In my previous blog I provided an Axiological definition of Talent as being:

‘ a person’s recurring and habitual patterns of thought’

and we all possess a multitude of these talents.

So knowing what talents a person possesses is of vital importance to any employer, but of equal importance is a way to measure their ability to access their talent.

When conducting talent benchmarking exercises within organisations we have measured the talent of high and low performers in teams and found that both groups contain people with high levels of the right talent required to be a success. However, our system is also able to identify each individual’s ability to access that talent and as shown in the chart below, often it is not a lack of talent but the lack of ability to access that talent that is the key differentiator between high and low performers.

Interestingly, this chart shows that both groups achieved equally high scores on talent and equally poor scores on their attitude, but it was the high performers ability to access their talents that was the key  performance discriminator.

We can all have temporary losses of form or performance, or put another way, have things going on in our lives that will temporarily block us or stop us from being able to access our talent, but as an employer or recruiter you want to avoid employing people for a role that either do not have the talent, or are unable to access that talent, or you will be spending a lot of time and energy managing that employees problems. To read more about the Axia Talent benchmark solution click here

Business values are the core principles that guide the way that you do business and how your people engage with your customers. Your values sum up what your business stands for and what makes it special. While short and long term business plans and strategies may change the core values of your business may remain the same.

Many organisations pay lip service to their values, they come up with a list of statements that they believe their customers want to see , put a plaque in reception and a page on the web site and it is job done.

Unfortunately for them, a lot of evidence suggests they are now missing a trick. A businesses values are the guiding principals for all of their people and organisations that communicate, live and breath their values have greater engagement and productivity.

Axiology is the science of values and teaches us that we all value in three dimensions. These dimensions are Systemic(conceptual) , Extrinsic (pragmatic) and Intrinsic (empathy)

When you ask a person or a business to define their values, they will normally give you a list of words that fall in to the Systemic category, such as :   standards, beliefs, principals, honour, purpose, respect and goals.

So they are missing extrinsic and intrinsic values out completely. Axiologically these dimensions of value are greater than systemic values as a business makes no money from a strategic goal, standards don’t make or deliver a product or a service and we can’t live in a conceptual world.

When looking at you values, involve your people in the process, demonstrate to them the three dimensions of value that exist and let your values show that your business puts its SOUL before its ROLE and its GOAL.

For information about how Axiametrics can help your business define identify the values held by your people contact us today on 0800 195 4162 or email info@axiametrics.co.uk

Firstly, let us try to define talent

There are many different definitions to describe talent resulting in a huge amount of confusion in the workplace, especially in relation to recruiting for a new role.  Some companies define talent in terms of competencies, but competencies are often knowledge based.  Just because someone has knowledge it does not mean they have talent.

Just look at the debates and comments that follow every football match.  The majority of the male population often voices an ‘expert opinion’ but this knowledge or interpretation of an incident definitely does not make them a talented footballer or manager!

In the work place you can take 100 people who possess similar knowledge (experience or qualifications).  If you then provide them all with the same job specific training, will they all complete the job in the same way? The answer, as every employer, manager and HR professional knows, is definitely not.

So, if talent is not Knowledge then what is it? Is it attitude or personality based?

There are many psychometric profiles now that will accurately define someone’s personality group and the traits you are likely to see from this group type, but this does not infer any specific talent.

Robert Harman proved mathematically that human thought has a structure and that it can be measured.  Each individual’s thinking process is therefore what makes them unique.

At AxiaMetrics we define talent as a person’s recurring and habitual patterns of thought.

The way a person reacts to any given set of circumstances is dictated by how they process the information presented to them.  In the work place, no two people will react the same to a problem, as we all have different thinking patterns.  This means they will not come to the same solution and we will all be influenced in some way by the set expectation of acceptable behaviour.

To find out how the Axia Talent benchmark can dramatically improve your recruitment and succession planning click here

Do you want to develop your inspirational leadership skills and make great decisions fast? Would you like your team to be creative problem solvers; have the focus, commitment, energy and confidence needed to blow away the competition and not just handle pressure that would cripple most but to use it and turn it into a rare advantage? If so you should attend this one day Masterclass and learn about ‘The Mind Factor’.

This unique, innovative, day will give you a rare and inspiring insight into the personal performance tools and skills of world champions and learn how these can applied into your day to day business and personal lives.

