leadership is clear, fair and talent-oriented. Those leaders are more likely to promote the best people for the job, to make sure performance expectations are well known and consistent with the strategy, and to be committed to developing their people.
3. There is a commitment to the right talent within the organization, and while employees are treated as unique individuals, the organization takes a holistic approach to managing and making decisions based on data-driven information. This begins with a strategic approach to workforce planning. It entails looking at the organization from an outside-in perspective that identifies the business model components and areas that drive value and then determines what the organization needs.
4. The culture is strong in all the right ways, and employees are more likely to think the organization is a good place to work. Employees not only adapt well to change, they embrace it. High performers also emphasize a readiness to meet new challenges and are committed to innovation.
5. They are more likely to have a strong market focus and go above and beyond for their customers. They are organized internally around what’s best for the customer, they think hard about customers’ future and long-term needs, and their strategy is based on customer data. And they are more likely to see customer information as the most important factor for developing new products and services.

While these five domains – Strategy, Leadership, Talent, Culture and Market – may seem a bit broad or even obvious, the separation our research has shown between high and low performers in these domains is startling. For example, in a just-released study on high performance by i4cp, the following graph depicts this separation:

These findings, along with previous studies, have convinced us to target our research on discovering the best ways for companies to boost their performance in these five domains and the numerous sub-domains within. We’re convinced that companies that focus on excelling in these areas are cooking up a surefire recipe for long-term success.

i4cp’s 4-Part Recommendation:

1. Take stock to determine where your organization stands in these five areas, and be honest – even the best performing companies aren’t always superb in each area. To get an objective view, survey the workforce on these domains as well as use other assessment tools.
2. Once you’ve determined your areas of strength and weakness, make sure senior management is involved in improving on the weak areas while not taking the eye off of the strengths; in tough economies it can be easy to stop focusing on core areas that the company has excelled in. Don’t forget to investigate the practices of other organizations that are excelling in your areas of weakness; it’s amazing how some very simple and inexpensive ideas can make a huge difference in closing the gap.
3. Although companies should focus on the specific tactics for boosting their performance in each of these five areas, it’s important to align the five areas as a whole. Each domain feeds off the others, and ignoring one is like leaving a key ingredient out of a culinary masterpiece.
4. Although these efforts should continue indefinitely to sustain performance over time, organizations should also do regular reevaluations of their progress so they can make course corrections as needed.

View a recording of Thursday’s webinar, The Five Domains of High-Performance Organizations.
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In this study, we examine how mentoring benefits mentors as well as how team cohesiveness affects mentoring relationships and resulting benefits. We followed 512 formal mentors in a Chinese manufacturing firm for six months and collected data in three phases and from three sources. The findings reveal that the amount of mentoring provided is positively related to mentors’ in-role job performance and social status. These relationships were fully mediated by mentors’ personal learning and social interaction quality, respectively. Team cohesiveness, however, did not moderate these relationships. Our empirical findings have implications for understanding how mentors’ careers can benefit from being a mentor.

 Sourced from: Latest Issue of Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology

Competencies in human resources refer to the knowledge, skills, abilities and other qualities that an individual possesses which influences his or her performance at work. These competencies are typically assessed during a job analysis where the appropriate competencies for the role are identified and included in the position specifications. These competencies can be utilized during recruitment and selection to identify applicants who possess the qualities necessary for future success in the positions. They can also be utilized as indicators for tracking performance during the performance management processes.

Competencies can also be used for training and developmental purposes to identify potential competency gaps. These gaps refer to differences between the given level of ability and performance in a certain area and the expected level of ability and performance for that area. Through the identification of such competency gaps, remedial action can be taken through the application of training to address these gaps and ensure that the individual is provided with the necessary knowledge, skills, abilities and other qualities to perform at the expected level.

Another potential area for utility of competencies in development is that of talent management and development. In such cases, an individual may be in the process of being groomed for higher level positions within an organization. Having identified the competencies necessary for that position and assessing the individual’s current competencies, it would be easier to address his or her developmental needs and provide a map to track the progress. This would allow organizations to determine the potential of the individual as well as when that individual would be able to fulfil the requirements of the future position.

Assessment Centres (ACs) are a commonly utilized tool for organizations in the selection and development of leadership talent. There is evidence demonstrating the utility of ACs as a work sample measure of work performance with favourable evidence in predicting the future work performance of the participants who have been assessed.

There is also evidence that personality is linked to the various areas that are commonly assessed by ACs. Of particular interest are the personality dimensions of Exhibition, Dominance and Achievement as these have been shown to predict leadership effectiveness.

Research conducted has shown that age can act as a moderating influence on personality and AC performance (Krajewski, Goffin, Rothstein & Johnston, 2007). Simply put, age influences the relationship between personality and AC performance. It is demonstrated that for Exhibition and Dominance, older managers seem to display these characteristics in a fashion that is more mature and effective at the workplace. The caveat to this is that age per se may not be the correct “term” but of greater importance is that years of relevant experience may be the better indicator regarding this relationship between personality and AC performance. Even so, ACs have nevertheless also demonstrated utility in assessing and predicting performance of individuals across age differences.

Krajewski, H.T., Goffin R.D., Rothstein M.G. & Johnston N.G. (2007). Is Personality Related to Assessment Centre Performance? That Depends on How Old You Are. Journal of Business Psychology, 22, 21-33.