XC InSight – Development

Meet Jessica Michaels; she is 34 and works for a major software development company as an account manager in their sales division. The software is complex with a long sales cycle and requires analytical skills to help customers apply the software solutions to solve their problems. It requires technical competence to ensure clear communications between customers and sales support to ensure specific client needs are addressed in a timely manner. Jessica is a competent salesperson with excellent analytical and technical skills. Customers find it easy to trust her because she is innovative and demonstrates technical and analytical competence.

Jessica’s manager, Rob Hanson, is a regional director for the software development company. He has eight direct reports, each of whom is an account manager with several large accounts. He recognizes Jessica’s strengths as a competent sales professional, and yet, he has been struggling with how to help her take her sales performance to the next level. His success is measured in part by staff improvement, and he knows that improving her sales skills will also help the company’s bottom line results. He values her technical and analytical abilities, which are an outstanding asset in this field, and he would like to see Jessica excel.

Rob sees that Jessica is very goal focused and driven to succeed. Oftentimes, when she focuses on a problem in the sales situation, however, she can become overly immersed in the data and lose track of time, continuing to work and rework a problem. She can become overly critical and abrasive to those around her, in particular sales support, so people internally are reluctant to work with her. Rob has even had occasional feedback from customers, who say they are impressed with her innovation and problem-solving skills, but say she can rub them the wrong way, especially when they question her analyses and prolong making a buy decision.

Recently, her company implemented a companywide employee assessment program to give managers the information they need to help develop their employees. Jessica completed the XC InSight Assessment.

Her manager has just received Jessica’s XC Insight Development Assessment Report results. He is impressed by how clearly the report reflects what he already knows about Jessica and pleased with the advice the report provides for helping her develop. After he has reviewed the full report, he turns to the summary to help him focus on how he can use the information to communicate with Jessica. Let’s walk through the process Rob uses to help uncover Jessica’s areas for improvement and how he uses the information he receives.

Summary of Results

The first section that Rob looks at is the results summary. The color coded graph gives him an instant picture of the job-candidate fit and the summarizing statements clearly interpret the graph for him.

Reviewing DISC

In the results summary, the first section Rob looks at is Jessica’s DISC profile. This is a summary of her behavioral tendencies and how she approaches various work situations.

Behavior Profile

 

Strengths:

• May be seen as being forceful, analytical, creative and driving.
• Tends to be fact and data driven, and oriented toward concepts, projections and probabilities.
• Tenaciously gathers and reviews facts looking for the right answer.
• Considers all possible solutions before making a decision.
• Has a high concern for quality and accuracy.
• Demonstrates considerable planning ability.
• Decisive on daily matters.
• Finds new and innovative ways to achieve results.
• Drives change within the organization.
• Is focused on tangible outcomes.
• Maintains high standards for self and others.

Potential Overextensions and Limitations:

• May be seen as intense, blunt, aggressive, cool or aloof.
• She may not always convey her creative ideas in a simple, understandable way.
• A tendency toward perfectionism can result in others finding it difficult or impossible to live up to her standards or expectations.
• Becomes easily bored with routine.
• Can be seen as overly controlling.
• Overly critical and demanding of others.
• Exceedingly cautious when making big decisions.

Jessica is high D, which as the category suggests, means she is driven to achieve results. Other factors contribute to her behavior, and predictably, the report highlights the strengths that help her sell complex solutions in a technical environment: fact and data driven, and oriented toward concepts, projections, and probabilities; high concern for quality and accuracy; considerable planning ability; and finds new and innovative ways to achieve results.

Potential limitations include: a propensity toward bluntness, perfectionism, and overly controlling behavior. She can also appear cool and aloof while being overly critical of others who find it difficult or impossible to live up to her expectation and standards. She is someone who can get bogged down in the data and be exceedingly cautious when making big decisions. Rob notes this has been an area of concern in past performance reviews.

Competency Profile Summary

So far the results are consistent with other past reports and observations. The next area in the summary Rob reviews is the Competency Profile Summary. This section highlights the top five competencies. Rob recalls that the competencies have been determined with questions that show how Jessica has responded to situations in the past. These are skills she uses in a work environment.

