The Total View Hire and Manage Employee Competence with Confidence May 5, 2004 Published by Success Performance Solutions, Written by Ira S. Wolfe -- Productivity is up - but are employees getting too stressed out? -- Perfect Labor Storm Alerts #151 to #155 -- Stop Hiring High-Risk Hourly/Entry-level Employees with CBI and SELECT -- Select The Right Test -- Build A Top Performer Profile At No Cost -- NEW! What Interview Questions Can You Ask - Legally? -- Interview Questions That Every Manager Must Ask -- Stop the Resu-mess! Have Candidate Apply Online Anytime -- I just know you wanted to know this. -- Online Self and 360 Competency Assessments   What's the dumbest thing you ever heard a candidate tell you at an interview? Send in your tales to iwolfe@super-solutions.com. Looking for a new career but not sure what path to take? Looking for the secret to understanding what motivates employees? Then order your personal copy of Understanding Business Values and Motivators today. Productivity is up - but are employees getting too stressed out at work? With less people expected to do more at work and our pace of life just getting faster and more hectic, it is no wonder we are all feeling a bit tired. We are all being asked to do more and become more flexible. But have you ever wondered why some people seem to just keep on going and going and going just like the Energizer(R) bunny while others seem to have a tough time staying awake past their mid-morning break? Just imagine waking up in the morning and the first thing you do is fill up your "energy" tank. No, I'm not talking about stopping by at the local convenience store to fill up your SUV but filling up that "tank" within you - the tank that gives you the energy you need to get you through the day. That's exactly what happens every single day. Whether that first jolt comes from a cup of java or reading a Biblical passage, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that each of us gets a full tank of energy each day. While some of us have larger tanks than others, we all leave home with a full tank. How long that tank lasts and how effective we are at using it depends on several things. But nothing is so powerful on our effectiveness as our personal behavioral style and the environment in which we are expected to operate. As individuals, we have natural preferences. We choose how we respond to or move away from the 4 Ps - Problems, People, Pace, and Procedures. When we act naturally according to these behavioral preferences, we are energized. Likewise when asked to act against our natural preferences, this requires more energy than normal and we tire easily. If asked to do this too often or for a prolonged period of time, we get fatigued and burned out. A model that assesses the 4 Ps is called DISC. As a quick refresher, DISC is a model of behavior developed by William M. Marston. Marston's model has been tested, proven accurate, and validated for effectiveness with millions of people for more than 40 years. In the DISC model, four styles are associated with Marston's Behavioral Model. They are: Direct, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance. These relate respectively to how energized or de-energized we are when dealing with Problems, People, Pace and Procedures. Let's take a look at how placing ourselves in situations requiring different styles can "drain" our tanks quickly. In this column, I'll focus on the D style. In future newsletters, I will write about the other three - and if you have a story you would like to share related to stress in the workplace, please email me at iwolfe@super-solutions.com "D" behavioral styles are energized by meeting problems and challenges head on. But "D"s make up only eighteen percent of the population. So many of you might relate to Steve's situation. Steve dreads conflict. The good news is that individuals like Steve are quite patient. The bad news is that they let situations fester. Many times they hope the problem will go away without his or her intervention. Steve is the owner of a 75 employee manufacturing plant. He's been putting off disciplining his woefully under-performing and in-your-face manager for months. Push has come to shove for Steve and today is the moment of truth. Steve didn't sleep a wink all night worrying about this day. He knows that Michael won't take this quietly. If Michael handed in his resignation, Steve wouldn't be upset one bit. In fact, it would be a relief. Steve's behavioral preference is what you might refer as a "low D". This means Steve prefers to shy away from conflict and any form of confrontation. Arguments just wipe him out. To face Michael, Steve needs to stretch himself out of his comfort zone. The situation require that Steve become more direct, blunt and assertive. This moves him into what we call his adapted style. Using a two-graph DISC model (like that used in our CriteriaOne Behavioral Style Indicators, we can compare Steve's natural style and his adapted. Steve "scores" a 20 on the D natural scale. In order to effectively deal with Michael, Steve needs to stretch his D to at least a 60 on the adapted side. I often describe this stretch as the "rubber-band effect". In pulling his D upward, he is forced to expend extra energy. This diverts energy away from other important activities. Remember each of us has only so much personal energy to go around. Diverting our energies to worrying induces workplace stress and anxiety, only hampering our performance. As soon as his meeting is over with Michael, Steve feels like someone just sucked the life right out of him. That rubber band I described above is released as Michael leaves the room and Steve's D style snaps back to his naturally low D state. Instead of going back to work, Steve just wants calm. But wait - right around the corner lurks