The day will centre on the 20 year experience of Karl Morris. Karl is the world’s leading Mind Factor coach working regularly with world champions in the sports arena (including football, golf, cricket and rugby union). During this day Karl reveals how the unique insights he has gained in helping sports people control their mind to perform to their best can be applied to the near identical, specific, challenges in the business world.

Karl will demonstrate how teams and individuals can apply the strategies he uses to create ‘world champions’, enabling them to perform to the very best of their abilities on any stage.

His coaching skills are rare, profound and proven in the most demanding environments, they are easy to use, game-changing and impact clients in both their professional and personal lives.

Your day will be delivered and hosted by Karl and will include a personal insight report from the Nobel-nominated AxiaMetrics values profiling system, which is used by top sports people to diagnose their personal Mind Coaching needs.

As an added bonus on this date we also have a high value session from world class Persuasion and Influence specialist coaches.

Date: July 26th 2011 – all day (breakfast, lunch and refreshments included)

Location: Dexter House, Tower Hill (http://www.etcvenues.co.uk/venues/dexter-house)

Cost: £ 125 + VAT per delegate

Format: The day will be interactive, discussive, realistic and actionable. All delegates will complete the Axia Profile (a 15 minute online personal values assessment) prior to attending the Masterclass. The findings from these assessments will be kept in confidence but will form the basis for the day in order to ensure that we deal with real issues and that you will take away new ideas, attitudes and approaches that you can use as soon as you return to the workplace. You will also be given your own personal profile at the end of the day to use and refer to as part of your own personal development process.

The day will be broken down into pacy, engaging, sessions and will include the findings from the Axia profile, a session on Persuasion and Influence skills (not just essential in the world of Sales but in every aspect of life) and Karl’s unique Mental Toughness model. The Learning Outcomes of which are:

FOCUS

Directing attention may be the ULTIMATE mental skill. You are either placing your mental energy in a productive or destructive place.

We are all told “to concentrate” yet very few are ever coached in “how to concentrate”.

The stunning 6 shot victory in golf’s greatest tournament, The British Open, by Louis Oosthuizen in 2010, was a product of “attentional focus training”. The now famous RED DOT was just one of the tools employed in this ground breaking achievement.

FEAR OF FAILURE

Everyone has fears in one form or another. The key is how to manage your fear. Most of the fears we have as human beings have constructs of the mind.

Ashes winning Captain, Michael Vaughan, learned how to cope with the huge expectation, responsibility and anxiety ahead of the greatest Test Series of all time against Australia in 2005. The Ashes were regained for the first time in nearly 30 years and Vaughan said afterwards that his work with Karl Morris was a crucial factor.

Once delegates understand specifically how the brain creates “inappropriate fear”, they can be coached in how best to manage destructive tension and anxiety.

SELF BELIEF

Faith in one’s self, in the organisation or the environment, is a prerequisite for success.

Karl’s time at Manchester United FC provided a clear and indepth insight into the building blocks of faith on both a personal and collective level. Specific daily actions by the individual and by the organisation are required to build unshakeable faith.

A meaningless “mission statement” will have little or no impact unless an understanding is gained of how the brain requires constant priming and reinforcement to establish a solid foundation of beliefs and a sense of faith towards a specific outcome or goal.

DRIVE

Q : How do we build a sense of “inevitable success?”

Graeme McDowell worked with Karl on the concept of “little victories”. Specifically designed short-term goals which the brain responds effectively towards. The accumulation of these little victories in the end created a foundation for the first European golfer to win the toughest Major of all, the US Open, in 2010 – after an incredible gap of 40 years!

Our commitment to you

We know that you will not only find the day really valuable but guarantee you will take away at least one new action that will help you in your professional and personal life immediately. And if you don’t feel the day delivers you that value then we will refund your fee…..no quibble. By the way, no-one has ever taken us up on this offer but we do believe this guarantee gives you that “first step” confidence.

Next Steps

To book your place simply call John Hedges of AxiaMetrics on 07736 648262 or email johnhedges@axiametrics.com. Please note that spaces are limited so that delegates enjoy the greatest benefit from the close personal attention they will receive from Karl and our other coaches on the day.
And if you would like all of your team benefit from this incredible seminar and have the subject matter for the day tailored to your specific needs whilst making a dramatic saving on the per head price then John would be delighted to meet with you at your convenience to discuss our tailored in-house delivery options.

