• You could easily predict the performance of your leaders, your teams and your organization?
• You could gain access to the underlying motivators that drive a leader or employee to do their best work?
• You could eliminate costly hiring mistakes and determine in advance to what extent a candidate will perform well in a role?

Such a solution exists and can unleash the potential and performance within your organization.

It’s called motivational profiling.  Your underlying (and often unconscious) attitudes and motivations determine what you pay attention to and focus on in your leadership role.

These deep motivation and attitudinal patterns  (MAPs) ultimately drive – yours and others’ –

• Behaviors
• Decision making style
• Requirements for change and variety
• Dominant motivation driver
• Levels of strategic and visionary thinking
• Relationship to norms/rules
• Orientation toward innovation and creativity
• And much more

Drawing on recent evolutions in cognitive science research, motivational profiling is a state-of-the-art assessment tool that provides a window into yours and your employees’ intrinsic motivations and attitudes at work.

These intrinsic motivations are the invisible forces that pull you and your organization in a certain direction.   By uncovering these patterns, you can unlock the motivational code for improving engagement, productivity and performance in your workplace.

Before delving into 7 key leadership motivation patterns, let’s first look at 3 often-missed truths about performance.

3 truths every leader needs to know about performance

1.  Most companies mistakenly believe that competencies are the #1 driver of performance.  

Not true!  Just because you have a certain capability doesn’t mean that you are motivated to use it.  We all know people who are highly educated and/or talented, yet just get by in their work role.  As Zig Ziglar said,

“Attitude, not Aptitude, determines Altitude.”

Competency accounts for, at best, 20% of performance.  Yet companies continue to invest in skills development only to be disappointed by little or no difference in performance.

The truth is your motivation patterns account for as much as 60% of performance.  Motivation patterns reflect whether you want to do something, NOT whether you can do it.

2.  Different leadership roles require different motivation patterns for high performance in that role.

While there are certain patterns important to all leaders – such as, a high people interest, specific leadership roles may require different motivational patterns to be successful.

For example,

A successful CFO is likely to have such MAPs (Motivation and Attitudinal patterns) as — strong motivation toward procedures over options; a preference for solving problems over focus on goals; and a high past time orientation that drives focus on traditions, past experience and benchmarks.

A successful CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) is likely to have such MAPs as – strong motivation toward options (ie., how to do something faster, better or cheaper) over procedures; high motivation toward goals, rather than avoiding problems; and high future time orientation with a focus on long term strategies, future customer needs and environmental changes.

Motivational profiling can help you put the best individuals into a specific leadership roles with the best chances of success.  Not only will motivational profiling tell you if an individual is naturally wired to be a successful leader.  It will also tell you for a given leadership role, if he/she is likely to excel.

3.  All behavior is motivated. If you want to change a leader’s behavior, change the motive underlying the behavior.

Common company practices tend to focus on behavioral changes to increase performance.  However, your behavior is a symptom or byproduct of your underlying motives.

Changing just behavior is at best temporary.  For permanent behavioral change, you must change the underlying motivation.

Identify the motive and you will understand the behavior.  Satisfy the motive and you will manage the behavior.

7 motivational patterns of high performance leadership

Since 2002, Carl Harshman — Founder, Institute for Work Attitude and Motivation –  has studied hundreds of business leaders’ MAPs.  He found the following 7 strong (high score) motivation patterns as key drivers of leadership effectiveness and performance.

Goal Orientation

Goal orientation is one of 2 patterns that reflect your direction motivation.  With a high goal orientation score, you are motivated to move toward goals, pleasure or something positive.

Its companion MAP — Problem Solving – reflects to what extent you are motivated to move away from pain, problems or risk.

High performing leaders tend to score high on goal orientation.  They want to focus on and pursue goals more than avoiding problems.

Breadth

The Breadth pattern reflects to what extent a leader focuses on the “big picture.”  It also reflects a leader’s cognitive style to think in broad, large chunks of information.  Like seeing a landscape from 10,000 feet above.

Its companion pattern is Depth – ie.,, thinking in small chunks of information and focusing on details.  Effective managers are typically more oriented toward details, as are functions like quality control and accounting.

Future Orientation

There are 3 Time Orientation patterns – Past, Present and Future.  This set of patterns influences your focus, decision making and thinking style.

High performance leaders tend to think from the future.  They want to pay more attention to a long term, rather than short term, view.  Effective managers, on the other hand, are more Present time oriented to deal with daily activities.

