Improving Managerial Talent

Practical Psychology for Human Resourcing and Learning & Development Professionals

Hugh McCredie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351363983
• Subtopic: Business generale
• Index: Business

Aimed at senior HRM and L&D specialists responsible for improving their organisation's managerial talent, Improving Managerial Talent covers the core findings of the author's and other published research. It provides a highly participative overview of personality and ability psychometrics, involving the opportunity for self-application. It reveals hard evidence of the extent to which such tests can add value to the prediction of managerial success and their link to requisite competencies. It shows how qualified testers, HR and line managers can each make a unique contribution to the selection process. The book goes on to show how management style is a product of personality and habit and how the acquisition and use of a complementary style can improve persuasiveness and the cultivation of interpersonal skill both for the manager and for those whom the manager might need to coach. It regards job-challenge as the primary engine of managerial growth, both for development in key result areas and for underlying personal competencies.

The book provides the reader with some self-insights and an appreciation of validated, powerful, often in-house, methods for selecting and developing better managers. The methods on offer have been validated on a population of over 400 directors of small to medium-sized business units. They include a generic psychometric algorithm for the selection of managers, some unique findings on styles of managing, coaching and persuading based upon close observation of over 200 senior managers and a distinctive and powerful approach to developing interpersonal skills by (1) practice, (2) demonstration of alternatives and (3) reflection.

Part I
Recognising and selecting managerial talent

Drawing on a range of published empirical research

The first part of this book introduces a model which reflects the efforts of the author and others to remedy the almost total absence of published, evidence-based solutions for predicting managerial success which existed prior to the 1980s. It offers robust data and a validated algorithm for the personality-based prediction of performance applicable across a range of managerial roles and explores the extent to which personality data can, or cannot, add value to well-informed and relatively unbiased ratings of personal competencies.

Consideration is also given to combinations of personality factors known to contribute to managerial career derailment and the extent to which the adult personality is amenable to change. It suggests complementary but different roles for qualified test users, HR specialists and more senior line supervisors in selecting more effective managers.

1
What contributes to overall managerial performance?

If we know what contributes to managerial performance and can measure these contributions, then we stand some chance of predicting successful managers at an early stage in their career. In the figure, below, we have a flow diagram of the various factors believed to contribute to overall performance, which I developed from an earlier published model.¹ The ‘upstream’ factors are mental abilities and personality traits, whilst the most ‘downstream’ is overall performance. Mental abilities are variations on a theme of what is now commonly referred to as IQ.² These contributions are invariably assessed by those qualified to use psychometric tests. Studies of twins and adopted children, mainly from the developed world, have revealed that around 50 per cent of the differences in IQ scores come from what we have inherited from our parents.³

Figure 1.1 Contributions to overall performance

Personality traits are the broad Big Five personality factors, distilled from everyday⁴ languages and clinical sources,⁵ which have been found to underpin a wide range of good personality questionnaires. These are extraversion (E), agreeableness (A), conscientiousness (C), neuroticism (N) and openness (O). They can be remembered better if the initial letters are re-arranged to give OCEAN. About one third of differences in personality test scores are attributable to genetic factors. Head scanning studies are increasingly demonstrating how the Big five factors are associated with different areas and different chemicals produced within the brain.⁶ As with mental abilities, assessing personality traits accurately requires the services of a qualified tester using adequately validated tests. Such validation requires the demonstration of a statistically significant link with job performance criteria, preferably published in a peer-reviewed journal. However, as Lord Robert Winston demonstrated in his TV mini-series The Big Personality Test (BBC1 30 and 31 May 2010), the Big Five factors resonate with labels that we use in everyday life to categorise people and we can grasp their meaning without difficulty.

Excluding the possibility of testing errors (e.g. the candidate having a bad day), scores from reliable tests administered by a qualified tester should be regarded as relatively fixed.⁷ However, if in doubt, the tester could follow-up on a second occasion with a parallel form of the same test or an acceptable equivalent.

It is worthwhile noting that measures of the Big Five model sample the normal range of personality.⁸ There are other measures which are concerned with different levels of dysfunctionality. Some of the latter will be examined, briefly, when we look at the personality styles and disorders which de-rail managerial careers.

There is a lot of published research around the Big Five factors. Some of this relates to specific occupational roles.

The constituent scales of some personality tests, whose origins predate the emergence of the consensus Big Five model, have been found to be underpinned by approximations to these broad factors and it is possible to calculate derived Big Five scores. The Global Factors of the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) and the Big Five scores of the Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ) are examples of this facility.

Figure 1.2 Assessors and recruiters should be very wary of any questionnaire which does not cover all of the Big Five factors. Narrower measures could miss some aspect of personality which is potentially vital, or problematic, to the role for which they are predicting.

Personal competencies relate to the non-specialist requirements of managers of which the four typical cluster headings are: results-orientation competencies, interpersonal competencies, intellectual competencies and adaptability competencies.⁹ They can be assessed by bosses, colleagues and direct reports answering questionnaires. Alternatively they can be measured ‘off-job’ via assessment centres and certain types of highly structured interviews.¹⁰ The latter are typically administered by specially trained interviewers. The former often include a mix of assessment specialists, HR staff and senior managers. The functional, specialist or technical competencies of managers (e.g. accountancy, marketing, engineering) will not be explored in this book as they are generally best specified and assessed by the client department or unit for which selection is taking place.

Key result areas (KRAs) constitute the most important accountabilities of the job and performance in these is best assessed by a manager who has expert knowledge of its content. We will be looking at the KRAs which frequently occur at the top of the three mainstream functions of an organisation or each of its business units; i.e. sales/marketing, operations and finance/accounting.

Job competences are the tasks at which the average performer is expected to be competent and form the basis of National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs).¹¹

Non-task behaviours generally centre around what researchers have called ‘organisational citizenship behaviour’ (OCB).¹² Measuring this can add value to predicting overall performance in narrow roles. However, in managerial appointments OCB tends to be reflected in the requisite upstream personal competencies referred to above, or, otherwise assumed at this level.

Overall performance requires little explanation; it is the term frequently used when bosses and colleagues are asked to make a judgement on the job holder’s overall contribution to the organisation over the period under review; e.g. a year or the total time in the job.

The boxes in bold type relate to the contributions which we shall be examining in greater depth across the sections which follow. We shall also be looking at the nature and strength of the links between the boxes as depicted by the down-pointing arrows. In particular we shall be considering whether it would be necessary to measure an upstream contribution if we already have more downstream information; do we need to measure personality traits if we have personal competency ratings?

Notes

1 Spencer and Spencer (1993) proposed the ‘Causal Flow Model’ whereby personal charac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• PART I Recognising and selecting managerial talent: drawing on a range of published empirical research
• PART II Behaviours and styles: lessons from the systematic study of managers talking to each other
• PART III Developing managerial talent: some powerful examples of theory-based management development practices
• PART IV Improving managerial talent: reflections and summary
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index