Connecting HR Leadership to the Bottom Line
Defining the Importance and
Relevance of Passion
Words such as passion and values have been used so often that they have lost some of their original meaning and impact. When you are looking for superstar performers you need to take a scientific approach to assessing what type of passions and values you need in your workforce.
Some of the most fascinating research in the area of workplace values was done by German psychologist, Eduard Spranger. He published the groundbreaking study in the 1920s titled Types of Men. In his work, Spranger suggested that a person's attitude, not personality type, created a feeling of success in the world. The attitudes or values Spranger researched are now of great interest to organizational psychologists.
In the future, we believe that career building and human performance will increasingly focus on the nature of passions as predictors of an individual's success in a chosen career. An individual's personality is not a good predictor of success in any job; a person's passions are. Skill, knowledge, and personality are all important, but all of these attributes stem from the head. They enable you to determine whether a person can do the job but they don't give you an idea of how well they will do the job. The bottom line is that people will not pour themselves into a career and create a reputation for innovation if their
hearts are not in the job.
When you look for the traits that will predict how much energy people will give to a job, the type of energy that leads to innovation, you need to look at the passions and character traits required for successfully completing that job. As we mentioned before, we devote an immense amount of time to researching the passions and character traits necessary for jobs that require a high level of innovation and ingenuity. We also have a highly sophisticated process for finding the right people to fill those jobs once the passion has been identified.
Final Considerations
On the ROI of Coaching
One of the other top considerations of leading human resources executives is in the area of coaching and training existing staff. A number of interesting studies have shown that there is a bona fide bottom line impact stemming from coaching efforts.
For example, a 2000 study published in Business Wire and conducted by Manchester Inc. (a career management consulting firm) found that
"...a company's investment in providing coaching to its executives realized an average return on investment of almost six times the cost of the coaching." This study is often cited as one of the first major studies to quantify the business impact of executive coaching.
According to citations, the study revealed several specific improvements experienced by companies that provided coaching to its
executives:
- Productivity (reported by 53% of executives)
- Quality (48%)
- Organizational strength (48%)
- Customer service (39%)
- Decrease in customer complaints (34%)
- Retention of executives who received coaching (32%)
- Cost reductions (23%)
- Bottom-line profitability (22%)
In the areas of sales coaching specifically, clients studied in the Manchester, Inc. research have reported many measurable benefits including the following:
- Greater awareness and proficiency in sales skills, such as
qualifying leads and closing sales
- Increased sales
- Greater pleasure in their work
- More effective sales training
- Increased customer satisfaction
- Greater impact on the organization meeting its company-wide
financial goals
- Improved focus related to their career
- Renewed energy for life
Another interesting study compiled by Coaching.com, a San Diegobased coaching company and reported by Mary Lee Olsen, shows that organizations providing one-on-one coaching in conjunction with training, attain a better return on the investment they make in training programs.
As reported, an independent study by Michigan-based Triad Performance Technologies, Inc. studied and evaluated the impact of coaching support on 67 regional and district sales managers within a large telecom organization. Positive results were achieved in several key areas, which led to an estimated $2 million profitability impact from the group receiving the coaching. Top performers remained in their jobs, positive work environments were created, and revenue increased as individuals exceeded their goals.
Such studies substantiate that any human resource officer would be attending to the front-line of duty by using assessment tools and surveys that would help clarify and define the areas of training, coaching and development that need to be addressed first.
Summary
At Headway, we use many tools, techniques and assessments to help identify people with a passion for solving problems; we can usually tell what kind of work environments or challenges will spark their passions and unique abilities.
If we were to give any advice to human resource officers who are trying to positively impact the bottom line of their companies, it would be this:
- Use all of the assessment tools and recruiting methods at your disposal to locate people who have a passion and track record for solving problems.
- Concentrate on finding people who still have "something to prove." This will help you weed out those who have a sense of entitlement and who will always decrease the momentum of your teams.
High-impact recruiting and selection means that you must go the extra mile to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. You must carefully screen out people who are likely to take more than they give. Innovative people are more likely to give more than they take. Individuals characterized by self-interest and laziness react negatively when asked to do something beyond the call of duty. However, there are also those people who possess what we call "the magic." They leap at the chance to show you what they are made of and to tap into their passions. They want to go beyond the call of duty; they take pride in proving themselves. Their drive to demonstrate their abilities and talents is more important than their self-interest. From this magical mix comes innovative thinking and innovative behavior in the workplace.
Great human resource leaders have always known these things. The true test for all of us as we look forward to tomorrow, however, is this: we must stand up for and acknowledge the value of those excellent team members who have demonstrated the quiet, unpretentious leadership of service, dedication and a desire to prove themselves to others. Such people are not always the easiest to find-but we need to reach out to them, select them, hire them, train them and retain them. Because the quality of character, commitment and passion that comes as natural as breathing to these people is really the breath of life for any organization that wants to succeed in these stressful and challenging times.
Return to top
Recommended Reading
Root-Bernstein, Robert and Michèle. Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People. Mariner Books. (August, 2001.)
Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don't. HarperBusiness. (October, 2001.)
Collins, Jim and Porras, Jerry I. Built to Last : Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. Harper Business Essentials. (August 2002.)
Dellana, Scott, and Snyder, David P. Student Future Outlook and Counseling Quality in a Rural Minority High School. High School Journal, 88(1):27-41. (October 2004).
Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and its Discontents. W. W. Norton & Company, (Reissue edition, January, 2005.)
Erikson, Erik, Childhood and Society, W. W. Norton & Company; Reissue edition (August 1, 1993)
Erikson, Erik. Life Cycle Completed. W. W. Norton & Company; Extended edition (June 1, 1998.)
Hubbard, Edward. Hiring Strategies for Long-Term Success:
How to Hire the Best People and Keep Them! Global Insights
Publications. (January, 1992)
Jacobs, Gregg. D, and Snyder, David P. Frontal Brain Asymmetry
Predicts Emotional Styles In Men. Behavioral Neuroscience. (February 1996.)
Kouzes, James M. and Posner, Barry Z. The Leadership Challenge: How to Keep Getting Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations. Jossey-Bass Publishers. Third edition. (July 25, 2003)
Maslow, Abraham. H. Toward a Psychology of Being,3rd Edition. Wiley. (November 9, 1998)
Outlaw, Wayne. Smart Staffing : How to Hire, Reward and Keep Top Employees for Your Growing Company. Dearborn. (August, 1998.)
Peters, Tom. The Brand You 50 : Or, Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an 'Employee' into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion! Knopf. (September, 1999.)
Peters, Tom. Re-Imagine. Dorling Kindersley Publishing. (October, 2003.)
Snyder, David P. How to Mind Read Your Customers. AMACOM. (May, 2001.)
Internet Source Citations
Olsen, Mary Lee. (Published on the Internet.) Coaching Helps Increase
ROI by Ensuring the Success of Training Programs
http://www.coaching.com/Marketing/Common/newsroi.htm
Published Press Release. (Published on the Internet.) Executive Coaching Yields Return On Investment Of Almost Six Times Its Cost,
Says Study.
Originally cited in Business Wire. (online.) Republished on: http://www.modisintl.com/news/viewrelease.asp?art=20010104_1.txt
|