Jessica

‘

s Competency Profile Summary

This individual possesses strengths in the following areas:

• Persuades and Influences: Effective at persuading others to change their mind or alter behavior. Presents compelling rationale and options that focus on advantages.
• Communicates Articulately: Demonstrating an ability to speak clearly and concisely, and demonstrate skill in using expressiveness to convey important points in verbal communications.
• Gains Buy-In: Looking for alternatives to find win-win solutions and then negotiating deliverables and schedules.
• Delivers Compelling Presentations: Presents information with enthusiasm and expressiveness and adapts her presentation style to suit different audiences.
• Strives for Success: Driven to achieve and eagerly accepts challenging assignments. Strives to deliver excellence.

Potential development areas:

• Displays Emotions Effectively: At times emotions may be too easy to read. May show frustration or impatience too easily.
• Demonstrate Flexibility/Resilience: May tend to stick to how things have been done in the past and be slow to adapt to change. May get easily discouraged when things don’t go according to plan.
• Builds Rapport: Makes some effort to get to know and understand others but may find it challenging to establish quick rapport with some individuals.
• Establishes Credibility: Presents information positively, but openly discusses negatives. Does not embellish the facts to sell his/her ideas, but may paint a more optimistic picture to gain others’ support/business. Unlikely to hide intentions, but may not proactively offer underlying motivations.
• Listens Actively: May need to ask more open-ended questions, listen more intently and be more sensitized to the non-verbal cues during conversations.

Rob isn’t surprised that the relationship skills fall into an area for potential development, and yet, looking at her competency profile strengths, he sees how she uses persuasion, articulate communication, and buy-in to help close sales, perhaps overcoming the need for relationship building and the personal touch. Her top five competencies also show how she delivers compelling presentations and strives for success.

Her bottom five competencies show important sales skills that can be improved: displays emotions effectively, demonstrates flexibility/resilience, builds rapport, establishes credibility, listens actively.

Values and Motivation Profile

When Rob looks at the summary for Jessica’s values and motivation, he smiles and sees where she gets her tenacity and motivation to succeed in this challenging software sales environment. She obviously loves the challenge of selling sophisticated software solutions to people who respect her competence and innovation.

Jessica’s Values and Motivation Profile

The top three values in this individuals report indicate the following:

• She will be motivated by achieving challenging goals (high Achievement).
• She will enjoy work that allows her to take calculated risks and compete with others (high Adventure).
• She will be motivated by recognition, authority her ability to influence others (high Power and Overt Influence).

Jessica’s motivation for achieving challenging goals, willingness to put forth her innovative but carefully thought out strategies in an environment where she can influence others, all contribute to a successful sales situation.

Thinking Style Profile

The last summary Rob reviews is Jessica’s thinking style profile. This shows how Jessica analyzes problems, evaluates information, and forms opinions based on patterns and preferences for thinking about, remembering, and using information.

Jessica’s Thinking Style Profile

• Innovative thinking is greater than or equal to 84 percent of others in sales
• Analytic thinking is greater than or equal to 76 percent of others in sales
• Strategic thinking is greater than or equal to 20 percent of others in sales

Jessica scores highest in the innovative thinking style indicating she will focus on new ideas, solutions and opportunities when making decisions.

She is also high in analytical thinking, so in many situations, she will also collect data that will help her to consider the financial environment and leverage profitability when making decisions. Her results for strategic thinking show she will be less likely to focus on the long term implications of her decisions.

Jessica’s Development Plan

Jessica receives a copy of the full Development Assessment Report. The 48-page report explains every aspect of the assessment in detail and provides an explanation for each section and the report as a whole that explains to Jessica what her areas of strength are and where she has potential overextensions or limitations. After each profile: behavior, competencies, values and motivation and thinking styles, the report asks Jessica  to reflect and report her observations such as any comments that surprised her, how her strengths help her in the workplace, what she sees that might be limiting, and then what specific actions or challenges she might take to change or adapt. Jessica meets with a certified coach who reviews the results in her Development Assessment Report with Jessica. As part of her review and coaching session, Jessica completes the interactive reflection portions of the Development Assessment Report, which creates her development plan. Her development plan is then incorporated into the Summary Report.

Rob meets with Jessica to review the results together. As they go through the full Development Assessment Report, Rob listens as Jessica reports how she responded to the interactive questions throughout.

Rob and Jessica review the development suggestions in the report for each of the profile areas and then review Jessica’s development plan. When they have completed their session, they create specific action steps with time commitments providing a clear plan of action for how Jessica can use her strengths and to help Jessica work on areas of limitation or overextension. Here is a summary of Jessica’s development plan.

