As a keen amateur photographer, I have come to value how lenses and filters enable different perspectives to be obtained. For example, to make clouds more distinct, I might use a polarising filter. In a different context, the same filter can reduce reflections but would serve little or no purpose capturing a night sky. Careful …
Lao-Tzu, the ancient Chinese mystic philosopher, wrote that in the 6th century BC. Modern-day authors might say something along the lines of “effective leadership starts with knowing yourself”. The corollary of these quotes might read that “lack of self knowledge is unenlightened and can result in poor leadership”. I know from personal experience, running leadership …
The problem with judgement is that it’s subjective – rarely black and white and generally complicated by several shades of grey. Yet good judgement is often an essential job requirement, particularly for more senior roles where decisions tend to be less rule-based. The traditional options for assessing an individual’s judgement ability leave a bit to be desired ………
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Abraham Maslow* It’s a great quote, which is especially appropriate to personality and ability testing. You see, reliability and validity really matter when deciding which psychometric test to use. Poor reliability is a bit like having bathroom scales which give different readings each …
For the remainder of April, we are offering customised candidate reports for just £195 plus vat – that’s a 20% reduction on the normal price. Our reports include: pen portrait competencies profile interview prompts By using psychometrics as part of a recruitment process, much more can be discovered about the job/person fit than by just …
Good news! Leadership and Management government grants are back – with awards of £1000 available for qualifying organisations. The grants are intended to develop people management skills. They are available for companies who employ between 2 and 250 staff and show growth potential. Typical applications of the grants include leadership development, executive coaching and interventions …
Earlier this week, I was sent some excellent research on the use of psychometrics for recruitment and selection (thanks Yasmin). Aberdeen Research has produced a report which claims: 12% increase in revenue and an 11% increase in profit per full time employee 47% greater improvement in hiring manager satisfaction 15% greater performance in first year …
Most workplaces are collaborative environments where problems need to be resolved and decisions need to be made. People and teams need to interact and collaborate in as efficient and effective a manner as possible to realise the goals of the organisation. This requires a combination of hard skills (mostly technical) and soft skills (such as …
Customer research is such a great reality check. It challenges the status quo and almost invariably provides the odd surprise here and there. It’s a way of finding out what customers really think – particularly when undertaken by someone outside the sales process, who is not involved in the day-to-day business relationship. I’ve been doing …
Strategy is long term; it’s about the direction of an organisation and how it will meet customer needs profitably. Like a journey, you need to know your starting point, where you want to go and how you will get there. A key element of strategy is the identification and evaluation of alternative destinations; without this …