Talent Management Questions & Answers

HR Service Team uses Critical Thinking components whenever our clients have a complex project to manage. We work with the client using the Critical Thinking questions below. The time spent up front helps reduce the anxiety and stress that can accompany the rollout of any large project.

• Clarity: Can they illustrate what they mean? Can they give examples?
• Accuracy: Can they support the data being presented?
• Precision: How much detail would the end user expect to see?
• Relevance: How can the information be tied back to the problem?
• Depth: What are some of the difficulties that may arise and how do we deal with them?
• Breadth: Do we need to look at the problem from another perspective?
• Logic: Does the data make sense?
• Significance: What is the most important element of the problem?
• Fairness: Do we have any biases that may affect the outcome?

HR Service Team has firsthand experience working with technical managers – rolling out a managerial training program for technical managers is not easy.

Why are technical managers so different? Most technical managers end up in management because they were excellent engineers – not because they wanted to manage people. The educational training they received in college covered technical courses – not management courses. Because of their technical background, any training course must be relevant to situations they deal with on a day-to-day basis otherwise; the course may not be taken seriously.

Developing creative training solutions. One of our clients had the CEO of the company deliver the One Minute Manager training course – the technical managers loved the course and asked for more. Having someone they respect teach a course helps grab their interest.

Holding managers accountable. Holding managers accountable for their leadership skills (e.g., communicating, rewarding and recognizing employees, delivering employee feedback, organizational politics, relationship building) aid in your cause to deliver managerial training programs. Your managers will pay attention when it affects their performance.

HR Service Team has two favorite courses that deal with people differences. They are:

1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
2. Wilson’s Social Styles

MBTI is a proven tool that is easy to understand and implement. It helps employees understand their preferred style as well as the preferred style of others.

Wilson Learning has produced the Social Styles course. It is based off a book entitled, People Styles at Work – Making Bad Relationships Good and Good Relationships Better by Robert Bolton and Dorothy Grover Bolton. Social Styles training provides an inside view on how others view you. An assessment by co-workers is completed for each training participant, and throughout the training, participants learns that there is no right or wrong style.

In summary, Myers Briggs training helps participants understand their preferred style; Social Styles training explains how other people view you. Both courses help teach employees to value people differences.

HR Service Team has built a fun interactive tool using the Calling Cards product by the Inventure Group. The Calling Cards product helps people discover their personal calling. There are 52 cards; each card has a unique calling description (e.g., Resolving Disputes, Straightening Things Up, Selling Intangibles). This team training exercise helps team members understand what motivates their co-workers and fosters team work.

HR Service Team uses the following training steps.

1. Provide each team member with a deck of Calling Cards. From the deck, each member picks three cards that describes their calling (i.e., the things they like to do best).
2. Gather the participants’ cards and assemble them onto a master sheet with duplicate cards noted. (It is an eye opening experience to see duplicate cards. For example, an accounting team may have several people choose “Doing the Numbers”).
3. Once the master sheet is completed schedule the team meeting.
4. In a roundtable setting, provide each participant with a copy of the master sheet. Next, ask each participant to tell the group why they picked their calling.

This is an insightful non-threatening team exercise – it helps team members know more about their co-workers in a fun environment.