another problem. "Steve", his assistant calls out, "Mr. Jones wants you to call him right away. He seemed angry and said it was urgent." Whereas if Steve was a natural high D, confrontations like that between Michael and Steve would have just re-charged his batteries. High D's are ready for another fight, another challenge, another competition right after the first one is over. They don't miss a beat before they are ready to take battle again - just bring 'em on, they say. Low Ds on the other hand just hope they never have to go through that situation again. While Steve is dialing Mr. Jones' number, he's wondering how long he can keep this up. We're all expected to adapt our behaviors situationally. But when we are expected to constantly and continuously live our work life in the adapted state, we eventually exhaust ourselves and run out of energy to re-shape that rubber band. The more often and the longer we are asked to adapt our styles, the more likely it is that we will fatigue, be stressed and burn-out. There is new research confirming studies of the past - individuals whose behavioral styles are mismatched to the job and/or team are also stressing out their physical health systems. It is not uncommon to hear managers and employees alike share with us stories of failing health, rising blood pressure, increasing cholesterol, worsening musculoskeletal pains and even strokes and heart attacks that can be traced back to mis-matches between an individual's personal style and the style required by the job. As employers search for new solutions to improve the wellness of their workforce and improve retention and productivity, an inexpensive tool to head-off employee burnout and identify sources of poor performance before it is too late is the CriteriaOne® DISC Behavioral Style Indicator. When using CriteriaOne DISC, employers and employees can learn to recognize proactively the situations that might cause undue stress on employees, resulting in lower productivity, higher absenteeism and more turnover. By working with employees to teach them the skills to lessen the stress during adaptation or changing the environment to minimize these situations, employers will enjoy a healthier, more productive workforce. ********************************************************************** What Every Manager Needs to Know to Recruit In the Future - There Will Be Too Many Jobs and Not Enough Skilled People. Don't be fooled. The labor shortage over? The shortage of people and skills has only just begun. Learn what's ahead in The Perfect Labor Storm Fact Book. See below for details. "The Perfect Labor Storm Fact Book: Why Worker Shortages Won't Go Away" is HERE! Order your copy today - $7.95 includes no shipping costs for limited time only.   ********************************************************************** Perfect Labor Storm Alerts #151 to #155 Fact #151 A national survey by Rutgers' Management Education Center of 4,500 high school students found that 75 percent of them engage in serious cheating. Fact #152 More than half of the high school students have plagiarized work they found on the Internet. Fact #153 Fifty percent of those responding to the Rutgers' survey said they don't think copying questions and answers from a test is even cheating. Fact #154 Fifty percent of college professors admitted to overlooking cheating at least once. Fact #155 Thirty percent of all college papers submitted have significant levels of plagiarism. Source: ABC PrimeTime, April 29, 2004 ********************************************************************** Stop Hiring High-Risk Hourly/Entry-level Employees with CBI and SELECT Counter-Productive Behavior Index(tm) is the most cost-effective screening test to identify these high risk work- related attitudes and behaviors: Honesty Substance Abuse Computer Abuse Dependability Aggressive Tendencies Sexual Harassment Counter-Productive Behavior Index(tm) takes no more than 15 minutes for a candidate to complete and can be scored on paper in less than 60 seconds to score or online. Online reports include a structured interview guide with recommended interview questions. SELECT(r) Associate System is a pre-employment screening tool to identify work-related behaviors such as Positive Service Attitude, Accountability, Frustration Tolerance, Acceptance of Diversity, Multi-tasking and more, plus a Validity Check and Integrity Index. Each customized report includes a step by step interview guide including recommended interview questions. Reduce Absenteeism, Theft and Harassment! Read more about pre-employment testing. ********************************************************************** Select The Right Test Confused by which test to use for which employee or position? Then visit our newest guide to helping managers Select The Right Test. Beginning with pre-hire tools to screen out high risk candidates to development assessments to help guide an employee's career, you'll find nearly our whole family of assessments conveniently listed with brief descriptions about each assessment and how when to use them. Select The Right Test - Download the CriteriaOne Hire Competence with Confidence Assessment Guide here. http://tt.lt0.net/c.asp?ltk=831432_7540958 ********************************************************************** In the May 2004 issue of HR Magazine, Ira Wolfe, founder of Success Performance Solutions, was interviewed in "The Boss Makes The Weather", how training can improve the work environment between managers and subordinates. Also interviewed for the article was Dave Wolf, president of Clean Burn in Leola, PA. Six of Clean Burn's supervisors recently completed a series of Managing to Excel supervisor workshops for team building. Success Performance Solutions sponsored the Managing to Excel program. To read more about how supervisors