Power

In the context of MAPs assessment, the Power pattern reflects to what extent a leader wants to be in charge.  It is one of three core motivational drivers identified by McClelland.  The other two motivation drivers are Affiliation and Achievement.

High performing leaders score in the healthy range of Power – neither overly strong nor weak.  Too high and the leader becomes domineering.  Too weak and the leader shrinks from being in charge and their own personal power.

People and Group

There are two individual, yet highly related, patterns that high performing leaders tend to score high (or at least normal range) on each.

The People pattern is an interest filter.  A high score means the leader wants to deal with people as part of their role.  Other interest filters are oriented around things, such as systems, tools, money, activity, etc.

The Group pattern is an indication to what extent a leader wants to have contact with people as part of their role.

Evolution

This is one of three patterns that relates to a leader’s relationship with change.  A high Evolution score is typical of high performing leaders and indicates a motivation for planned, incremental change.  The Evolution pattern is synonymous with “continuous improvement.”

The other 2 change patterns are Sameness and Differences.  For different industries, these 2 patterns may play a more important role for leaders.

Shared Responsibility

This pattern and its companion pattern (Sole Responsibility) indicate a leader’s motivation as it relates to responsibility.

High performing leaders tend to have a high Shared Responsibility score.  It indicates that they are motivated to be great team players and delegators.  They want to collaborate and share responsibility.

By no means, are these the only motivation patterns that can impact your leadership performance.  They serve, however, as a starting point to help you identify to what extent you focus on (or motivated by) these 7 areas.

Real stories … real breakthroughs

When I assess leaders’ motivational patterns, I am looking at both 48 distinct motivational patterns, as well as combination of patterns, as clues about what is hindering or can enhance a leader’s performance.

I now have the luxury of accessing these patterns through an online tool.  It has opened the door to deep insights for many leaders, teams and organizations.

Not only has performance improved, leaders and teams rise to the top of their game, more engaged and motivated.  Below are 2 examples.

1.    Within 6 months, low performers became high performers.  Increased revenues – 33%.

Through motivation profiling and Models of Excellence tools, the motivation patterns of high performers within a call center were identified.  Under-performers were trained to replicate motivation patterns of high performers.  Results: 33% increase in revenues in 6 months;  a motivation profile of high performers also served as a recruiting tool for hiring top talent.

2.    Improved leadership teamwork, cohesiveness and performance.

A common leadership issue is being in sync and working as a team.  While some skills come into play for stronger teamwork, the bigger, often missed, issue is the differences in motivation patterns across the leadership team.

The key for this company was to train each leader in their own motivation patterns, as well as those of the other leaders.  When leaders were able to understand each other on a deep motivation level and how their differences were sources of team brilliance (rather than team breakdowns), team communication improved and performance increased.

Check out these free resources for more information:

• iWAM:  Mapping the New Landscape of Human Performance  (PPT download)
• Talent Management:  A Focus on Excellence (free 93 page ebook)

Email me with any questions.

The post Deep Motivations, Not Competencies, Drive Leadership Performance. appeared first on The Empowered Business.

One costly hiring mistake that I have observed with leaders is the unconscious avoidance, denial and/or toleration of under-performing employees.

Shocking costs of hiring mistakes

More commonly known as the cost of a mis-hire.

According to Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos, hiring mistakes have cost his company as much as $100 million!  That’s alot of dollars immediately subtracted from the bottomline.

For many companies, that one mistake can make the difference between surviving and thriving, between mediocrity and high performance.  Mis-hires and under-performing employees are the #1 profit leak in companies today.

Why Does This Issue Perpetuate Unknowingly in Many Companies?

For one, few companies actually take the time to calculate the hard and soft costs of even a single mis-hire.  Ignorance is not bliss in this case.  The higher the level of the position, the quicker the cost of a mis-hire increases exponentially.

To understand why such a large number, let’s look closely at the long list of direct, indirect and long-term opportunity costs of a mis-hire:

• costs associated with your time, your team’s time and any outside recruiting help in finding, screening and interviewing the pool of possible candidates
• costs associated with reference checking
• hard and soft costs associated with training a new employee
• costs associated with manager’s time to get a new employee up to speed
• costs associated with the lost productivity of a new employee for at least first 3-6 months
• long-term opportunity costs – seldom considered – with a mis-hire

-   substandard service

-   lowered employee morale and the resulting substandard performance in other employees

-   missed deadlines

-   customer dissatisfaction with product quality, customer service and/or lost trust/faith in the company

-   missed sales opportunities

-   and so much more

According to Guy Kawasaki, best selling author and former Chief Evangelist at Apple, there is another hidden high cost of mis-hires. “’A’ players tend to hire ‘A’ players; ‘B’ players tend to hire ‘C’ players and so forth.”   How does that translate to you and your organization?

