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Get to the CORE of your top performers.

All successful leaders want to find the top performers. They also know that average performers have value and will often do those the things needed that top performers won’t touch. But how do you identify the top performers easily, quickly and accurately so you don’t have to spend the time figuring it out or rely simply on “trusting your gut”? Today’s Monday Moment with Monica shares 3 steps to identify those top performers and a personality profile you can use to make it even easier.

Step 1: Give the Job or Role Incredible Clarity

We’ve all seen job descriptions and performance evaluations that were as clear as mud on what was actually expected. The job descriptions that your company has used for years are now likely not near as clear as they need to be and candidly you can no longer see it. You know what the person IN that job DOES or what they USED to do. You make unspoken assumptions that you think the candidate would just know. You’ve associated the job title, Director of Sales, for example, with certain tasks and behaviors that you’ve witnessed. What you fail to do is clearly spell those things out so that when you see someone who might be a fit, you’d notice immediately. Identifying a top performer is dangerous if you’re primary method is “oh, you’ll just know”, cuz you won’t. People are on their best behavior in an interview and when they know promotions are being handed out so you need to be crystal clear. Take these steps to create more clarity in those job descriptions: 

• Remove any outdated data
• Add psychographic criteria: personality traits, attitude, demeanor, natural tendencies of the ideal performer
• Observe the behavior and actions of a current top performer and consider adding these to the job description
• Don’t settle for what would be just good enough. Get clear on what one needs to be GREAT.

Step 2: Identify Your High Potential Candidates

Stop identifying top performers with your gut. Your gut responds to lunch, stress, fear, worry and moods. Once you’ve clarified your job description and created role clarity, take a look around. You may find your high potential candidate for someone in marketing is actually holed up in an office over in merchandising or finance. You may find that the person you didn’t promote into operations is actually an ideal fit, based on your new criteria, for that IT Director spot. Make a list of these high potential candidates for the role you’ve clarified and then as Ronald Reagan said: “Trust, then verify”.

Step 3: Verify You’ve Found a Match

Because people are smart when it comes to showing you what you want to see and many will have learned what you look for when hiring, it is best to verify that the behaviors you see are indeed natural. This is easily done with a comprehensive personality profile. Find a tool that will accurately identify the natural traits and well developed skills of your candidates and have them complete the profile. Then it’s simply a matter of matching the traits, skills, and psychographic data you’ve identified in your role, with the candidate who has the most or all. The profile should identify things beyond what they will tell you in an interview.

Profiles of this type are usually not free, but how much does it cost you to hire the wrong person? Let’s just say that can be painful. The tool we recommend is the CORE Profile® and yes, it’s one we offer. The CORE Profile® uncovers conditioned behaviors, identifies what one needs to feel job fulfillment and be most productive, and also shows how they will react under stress. If you would like more information, please call me to discuss, but I would do step 1 and 2 first. 

(NOTE: The CORE Snapshot SHORT profile you received in the Monday Moment Sneak Peak is NOT the comprehensive version mentioned in today’s post and will not uncover conditioned behaviors or “faking it” but will give you some idea as to what skills and talents they think they have.)

I’m Monica Wofford and of course stay contagious!

CEO, Contagious Companies, Inc.

Speaker | Author | Trainer | Coach

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