Thank you….we look forward to welcoming you.

“…the modern professional rugby coach shares common challenges with the modern business leader e.g. identifying, selecting and developing people and teams with the potential to perform successfully in a highly pressured environment is common to both domains …..learning from Axia’s personal profiling process and Karl Morris’ world-class coaching skills has given coaches on our Elite Coach Development programme the game-changing learning that helps our best coaches get better. I would strongly recommend anyone wanting to strive for performance excellence to have a chat with them to see how they can help take your team to the next level….”

In the current jobs climate candidates are more likely to lie?

With The UK struggling through recession there are 2.46m people searching for employment at the moment. With 7.8% of the UK work force out of a job there is stiff competition for each and every vacancy, today’s job seekers are more likely to become risk-takers, fuelled by the desperation to secure that all-important role at whatever cost.

Research shows almost a quarter of potential job seekers (24pc) are prepared to stretch the truth to secure a job in this tough economic climate. Many candidates feel they have no choice but to bend the facts to keep up with fellow candidates who they believe will be exaggerating skills and qualifications on their CVs and in interviews.

While this should come as a warning to recruiters, this revelation from candidates is not surprising. People cheat in all walks of life and as long as they think what’s on offer is worth it in comparison with the risks, it is likely they always will.

Cheating is a global issue and recruiters are facing new challenges for which most are simply not prepared. Many are being inundated by applications so the process of sifting through to find the best people is becoming far more difficult and as the research figures show, relying on CVs and interviews to hire the right people is no longer enough.

But what can recruiters do? One way to save time sifting through applications and decrease the chance of cheating is through the use of online assessments. All Psychometric assessments claim to create a level playing field for all candidates and ensure all job seekers have an equal and honest chance to shine, but with a proliferation of books available helping candidates to ‘make themselves more employable’ how do you know your test is not being cheated?

One great litmus test is to see if the questionnaire requires the respondent to answer questions about themselves or to describe their own actions in given situations, as noted recent research shows 24 % of people will stretch the truth or get assistance from books written specifically to manipulate these types of test. Even unknowingly are you ever totally objective when answering questions about yourself, or like most of us, a bit biased and subjective?

So is there an alternative? With the Axia Profile you are never asked to describe yourself, you are never asked to describe what you would or might do given a set of circumstances, and you are never asked what others might expect you to do – this double subjectivity used in psychometric tests is supposedly a way of getting you to describe what you are really like. In fact there are no questions at in the Axia Profile, there are two sets of 18 statements and you simply rank them from best to worst. The Axia profile is not subjective, you are not asked to describe yourself or how you would perform. You are actually performing a task, making a totally objective measurement, and with over 6 quadrillion ways that you can order each set of 18 statements it is incredibly detailed and accurate. For more information on how the Axia Profile will improve your hiring decisions

Developing the Right Environment for Success

In the post-Credit Crunch world, no sector is going to have to adjust more to the fiscal challenges to come than Defence. With Government procurement programmes facing their greatest challenges yet, he reality for many is that the status quo is no longer an option – at AxiaMetrics we are working with experienced firm s in the sector by using the Axia Profile as to identify the ‘people issues’ which hold organisations back. This is part of a suite of services jointly established to offer procurement teams a suite of proven tools, skills and resources to help organisations – large or small, Government or industry – to work at the peak of their effectiveness and efficiency.

In the current environment, firms may feel beleaguered, but they have to ask themselves the following question, “What stops success”?

Below are things that we hear day in, day out which stop firms achieving the desired results:-

“There is no real vision and no strong, clear leadership.”

“The customer isn’t clear about what he wants, or indeed what we need to know, in order to be able to help.”

“We’ve measured everything that you can measure, but we don’t have the right skills and resources to address the evidence.”

“Relationships are not good, there is little trust and as a result, behaviours are not constructive.”

“Dialogue! What dialogue? Communications are none existent.”

If any of these statements apply, progress is often slow, excessive staff turnover and cost overrun can be at epidemic proportions.

AxiaMetrics together with its key partners – Christopher Lewis Associates, Digital Meeting and Precision Leadership offer an end to end solution to provide procurement teams with a range of services that help build relationships, confidence and communication. This includes the development of bid and delivery teams, plus the provision of the best collaborative working environments for successful defence projects and programmes.