If you are hiring anything less than “A” performing leaders, your leaders will hire mediocre employees that are not as good as they are, due to their own insecurities.  Perpetuating that under-performing cycle throughout the organization, your “B” and “C” leaders will cost you many times more than the $6 million we quoted above.

Can your bottomline afford that?

Why Is the High Cost of Mis-Hires Rampant?

Below are the 4 most common reason for hiring mistakes I have found in working with companies for over 30 years:

• Hiring decisions are at least 80% made as “gut feeling” or “based on appearances”  — such as, “I liked the person,” “they seemed honest and hard working,” etc.

• Scarcity and/or urgency mindset — a belief that few candidates have the skills you need or you are driven by outside pressures to fill the spot immediately and settle for mediocre candidates.
• As a hiring manager, you are dazzled by first impressions, how good the person looks on paper, credentials, advanced degrees, well-prepared interview responses, etc. In addition, the highly competitive job market has triggered an increase in exaggerated claims, embellished resumes and “half truths” often missed in the hiring process.
• Not understanding the difference between and/or having the needed tools to discern top talent vs. best fit talent.  With all the buzz about hiring top talent, many companies seek the most impressive backgrounds, past successes and prestigious credentials in their pursuit of top talent without any regard to best fit talent.

Past success and experience are often an unreliable predictor of future performance.  Why?  Because different people are motivated by and excel in different work environments, organizational cultures, job opportunities, etc.  Competencies and skills only account for 20% of future performance.  The right attitudes, motivations, values and goals for a given role and company predict 80% of performance.

What are the 5 Best Secrets to Avoiding Costly Hiring Mistakes and Finding Best Fit Employees?

Secret #1:  Shift your mindset from hiring employees to hiring partners.

Your employees are your most important partners and stakeholders.  Hiring employees is like finding the best marriage partner or close circle of friends.

You seek those who have similar values, will make you a better person and provide synergies for both of you to create something bigger than you can individually.  While you may value their past accomplishments and expertise, it’s what’s on the inside and the synergies between you that will make that partnership fly.

Secret #2:  Hire those with the capacity to excel and exceed you.

I emphasize finding those with the best capacity to excel and outperform others, including yourself.  Capacity not only includes current capabilities.

Capacity also includes the right mindset, motivational drivers and thinking necessary to ignite future potential.  It takes extraordinary self-confidence, soul searching and inner security for leaders to recognize when they hire those that exceed them, everyone wins.

Secret #3:  Hire “A+” players based on attitude, motivation and culture fit.

How you assess best talent fit for your company and for each role is the single most important ingredient to successful hiring and maximizing employee performance.

The best tool I have found to help clients assess attitude and motivation fit is an online assessment tool (IWAM), uncovering 48 unique attitude and motivation drivers that best predict future performance.  Although all patterns are important in varying degrees, there are usually 6-8 drivers most critical for company/culture fit and a handful of other drivers important to A performance in a given role/function.  For more info about how IWAM can help you hire best fit talent, go HERE!

In addition, to further assess culture fit, it is important that leaders learn scenario building interviewing skills, or hypothetical “what if” questions for assessing values and traits, without the candidate’s awareness or ability to prepare for such questions.

Secret #4:  Develop a mission statement, results-oriented job description and list of non-negotiable traits before you start the hiring process.

You can’t know how to assess a best fit candidate unless you know why you are hiring someone, how will their contributions impact company goals and be measured and what traits are needed to excel in that specific role. 

Most job descriptions are long laundry list of tasks and responsibilities without justification why the position exists or a scorecard how to evaluate success and performance.  Without this information, the probability of finding those with greatest chance to succeed and raise the game is very low.

Secret #5:  Stop relying on intuition; start relying on unbiased, objective due diligence.

I’ve have heard too many leaders’ hiring regret stories.  Examples of when they were convinced a candidate would work based on feelings and impressions, only to find after a year of frustration, procrastination and endless coaching, that they made a mistake.  A million dollar (or more) mistake, at that.

To avoid this pitfall, develop a rigorous hiring process.  Develop screening criteria and use objective data to eliminate candidates right away.

Examples could include driving history check, credit check, drug tests if necessary, etc.  What you are seeking are personal records that reflect a candidate’s character.  Also check character references, asking truth-telling questions, like … on a scale 1-10, how well did the candidate get along with co-workers?  And, why that #? 

