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Vietnamese We have provided a clear guideline on how to sketch your own leader persona in the previous blog post. You already had a map, now there needs to be a compass.
What are the best-practices you should adopt to pinpoint elite candidates?
1. Key Performance Indicators
By quantifying the target an individual is expected to achieve within a predetermined time frame, KPI's are among the most reliable benchmarks for gauging an employee's performance, whose output then serves as an input into the identification of talents.
It comes as no surprise that this performance measurement is considered a rule of thumb whenever the Board discusses supreme methods for identifying a potential candidate for succession planning. Worthy of the name, KPIs demonstrate the work capacity of the individual who is under evaluation in the most objective manner possible.
Despite being commonly overlooked, KPIs are able to manifest to some degree an employee's time management skills and resilience in the face of pressure, how perceive stresses and challenges either as opportunities or hardships.
KPIs provide a comprehensive picture of the whole organisation's progress, in which the picture of every individuals' performance is also depicted. Based on this, you have valid grounds to pinpoint the ''superstars'', those best performers, and groom them for future leadership roles.
It is now accepted as a norm that in order to maximise organisational efficiency, any business should have some kinds of performance metrics in place, so it would sound quaint if there is a chief executive somewhere stating categorically that her organisation does and will not adopt KPIs of any sorts.
Universally practised and readily available as it may seem, choosing the right set of KPIs to facilitate talent identification is by no means an easy feat. There is no shortage of organisations that commit failure at this very step: they either set an undemanding or unrealistic, or even irrelevant target. The damaging consequence is that they register an ill-fitted into the plan and lose out on the decent ones.
Read more: KPIs – the key to identifying your top performers
2. 360-degree review
The conventional assessment models often focus mostly on assumptions made by the direct superior about the report that is under review. This partial opinion results in flawed feedback that favours biases for most parts, or even nepotism in some extreme cases.
Other objective and statistics-based performance appraisals such as KPIs that we discussed earlier seems to have a major drawback: there is no human warmth and flesh in it. You surely do not want to appoint to the Board someone whom no one holds dear or supports. This will damage the morale of the organisation.
360-Degree Review, an emerging assessment method, is able to make up those deficiencies in the succession planning strategy. The name of the tool stems from the concept of accumulating and centralising all relevant feedback from all the individuals whom the candidate interacts with in the organisational context.
People should acknowledge that the ultimate objective of the succession plan is to identify a successor who not only possesses all key attributes of a leader but also has the charisma of one. In other words, to find a competent leader that is endorsed by all her followers.
Thus feedback, no matter where they come from - from one's self, her managers, co-workers, subordinates and even clients, matter and could yield invaluable insights. By considering all the reviews and critiques, 360-Degree Review provides an in-depth view on the candidate's strengths and shortcomings with respect to her work capacity, conduct or discipline. These constructive data also ease the process of tailoring a Training and Development plan. Furthermore, knowing how one is socially perceived also helps her fine-tune justly to gain traction among stakeholders.
That being said, information from in-house tools is oftentimes either fragmented or superfluous, or both. GR8 360, our top-notch 360-Degree Review solution, is tailor-made for your organisation’s scope, culture, and objectives and the changing external market. GR8 360 is not only capable of deriving and synthesising actionable insights from raw data but also projecting workforce and talent issues.
Read more: Understand the fundamentals of 360-Degree Feedback
3. Potential Assessment
Universally accepted, there are 2 crucial factors that need to be scrutinised when assessing a leadership candidate: their performance and potential.
Whereas the former could be gauged thoroughly by a proper set of KPIs that is relevant to an individual's occupational category and required skill sets, ''potential'' is an abstract concept. So abstract that it could not be measured, at least, not to its full extent.
Some HR professionals have argued that HR functions should set aside ''potential'' when identifying potential leaders, instead opting for performance as it is more reliable and reflective of an employee's capabilities.
Amid the controversy, it is highly recommended that organisations should not avoid potential assessment completely.
A fairly reliable tool that you should consider integrating into the succession plan is the 9-box grid as it takes both performance and potential of the candidate into account.
When used with considerable caution, the 9-box grid could be of great use. The tool categorises all individuals into different predefined groups: who is the superstar, who is the core employee but needs further coaching, and who is the inept that needs replacing.
Read more: How potential are your candidates in the succession plan?
4. Psychometrics tests
Any job-seeker must have gotten acquainted with being administered a file of multiple choices which they are asked to complete. This usually takes place after the recruiter has screened the applicant's CV and/or resumé and concluded that their background is qualified for the position.
This test is known as a means for psychometric assessment, through which the candidate's skills, personality, aptitude, and knowledge are evaluated. This added procedure is widely applied in medium - and large - scale corporates where the search for adequately qualified individuals must be conducted with minimum errors.
Read more: Psychometric assessments: What are they & Why are they important?
In the context of succession planning, psychometric assessment is applied in the form of a multiple-choice test that comprises any number of type of questions such as intelligence, reasoning, problem-solving, verbal and such. This diversity enables the HR and the Board to evaluate the successor on various aspects.
Essentially, there are 3 main different types of psychometric tests that could be leveraged to identify leadership talents:
- Achievement assessment, measuring the candidates' knowledge, cognitive skills, and previous accomplishments.
- Aptitude (or cognitive) assessment, measuring the ease with which the candidate acquires new skills and sets of knowledge.
- Personality assessment, evaluate the way the candidate perceives work and life.
A well-groomed psychometric test is able to provide a deep understanding and insights into the employee's competencies and aptitude. Exploiting those valuable pieces of information, the Board could either single out individuals who meet the criteria for populating leadership bench strength or fine-tune the coaching plan of those who are already in the pipeline or phase out the incompetent.
That being said, building a psychometric test is, at best, a nightmare. You need to seek and gather a group of individuals with extensive expertise both in the nature of humans and in the market. GR8 Full Spectrum, our latest psychometrics solution, is tailored to your need of searching the best-fitted candidates for succession planning. Entrusting the task of assessing candidates to GR8 Full Spectrum, enables you to have more room to deploy resources into other critical processes.
5. Self-assessment
Grounded in the notion that everyone is born a leader, the use of self-identification is to give every individual a chance to self-reflect.
To begin, self-assessment appeases the incompetent in the likely event that they feel resentful due to not making the list. As an integral component of a standard succession plan, they would then be given a number of stretch assignments. Supposing that these employees fail these tests, they would acknowledge their shortcomings and, hopefully, commit to further training for the next succession season.
And not everyone yearns for the height of leadership, some rather devote their expertise behind the scene. By encouraging self-reflection, the organisation could avoid putting these core employees or veterans in an undesirable conflict of interest, which could result in their departures and in the organisation's loss of knowledge capital.