Through implementation of the right skills, tools and resources on the soft issues, the right environment for success is created – it’s about going beyond commercial agreements, process, governance and above all, measurement. Through delivering the right culture, attitudes, behaviours, leadership and communication, goals are understood and achieved. It’s about creating a sense of shared ownership aided through timely, transparent information; it’s about the individual and team and psychological contract providing the ability and agility to sustain the right environment through the life of the contract.

With proven success in delivering sustainable improvement throughout the supply chain, our specialist skills will help procurement teams identify where and what critical issues need to be addressed, when they need to be addressed and will deliver the appropriate solutions.

Did you know that in the 1950‘s—in an effort to determine whether soldiers were mentally fit to handle deadly weapons—psychometric testing was created by the U.S. Military? (Actually, a more accurate term would be ‘pathology’ tests).

In the years that followed, a few enterprising entrepreneurs decided these pathology tests (with minor adjustments) could provide them with valuable insights into how people work together to bring about common business goals. After fifty years of testing, we now know the level of accuracy of these tests. We know where they are helpful and where they fall short.

How can you know if the assessment you are using measures up? This Blog provides you with the first of 11 questions you should ask to determine what tool you should use in your recruitment process and to determine the true accuracy.

1: What ‘norm’ are your job candidates being compared to?

Most assessments measure personality and behaviour.

Here’s the simple version of how personality and behaviour based tests are created. As you will see, created is the key word here.

These profiles are created by psychologists who observe the behaviour of a particular group of people. They then create questions designed to show where a person scores in relation to the observed ‘norm’ of that group. In other words, their goal is to match the questions they’ve created to fit the ‘norm’ they are creating.

Every assessment tool in the market place is “culture” driven. When an assessment tool is to be taken in a different culture, they must, again, find the standard of measure, or ‘norm’, for that culture. While this process has some value, there is a massive element of subjective bias involved. Clearly, these tools are affected by many factors including the geography, culture, income, age or gender that group of individuals.

Just know this … subjective bias significantly lowers the accuracy of these tests. Perhaps this is why – after 70 years of trial and error in the hiring process, research clearly shows that typical assessment tools are just not accurate.

Business leaders find it difficult if not impossible to trust the typical hiring assessment. Have you found this to be true for you?

There is a better way…

In the years before the outbreak of the Second World War an amazingly accurate way to measure performance in people was discovered by Robert S. Hartman. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize for his research in 1973. His approach was NOT based on simply observing behaviour or personality.

Hartman’s theory was that we all think and make decisions in the same way—that there are three core decision making dimensions. He called this, “The Structure of Thought.” Hartman spent the next 40 years of his life proving his theory scientifically (not the few few days or hours some take to establish a new norm!).

He proved his theory with a totally objective mathematical formula. This formula measures how people think and how they make decisions.

This was a major discovery because unlike “subjective norms” that come as a result of observing behaviour and personality, Hartman discovered that the structure of thought has it’s own norm. This norm is the same for people all over the world – regardless of culture, geography, income, age, gender, or other factors. We all have the same structure of thought.

Hartman didn’t create subjective norms. His science validation confirms a norm—an objective norm that already exists in all of us. That’s extremely important because when the measurement is totally objective—you can trust it’s accuracy!

The Axia profile scientifically measures how you think and how you make a decision—what Hartman called your ‘structure of thought’. It directly measures skills, competencies, attitudes, talent, whether or not you are accessing your talent, and much more. The Axia profile will quickly identify precisely who will and will not perform in your company with greater accuracy than other human metrics systems.

A growing list of top business leaders are using our system to make more accurate selection decisions and significantly improve business results.

Not my words, but those of Bertrand Russell! He summed up in one sentence what many of us know to be very true, a phenomenon that causes endless problems when interviewing for new staff as the more able candidate is less likely to be as confident or push their abilities compared to the less able who may come across better and more confident at interview.

This has been scientifically proven and is now known as the Dunning–Kruger effect. It is a cognitive bias in which “people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it”.

The less competent therefore suffer from ‘Illusory superiority’, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from ‘illusory inferiority’. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. “Thus, the mis-calibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the mis-calibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.

So if you can not rely on past performance, interview testing or educational background to assess skills competencies what can you rely on. The smart money has completed framework assessment to define the required skills competencies required for each role in their organization. Despite much work to enable them to define competency the difficulty is that many of the required competencies are softer skills that are harder to define and measure.

