Power tip: "Don't forget the person behind the skills," Alex Franklin
"We often hire for technical competency. During the process, we forget about the person behind the skills."
LinkedIn
"Mining for Value" by Alex Franklin
firstprinciplesconsulting.com
Transcript
Ryan Castle: You're listening to Level 10 Leaders Power Tips, and I'm your host, Ryan Castle. Today we have a great tip from Alex Franklin from First Principles Consulting. Alex's power tip is on the people behind the skills. Let's dive in.
Alex Franklin: We are working with a large mining client to improve their productivity through business process improvement, formalisation of systems, unlocking and leveraging all of their existing data. Basically, all of the typical management consulting and coaching exercises. But the tweak that made the biggest difference was helping them to better understand and connect with the human element in their operations.
In business, we need to balance the technical and behavioural competencies. What this means is we often hire for technical competency, that is, eligibility for the role: certifications, skills and abilities, education and specific types of experience. During the process, we forget about the person behind the skills. We don't always consider the behavioural competencies, which is the suitability for the role. This might be their passion for certain tasks or outcomes, their interests, work preferences, interpersonal skills, career expectations, and so on.
For this project, it was our team dynamics exercise that was the value multiplier of everything else we were doing on site. We ran this with the leadership team to help them understand and work with, not against, each other's behavioural competencies. Most importantly, it helped them to understand their own. We use the Harrison Assessment tool, as its paradox reports are very helpful in facilitating conversations. But any third party tool that provides behavioural insight works. The common ones you've probably heard of are DiSC and Myers-Briggs.
The key is that these tools provide an outside perspective that helps people to understand themselves and each other better, which means that they can communicate with impact. The end result is everyone is now rowing in the same direction rather than against each other.
This small exercise took all of the consulting work that we were doing and supercharged it. It made it ten times more effective. It was so powerful that even after we finished the project and we'd left the site, the client still asked us to come back roughly every year, for either a refresher or because they'd had churn in their team. So it was the smallest thing we did, but it had such an outsized impact. And my big takeaway from this was don't forget the person behind the skills.
Ryan Castle: Thanks, Alex. To connect with Alex, go to level10.us/40. That's level 10 dot U S, forward slash four zero. While you're there, be sure to check out more Power Tips. And thanks for listening.
Small, deliberate actions drive lasting progress. Let's get to work.
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