Skip to main content

Talent Drain

Bobby is spectacular at identifying talented team members and using their strengths with the tasks at hand.  He loses talent at three times the rate of all other managers at his level in the organization.  Bobby's boss was given a report from hr which outlined the alarming rate of talent loss and the cost to the company.  The main theme from exit interviews was than"Bobby is brilliant and he is impossible to work for."  One exiting employee said, "I would not work for him again if he had the only job available."
Because Bobby had been heavily recruited and his sign-on bonus was significant, senior leaders didn't want to give up on Bobby's potential in the company. I had previously worked with the COO when she was in another company's and she called to discuss coaching possibilities for Bobby.  After considerable discussion about what a coaching engagement would be workable, Bobby was brought in to the discussions and he and I had a fit discussion.
Along with interviews of key stakeholders around Bobby, a highly personalized 360 multi-rater, and the Pearman.  And as you might expect, on job related and task related competencies, Bobby was stellar.  Relationship, team building, respectfulness, and understanding of others related behaviors were seen as nearly absent.  
On the Pearman, Bobby had high scores on Demonstrated Extraverted Thinking and high scores on a Natural pull of Extraverted Feeling. As we discussed this difference, Bobby shared that his strong Feeling function drove him to be mission oriented and passionate about being successful in his role.  He believed that the marching orders he had been given were about increasing standards, increasing efficiency, and driving action.  And in the environment he was in, he felt being hyper critical and analytical would achieve these goals.  
All of his flex scores were below the means (79-89). In discussions with Bobby, he revealed that he believed he needed to be super analytical to be successful--it was his mission. He began to see that his relentless criticism, fueled with a belief about his role wasn't going to lead where he needed to go.  And to add to the difficulty, he really didn't like this role he had made for himself such that he was super stressed---thus the lower flex scores.  In his distress, he couldn't see the long term outcomes, felt emotionally reactive and disconnected, and was doing almost nothing for renewal.
Bobby began to explore how the situation was in a downward a leadership death spiral.  And he could examine how his natural strengths could be used to help turn the situation around.  Carefully and systematically we looked at how his personality type system could be used to promote being an effective leader.  Through the Pearman, he learned that he could access and use:

Extraverted sensing gave him access to information in the moment 
Introverted sensing gave him clarity about information and how to verify it
Extraverted intuiting gave him opportunities to explore open ended questions to generate new ideas
Introverted intuiting opened the opportunity for examining scenarios useful when thinking through complex 
Extraverted thinking was a way to explore the logical elements of rationale
Introverted thinking was a resource if thinking through key elements of a situation 
Extraverted feeling was a natural resource for demonstrating empathetic regard
Introverted feeling invited looking st the ideals and vision critical to being passionate about the work
Bobby said that the discovery of all of his sources of talent was empowering and exciting.  He now knew he had the mental muscles to do what was needed for success.  We monitored how he was using his new found resources and the impact on the stress he experienced. Combined with the powerful recognition that motivating others and developing others were mission critical to his work rather than being the relentless critical ogre he had become, Bobby began to see immediate results.  He solicited feedback from his team and he talked regularly about how to employ his new found wisdom.  

The Pearman invites accessing all of your Natural resources and using them as appropriate to your situation.  With the FlexIndex you can see what you need to do increase the capacity to flex in your setting.  To take the Pearman, reach out to me at rogerpearman@yahoo.com.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Personality Brokers: A Point of View

Engaging. Informative. Speculative. Illuminating. Irritating. Thoughtful. Mistaken. These terms describe  Merve Emre’s new book, The Personality Brokers (in the US) and What’s Your Type? (in Australia and Europe), published by Doubleday.  Emre brilliantly used sources in multiple places to support her historical rendering of the family environment and passions of the mother-daughter duo who are responsible for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® assessment.  She managed to expose a host of attitudes, reflective of the time, and of the unique character of the individuals involved.   Emre’s real goal, however, is to use the popularity of the MBTI® tool to expose issues in the use of psychological tools in organizations.  She is right to point out that using personality based tools for selection and promotion is problematic and typically doesn’t end well for the individual or the organization.  Noting that individuals are being improperly evaluated from a s...
1 comment
Read more

What does empathy have to do with judgment? A look at the engine of judgment.

                                            What does empathy have to do with judgment?                                         A look at the engine of judgment: Thinking and Feeling. For many years I’ve had participants in psychological type workshops say to me, “How can Feeling be a rational judgment?”  “What does Feeling have to do with making decisions?”  “How is empathy related to making a choice or in judging something?”  When I’ve been with experienced long time consultant or facilitator users of psychological type assessments, I’ve asked the following and usually get silence in response:  “If Thinking is a rational judging process, how is Feeling rational?”  I’m willing to bet there are a number of readers of this blog who have had the ...
1 comment
Read more

A Thoughtful Journey: An Introduction

Carl Jung created a remarkable library of books, letters, and lectures.  If you have read any of his work and feel he is sometimes simply "too far out there," you are not alone.  During his life he had the luxury of time for reading the great books, engaging in massive letter writing, seeing clients or working in a clinical setting, and seemingly able to travel, write, and present endlessly.  He was nothing less than an acute observer of culture, history as manifest in literature, and master of synthesizing information both current and from the past which led him to propose inventive ways of thinking about the human experience. I think many readers of Jung miss the mark when they forget the intellectual culture in which his work was embedded and his simple proposition that he was sharing his journey .  His writings are not particularly straightforward--complicated as well by being translated into English.  His ideas are often esoteric. It is easy to see w...
Post a Comment
Read more