Sales & Marketing Management - January/February 2008 - (Page 39)

EXCERPT FROM LEADERSHIP BRAND book excerpt assessing your effectiveness MAKE SURE YOU’RE DEVELOPING THE RIGHT TRAITS EXCERPTED FROM: } T Leadership Brand Developing Customer-Focused Leaders To Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value By Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood o figure out who has the right stuff for the next leadership position, you can assess people’s predisposition toward the leadership brand, and you can look at behavioral feedback from their bosses, peers, direct reports, and clients or customers. s Able to apply knowledge via good presentation and inter- Predisposition to the Brand An organization sources its next-generation leaders by promoting individual contributors, recruiting from the outside, or inheriting leaders as part of a merger or acquisition. In each case, it is both possible and desirable to assess candidates carefully before moving them into a specific role. Nonetheless, though everyone knows how important rigor is here, few companies are as consistent about selection as they should be—even though poor selection of leaders is a very costly mistake. The secret to success is not in being sophisticated about assessment but in being rigorous and consistent. First, translate the statement of leadership brand into leadership behaviors and character traits, so that it’s clear what you are assessing for. For example, if your statement includes a word like “savvy,” break it down (define what constitutes savvy) in terms of behaviors and character attributes that have meaning to customers, like these: s Knowledgeable about the target customer, Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press. Excerpt from Leadership Brand by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood. Copyright 2007 Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood. All rights reserved. www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com personal skills, and s Confident enough of this knowledge to remain calm in difficult situations. With a clearer idea of what is desired, you can use behavioral event interviewing skills to talk with candidates about times in their career when they have faced situations where they needed to be savvy and to see how they behaved. In behavioral event interviewing, remember to let the candidates do the talking. The role of the interviewer is to get candidates to talk in depth about their approach to specific events related to the behavior or characteristic in question. Saying, “Tell me about a time when you were faced with an ambiguous situation and everyone seemed confused about what to do” will evoke a useful response, but then you need to go further and focus on behaviors. Another approach to interviewing is to use psychological tests. Psychologists have developed and applied leader assessment, selection, and development tests and techniques in a wide range of settings for many years. Look for tests and procedures that are both empirically derived and fieldtested. Or more customized tests can be designed and validated that assess a potential candidate’s ability to demonstrate the desired leadership brand. A good approach includes an analysis of leader task and temperament requirements and identifies the quality of the fit between potential future or current job requirements and each candidate’s skill set and temperament. The test battery addresses major jobJANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 SALES&MARKETING MANAGEMENT 39 http://www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sales & Marketing Management - January/February 2008

Sales & Marketing Management - January/February 2008
Contents
Editor's Letter
Brian Tracy University
Sales
Marketing
Management
Cover Story: Everything Happens in Vegas
Boosting Your Brain
Loyalty Goes Global
Swell Your Sales
Training
Technology
Incentives/Motivation
Travel/Meetings
Excerpt
The Way I See It

Sales & Marketing Management - January/February 2008

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