After 1-2 stages of screening, have a team of individuals from a variety of positions interview candidates with list of prepared questions and hands-on problem solving scenarios of common role/company issues.  To ensure a candidate is aligned with company purpose, you should also ask “purpose based” questions such as, “what do you want to be remembered for?  Or “when in your life have you been so passionately focused on an activity that you lost track of time and what were you doing?”

Hiring, by no means, is a science.  Even with the best hiring systems, mistakes will be made.  The key is to hire slowly, fire quickly.  Your credibility and reputation as a leader, inside and outside, depend on it.  Be rigorously honest about your past hiring mistakes, your own hiring blindspots and the changes you will make to start hiring your best employees.

Let’s keep the conversation going.   Visit our blog to share your comments, biggest hiring mistakes, stories of regret, burning questions and valuable resources for finding and hiring best fit employees.  We want to hear from you!

___________________

The post Shocking Costs of Hiring Mistakes appeared first on The Empowered Business.

• Aspires to accomplish great things?

• Is always seeking to raise your bar higher?

• Continually searches for an edge in personal performance?

• Gets diminishing returns from your efforts?

• Is fired up to take things to the next level, but doesn’t know how?

For a moment, put aside the stresses of your day and shift your focus from what is to what can be.  It’s time to enter a world of new possibilities for yourself and your future.  It’s time to play a new Leadership Game.

Imagine  …

Photo Credit: David Niblack

• You could be at the top of your mental game with volition

• Instantly elevate yourself into a peak emotional and mental state within minutes

• Fuel your confidence, passion and motivation on a daily basis that moves you to action

What would that do to your leadership performance, success and results   in the future?

Ninety percent (90%) of your leadership success boils down to one critical factor: your psychology.  Great leaders who achieve their extraordinary visions and success share one fundamental power: the ability to harness their emotions and transform them into focused, self-directed actions and accomplishments.

Shifting your psychology is the quickest, most profound strategy for realizing peak performance. Let’s look at what you can do to master your state and ultimately your outcomes.

The State–Success Connection: 

“How are you feeling at this moment?”  Whether you realize it or not, right now your state is running your performance.  If you are depressed or fearful, you will experience low motivation, focus and/or productivity.  If you are in a positive state, you will feel a sense of vitality, direction and momentum.

No matter what your state, there is great news!  Unlike goals which take time to achieve, your state can change instantly.  Below are 7 key strategies for changing your state and rising to the top of your business game … starting now.

1. Lead From Your Peaks

An important presupposition about all humans is that people have all the resources they need to achieve success.  Our mental images, self-talk and feelings are the foundations of our “inner” resources.  We can use those resources to build any thought, feeling or skill we want.

To build those inner resources, practice leading from your peaks.  Imagine a defining moment in your past when you overcame fear or a setback. Notice your physiology at that time.  Recall what you said to yourself as you triumphed.  Reconnect to that feeling of determination and courage. Anchor those inner resources by “stepping back into those memories” as though they are happening now.  If you have done this process correctly, you will have ignited the same emotions in present time as you felt from your past peak moments.  Now ask:

• From what peak moment(s) can you lead? 

• What past triumph inspires you to realize your vision and to overcome any obstacle?  

• What higher peaks can you climb?

2. Re-Engineer Your Brain For Bigger Goals and Visions

Have you ever noticed when you are flying into the vast skies, how small a car or house look from above?  Likewise, in a vast world of endless possibilities, our norm is to pursue teeny, tiny goals that are the size of specks compared to our potential.  These goals often lack fire and excitement are driven by “shoulds” and “needs” rather than “wants” and “desires.”

Big, bold visions are the fuel of every great achievement.  They are the catalysts of magic.  Walt Disney – the ultimate dreamer – had one directive for his project managers in building theme parks:  “Build the castle first.”  He knew that getting the castle in place was where the magic was.   If you could feel the magic, you could go the distance and do the hard stuff.

• When was the last time you felt excited about your own personal leadership direction and that of your organization?

•   How can you re-engineer your leadership visions to ignite the magic?  

• What “castle” must you build first to go the distance?

3. Upgrade Your “Inner Rule Book”

Your “inner rule book” – namely, your beliefs and convictions — drive all your leadership behaviors, actions and decisions, as well as your state and emotions.  They make up the boundary conditions of your thinking and form the parameters of your Inner lLeadership Game.*   When your beliefs are based on a mindset of limitations, you narrow your possible outcomes.  When transformed into new empowering beliefs, they ignite potential and allow you to soar.