can impact the bottom-line and the importance of training, read the May 2004 issue of HR Magazine or visit www.shrm.org. ********************************************************************** Build A Top Performer Profile At No Cost Hiring the right employee for the job begins with developing a top performer profile with the TotalView Assessment System. Try it with no risk - just follow the link below. Complete your Job Description Worksheet here. ********************************************************************** NEW! What Interview Questions Can You Ask? What Questions Are Not Legal to Ask? Download Our SPS Interview Guide here. *********************************************************************** Interview Questions That Every Manager Must Ask Interview for Success Behavior-based interviewing has been around for 25 years, but the practice has recently been gaining momentum with the increasing demand for skilled and competent employees. To conduct a behavioral interview, interviewers need to know what to look for in a candidate's response. Online Interview Generator(r) pairs specific "target behaviors" to over 60 competency based interview questions. Online Interview Generator(r) (IG) allows users to create company and job specific customized behavioral interview guides in minutes. Satisfied IG users include hiring managers, employers, human resources professionals, and consultants. As an IG user, you can choose an already- developed interview guide from our Job Library of over 40 standard job titles (from Administrative Assistant to COO), then quickly and easily edit to fit your open job. Or, you can choose to design your own interview guide from "scratch" using our extensive database of 65 competencies, and over 1,500 different target behaviors (interview "answers"), and corresponding interview questions. IG is extremely versatile and flexible - it can be used for selection in every industry, business and organizational environment. IG is inexpensive and cost- effective; clients can purchase interview units separately, or through a site license. View a sample Interview Guide created with Interview Generator. ********************************************************************** What Is It That Employees Really Value? 6 Proven Motivators are revealed in Understanding Business and Values. Order your copy of "Understanding Business Values and Motivators". (Yes, Understanding Business Values and Motivators is finally here.) Understanding Business Values and Motivators is an introduction to understanding the six business values and motivators that drives human performance. In this book, Ira Wolfe describes how each of the motivators affects peoples' behavior in the workplace and how managers can tap into those motivators to increase productivity and improve performance. Order your copy today - only $12.95. Want to order a copy for all your managers? Call us for volume discounts. Attention Consultants - call us about affiliate and re-seller programs. Preview a Chapter of Understanding Business Values and Motivators today. http://tt.lt0.net/c.asp?ltk=831436_7540958 ********************************************************************** Stop the Resu-mess! Have Candidate Apply Online Anytime and Cut Your Resume Screening and Interviewing Time in Half. What is Total APS(tm)? It is our newest technology. Post your jobs and have your job applicants move through our structured screening process. Critical Rapid Screening Data (RSD) includes capturing resumes and job specific personality testing. Managers are enabled to compare candidates and make accurate decisions quickly. Test batteries include: -FirstView, a 15 minute indicator of basic job fit for 15 different job positions -CBI, a highly effective 15-minute assessment of honesty, integrity, dependability and tendencies toward aggressiveness and sexual harassment. -TotalView, the definitive indicator of high performer job fit. This assessment can be benchmarked specifically for any job. Total APS is available on a pay per-hire basis for 7, 30, or 60 days at an unbeatable cost! You can screen 5 people or 50 people all at the same low cost, until you find the right person for the job! For larger organizations or smaller businesses faced with high turnover or seasonal jobs, Total APS is also available for annual unlimited use licenses (based on number of positions and number of employees). Learn more about Total APS - Unlimited personality assessments and FREE InterView Guide through May 31, 2004 ********************************************************************** I just know you wanted to know this. - On a plumbers truck in Akron, Ohio: "A straight flush beats a full house!" - On a septic-tank-cleaner's truck in Hyattsville, IND: "We're the #I business in the #2 business." - Over a gynecologist's office: "Dr. Jones, at your cervix." - At a military hospital-door to endoscopy: "To expedite your visit, please back in." - On a Plumbers truck-. "We repair what your husband fixed." ********************************************************************** Online Self and 360 Competency Assessments Janus Performance Management System - tailored to match individual needs by developing the competencies that are most relevant for every job. Janus provides a comprehensive, step-by-step planning design to help manage this process effectively. Janus not only provides a suite of goal setting and appraisal forms and templates to help this action planning process, but also helps to ensure that all reports are in plain language, complete, comprehensive, and easy-to-use. Build customized reports in minutes 36 Janus Critical Core Competencies are based on the principles of the Balance Scorecard. View a sample Janus report.   Ira S. Wolfe ©2004 - All Rights Reserved. Reprints and other distribution by permission only.