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Have you ever
been fooled by an applicant who has a high rating (“9”) on the
Performance Profile’s Intelligence characteristic? That high an
“Intelligence” rating makes you think, “Oh boy, this guy’s
going to do great things for us.” So you hire him, and a
year later you are still waiting for the kind of performance
those “smarts” seemed to promise. The guy does good
work, but you didn’t expect merely “good”; you expected
“exceptional!”
And what about
the guy you hired who had a “5” on Intelligence, and who has
consistently set the world on fire? Customers rave about
him, he is always under budget and under deadline, and he has
implemented two new product ideas in the last four months.
Why is it that
exceptionally high intelligence doesn’t always translate into
exceptional performance, whereas someone with average
intelligence sometimes does perform exceptionally? To answer that
question, let’s look a little further.
The Anatomy of
Exceptional Performance
A complete list
of the characteristics, attitudes, and abilities that
contribute to exceptional performance would be several pages
long, but there are three main ones: curiosity, motivation,
and experience.
Curiosity - The Soul of
Exceptional Performance
Curiosity is
the soul of exceptional performance. My dictionary defines
curiosity as, “The desire to learn or know about anything;
inquisitiveness.”
The curious person asks questions: “Why do we do it
this way?” “How
can we do it better?” “What would our
customers like that we aren’t giving them?” She looks for new ways
to do things, new ways to satisfy customers, and new ways to
improve “the way we’ve always done it.”
Motivation – The Heart
of Exceptional Performance
If curiosity is
the soul of exceptional performance, then motivation is its
heart. Motivation
is the thing that takes the good idea that curiosity comes up
with and turns it into action. If curiosity is the
seeker, motivation is the doer. Motivation overcomes
obstacles, deals with objections, and finds a way to make the
idea work in the real world. Motivation gets things
done.
Experience – The Muscle
of Exceptional Performance
Curiosity and
motivation are necessary, but they need experience to show the
way to consistently exceptional performance. Curiosity and
motivation alone are what people who are new to the working
world, such as interns, sometimes have. They may have great
ideas and strong motivation to try them out, but limited
experience that would provide the specifics for how to proceed
and how to succeed.
Experience can
provide counter-intuitive solutions to seemingly insoluable
problems. It
creates the insights beyond textbook explanations into how
things really work. It creates the vision
to see how solving one type of problem can be applied to a
completely different kind of problem.
How To Select For
Exceptional Performance
Exceptional performance is most likely when you have an
individual who is curious, motivated, and has relevant work
experience.
Unfortunately, these folks don’t drop off the turnip
truck and walk in your front door every day. Thankfully, they don’t
have to. Any one
of these three attributes, or any combination of them, can
result in exceptional performance. Let’s look at ways to
get a handle on a candidate’s level of experience, motivation,
and curiosity.
How To Recognize
Relevant Work Experience
This is
probably the easiest to identify, although it must be said
that any kind of work experience is not what you are
looking for. You
want to see work experience that is relevant to the job you
want your applicant to do.
The resume is
the first place to look for relevant work experience, but
remember to look skeptically at the work experience on an
applicant’s resume. The resume is often a
better example of the applicant’s creative writing skills than
an accurate description of former duties and
responsibilities.
Check
references and, when you do, try to pin down exactly what the
applicant’s job duties and responsibilities were for a given
job title. A
department head with responsibility for two subordinates faces
a much less demanding role than does a department head with
eighteen subordinates.
How To Recognize
Curiosity
Unfortunately,
there is no way to measure curiosity directly, but you can
look for indirect indicators. One such indirect
indicator is the Intelligence rating on the Performance
Profile Report.
Higher ratings on this scale indicate an individual who has
the intellectual horsepower to question the obvious solution
or process that isn’t working and look “outside the box” for a
better way.
The brighter
the person is, the more likely it is that he or she is aware
that there are always alternatives to any choice. The bright person
doesn’t react to difficulties by saying, “That’s
impossible!” She
reacts by saying, “That’s a challenge.”
Strong mental
capacity, however, doesn’t always translate to curiosity. Strong mental capacity
is like physical strength in an athlete. While physical
strength in an athlete is a basic requirement for exceptional
performance, it doesn’t guarantee exceptional performance.
A fairly common
lament in athletics and other fields is, “He never lived up to
his potential.”
In a similar way, strong mental capacity provides the
potential for curiosity, but it doesn’t guarantee that the
potential will be used.
How To Recognize
Motivation
The strength of
a person’s motivation is influenced by the person’s health,
financial situation, and ambition, as well as by countless
other issues particular to the person. Like curiosity,
motivation has no direct measure, in spite of the extensive
research that has been done over the last hundred years or
so.
Once again, you
need to look at indirect measures such as the Energy Level
rating on the Performance Profile Report. Other indirect
indications of motivation may be in the individual’s
accomplishments and activities. Let’s look at how
these indirect measures interact.
Higher Energy
Level ratings indicate both the capacity and preference for
turning ideas into action. A strong energy level
is the gas that drives the engine of multiple activities and
accomplishments.
To pursue multiple activities takes energy as well as interest
in the activities, and so it stands to reason that a person
with abundant energy will have more capacity to commit to
accomplishing ideas, setting and reaching goals.
A Word Of Caution
About Indirect Measures
Indirect
measures are just that: they point us toward
possibilities, but they don’t guarantee direct
cause-and-effect.
For example, people with lower energy levels can be highly
motivated individuals who have learned to manage their
energy level and focus it on accomplishing goals.
In
Summary
Exceptional
performance is rare, and that’s why we call it
“exceptional.”
Your job is to select the best available candidate, the one
with the most potential for exceptional performance, and then
nurture that potential through careful placement and specific
coaching. Exceptional performance is not just a matter
of finding the exceptional person; it can be
developed.
Remember, People are not your most
important asset!
The RIGHT People are!
To hire the best, test!
To reveal management potential, test!
To diagnose
problem behavior, test!
Best regards,
Kurt G. Helm, Ph.D.
Phone Toll Free
800-886-4356
Email: khelm@helmtest.com
Website: http://www.helmtest.com/
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Helm, Ph.D., of Helm and Associates, Inc. Please visit our
website at http://www.helmtest.com/ for
more information about how to avoid hiring mistakes by using
pre-employment testing as part of the applicant evaluation
procedure.”
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