Warren Buffet believes that it is easier to create money than spend it.  Richard Branson believes that business is fun and creative and anything is possible.  The only difference between you and Warren Buffet or Richard Branson is your “inner rule book.

• What “inner rules” are keeping you back from playing a bigger Leadership Game? 

• Who is producing the leadership results you want?  What is that person’s beliefs or “inner rule” book?  

• Which of their beliefs could you adopt to realize a breakthrough in your own performance?

4. Make Supreme Confidence a Deliberate Choice

In my 28 years of transforming leaders, I have found that more than 70% of all leaders are victims of “backwards thinking.”  That is, they believe that confidence is a by-product of success, rather than the driver of success.

According to Bill Gates,  “supreme confidence is a choice.”  You choose it first; then the proof appears later.  To cultivate it, you must declare victory before you even step out on the battlefield.  Certainty will propel you to victory.

• What would it take for you to feel supremely confident as a leader?  

• What leadership victories are you ready to declare now? 

5. Distinguish Between Fact and Interpretation

In the world of NLP (NeuroLingusitic Programming), a core theme is:  “the map is not the territory.”  Your perception of reality is only a representation of reality.  It’s never reality itself.  No more than the map of California is California itself.

Einstein said that ‘there are very few facts,” yet we treat everything as fact.  We believe our perceptions are “truth,” when they are really subjective experiences.  The meaning you give to an event … your “story” … rather than the event itself will drive your state, your response and your outcomes.

I recently heard a cancer patient say that “she did not see cancer as killing her, but rather it gave her permission to live more fully.”  How many people do you know that would respond accordingly?  While we may not have control over the events in our lives, we do have choice in how we respond.  Our state depends on how we interpret events in our lives.  Our interpretation and ultimately our response will drive every outcome.

• What negative “story” are you telling yourself as a leader when revenues drop or a major customer is complaining about poor service?  

• What might be 3 positive interpretations of any current business challenge or setback you are experiencing personally or in your organization?  

• Given those new interpretations, how might you respond differently in terms of actions, behaviors and outcomes?

6. Amplify What Is Excellent

NLP is the study of human excellence.  It provides the tools, technologies and processes for leaders and organizations to achieve rapid breakthroughs and unleash greater potential.

In this spirit, one of the best ways to rise to the top of your game is by amplifying your excellence so much that the roadblocks seem like little bumps in the road.  How do you amplify your excellence?

One of my favorite processes is called The Circle of Excellence.  The process anchors into your neurology your state of excellence so you can access it on demand when needed.  To do something similar, think of a time when you excelled and relive it.  Amplify that memory by making it bigger, brighter, more colorful and compelling.  Put yourself into that memory as though it is happening now.  Imagine utilizing this excellence resource state in future situations when you need/want it.  Recall another memory of excellence and repeat the process.  Taking a few moments to stack and amplify your excellence memories will increase your performance exponentially.

• When in the past have you excelled in your leadership role or even personally? 

• In reliving those memories, what did you see, feel and say to yourself in that experience?  

• How can you use those images, feelings and self-talk as an excellence resource state in future situations?

7. Stay Committed To and Aligned With Your Core

Goals by themselves do not motivate actions.  They are merely the stepping stones to realize what we deem important: our values.  When identifying goals, we answer the question “what do we want?”  With values, we answer the question “why?”

Values act like superchargers on our motivations. Strong values ignite strong motivation.  When we disconnect from our values, we become de-motivated, feel empty and depressed, and cut off from  “our souls.”

Our values are our compass, steering our course based on our own sense of personal integrity and what we consider important.  Staying committed to our values drives authentic power, momentum toward  goals and experiencing meaning and fulfillment in your role and life.  True success and emotional mastery cannot be obtained without this alignment.

• What’s most important to you in your leadership role?  

• What recent actions, decisions or behaviors are out of integrity with your core values? 

• What new choices must you make to get back to your core? 

In the words of Thoreau, “For things to change, we must change.”  One new thought, one new decision, one new belief can change the size and direction of your entire Leadership Game.*

Applying the principles and exercises in this article can be that one thing that changes everything.  Learn how to master your emotions and your state and you are on the path to mastering your leadership destiny.

For more information about mastering your Inner and Outer Leadership Game,  click here.

 _____________________________

The post How to Rise to the Top of Your Leadership Game appeared first on The Empowered Business.