Jessica’s Development Plan Summary

List the behavioral strengths that the employee identified in their profile:

• High concern for quality and detail.
• Results oriented.
• Competitive and driven to achieve.
• Careful decision maker.
• Maintains high standards for herself.
• Persuading and influencing others.
• Gaining buy-in and building long term customer relationships.
• Good listener.

List the behavioral blindspotsthat the employee identified in their profile:

• Can have a tendency to over analyze.
• Can overwhelm her customer with presentations that are too detailed.
• Can spend excessive time researching a lead which can waste time.
• Has difficulty delegating tasks to others.

What are the areas that the employee would like to focus on?

• Delegating – learning to let go and delegate more to her sales support.
• Prospecting – avoiding the tendency to spend excessive time researching.
• Presentations – stopping the tendency to present too much detail.

What action steps will the employee take to improve in these areas?

(What do they need to start, stop, or continue doing or modify to improve in these areas?)

• Jessica sets high standards for herself and is very detail oriented. She admits this can be a strength and a weakness, depending on the situation. She plans to focus on the following areas:
• Continue to research her leads but avoid the tendency to spend too much time gathering information. It will be valuable for Jessica to set specific parameters for herself on the key information she will gather on a prospect before making the initial call and then stop researching.
• Jessica recognizes her need to streamline her presentations as she can present too much detail which can be confusing or overwhelming to some customers.

What are the top competencies that the employee has committed to working on?

Demonstrates Flexibility/Resilience:

• Jessica admits that while she likes variety in her job, having structure and consistency is important to her. We discussed her lower score in demonstrating flexibility/resilience and the impact this may have for her in the workplace along with areas that may be important to focus on.
• Becoming more comfortable with changes even when she doesn’t have all of the detail.
• Learning to let go and take support from others and delegate more tasks to her sales support. Take time to show others how she likes things done. She can always make edits and revisions later.

Displays Emotions Effectively:

• Jessica plans to pay closer attention to her ability to mask emotions, especially when under pressure. Asking for feedback from those she trusts and interacts with daily may also help her to become more aware of how her display of emotion may impact her and others.

What Jessica’s Manager Learned

The Development Assessment Report shows that Jessica scored very high in the behavioral assessment in the Driving category so she is very task focused and tends to move very quickly. Because she is impatient, he knows that in order to keep her moving forward, he needs to be very direct in his communication, provide regular and ongoing feedback. One way he can support her is to help her remove obstacles and roadblocks, and get back to her quickly when he communicates. Because she moves so quickly, oftentimes she won’t think something through. So another important way he can support her is by helping her to think through her decisions.

Because she is so highly innovative in the thinking styles, she’ll see the big ideas. What Rob needs to do is help her think through the process of how things connect. Otherwise, Jessica will be off thinking about these big ideas, and will get frustrated because she’s not able to execute them.

In her values he sees that she is very goal focused because of the high percentile score in the Achievement category. She likes a little bit of adventure, and she’s got the power and overt influence. So she likes to take a risk and is very goal focused. So something else Rob will do to help Jessica is make sure that she has very specific goals, not just in revenue, but in targeting new selling categories and new industries, or in taking a new idea and pitching or selling that new idea. Jessica needs to feel that she is innovating, that she is groundbreaking, that she is a change agent, and that she is opening up new territory that has been uncharted. Rob knows it is in both of their best interests to support her in those efforts while still helping her to think through how to get something done from start to finish.

Looking at her competencies, Rob knows that one of the areas, and she also mentioned this in her development plan, is that she tends to be very emotional, and she is not that flexible. Rob needs to continue to work with her to help her with the emotions and show her that expressing them so overtly doesn’t help her to get what she wants in moving her projects forward. She needs to build the connections with people, and it’s not just about checking it off her list and getting the task done. She needs to take the time to really build that rapport over a period of time and not just show that she is competent. We know she is competent, but she tends to think that her competence will earn that rapport building along with the credibility. Rob needs to show her is that she’ll get better results if she holds back on her emotional responses. Also, she doesn’t recognize always that her lack of flexibility gets in her way. So Rob will help her create good habits so that she becomes a better listener. Her mind is racing, she is moving so quickly, that oftentimes she doesn’t take time to really listen to what a customer is communicating.

What a wealth of information to prepare Rob for helping Jessica take her sales career to the next level!