The Axia Profile competency modeling process helps organisations develop a framework competency. For larger organisations and teams this can be created on a bespoke basis clearly identifying the competencies of elite performers that are missing in the less productive team members. For smaller teams and organisations our generic reports have been developed over many years and already specify the key competencies for general roles such as management competencies and sales competencies. Using the Axia profile not only identifies these competencies but provides a measure of your existing team and a benchmark for all new potential hires.

So to find the most cost effective route to developing your own framework competency and avoid being the victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect at interview contact AxiaMetrics today

The 27th of January is a special day in the world of AxiaMetrics and Axiology for two reasons.

On this day in 1910 Dr Robert Hartman the ‘Father of Modern Axiology’ was born in Berlin Germany as Robert Schirokaur. He was a brilliant scholar and held a lecturing post at Berlin University and was also an Assistant District Court Judge.

Hartman was forced to flee Germany in 1932 due to his vocal opposition of the Nazi Party. Having experienced Hitler’s rise to power and what he saw as the successful organisation of evil , Hartman dedicated his life’s work to trying to answer the fundamental question of ‘what is good’

Hartman is credited with the discovery that all value has scientific order based on trans-infinite mathematical sets and for developing the hierarchy of the dimensions of thought. By combining these two discoveries he developed the first values based profiling tool, The Hartman Value Profile.

Martin Gilsenan, a father of 3 was also born on the 27th of January (as he is still with us we wont embarrass him by naming the year!) Martin is a partner in AxiaMetrics a UK distributor of the Axia Profile, which is based on Hartmans original work and profile.

Whilst Martin is not yet credited with the significant discoveries of Hartman he believes one of the most significant points in his working life was the discovery of Axiology. Never before had he seen such a detailed and accurate assessment tool. Unlike many flawed psychometrics that rely on subjective questioning the Axia Profile identifies the takers values using an ordering task which provides over 6 quadrillion permutations possible from the Axiological Norm established by Hartman. Essentially it identifies how we think and process information, why we make the judgements we do and the likely behaviour that will follow.

Martin is proud to share his Birthday with Robert Hartman and hopes for the following two achievement in his future:

1. To see QPR win the Premiership

2. That his personal legacy will be having introduced the science of Axiology to both business and education in the UK for the betterment of individuals and companies alike.

There is not a lot of chance of number one but to help Martin achieve number 2 contact AxiaMetrics today to see how this powerful technology can help your organisation.

When calculating the above, most researchers accept that it isn’t simply the salary and benefits of a bad hire they need to measure, painful though this is. They reason, quite correctly, that the “real” cost also includes factors such as reduced team productivity and missed client opportunities. The truth however, is the cost is much, much greater than that.

A bad hire has a profoundly negative effect on co-workers’ productivity and morale and can change their perception of the company “How could they have employed this person?” the rest of the workforce will say to each other, “How could they have got it so wrong?” is what they actually mean.

The biggest cost of a bad hire – by far, is the psychological impact on the leadership of the company – I should know I went through it myself with my 2 co-directors and close friends when we ran our own financial services brokerage between 2003 and 2007. “How did we employ this person?” we quite rightly asked ourselves. Then we had the subsequent cost in management time, coming to the conclusion that we had to get this person out of the company, then finally starting the process to actually do it. This, in turn engenders stress both at work and at home – the conversations with your spouse about that person, about how they drive you absolutely crazy, and about how you can’t believe that you ever offered them a job in the first place? The frustration that “you knew deep down” that you were making a mistake, but made the offer anyway and are now living with the consequences.

What a waste of money! More recruitment and training costs are incurred again – but what are you doing differently? It’s all the more reason to be absolutely sure that you’re making the right choices when it comes to adding new staff. Ask yourself the following – are you using a consistent hiring process to ensure that every open role is afforded the same level of care and attention? Do you have a method of filtering CV’s or applications? Do your staff know the right approach during interviews? Are you conducting thorough reference checks?

You may feel you have learned some lessons about people, one being that clients, customers and colleagues can be upset not only by a bad hire’s incompetence but by their attitude – again though, the same question needs to be asked – what are you doing differently to find out whether a person shares your company’s values?

The answer is simple – use the Axia Profile to underpin your recruitment process. New to the UK and based on Nobel Prize nominated research, this quick, online solution is specifically designed to help employers recruit the right people.