Skills Assessment

What is a skill?

A skill is a capability for a smooth sequence of coordinated behavior that is effective relative to its objectives, given the context in which it occurs. Thus, the ability to serve a tennis ball well is a skill, as is the ability to engage in competent carpentry, drive a car, operate a computer, solve a mathematical equation, or judge which job candidate to hire. Managerial skills have three essential features:

• Programmed. Skills have a beginning and an end. They involve a sequence of steps with each step triggered by and following closely on the preceding one.
• Tacit. Performers are not fully aware of the details that underlie skillful performance and find it difficult or impossible to give a full account of those details. Thus, skillful performance requires observance of a set of rules that are unknown to those following them.
• Automatic. Although the exercise of skills often involves the making of numerous choices, to a considerable extent the options are selected without conscious volition; they are embedded in the skill. Deliberate choice plays the role of selection of the skill sequence to be initiated.

http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/~baum/mgt2000/whatisaskill.html  

Why is it important?

• Selection – getting the right person who can add real value is not easy.
• Promotion or succession planning – who is able to step up to the next level?
• Develop leaders – identify strengths and development needs for high fliers.
• Acquisitions – which key players should be in which slots?
• Improve performance – by helping staff better understand them.
• Career planning – enable staff to play to their strengths.

http://www.leadersdirect.com/assessment.html   

 Methods for assessing skills

Personality assessment

Personality assessments often focus on the so-called ‘’big five’’ personality factors: emotional stability, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience. Interviews designed to assess personality explore early experiences and how candidates dealt with stressful life events. Behavioral assessments focus, not on the candidate’s life history or personality, but on recent behavior at work. The objective is to understand what candidates do and how they do it in job-related contexts. Simulations or work samples might also be used when extra depth and accuracy are required. Feedback and reports are structured around the organization’s leadership competency profile, not personality traits. The challenge in assessing personality traits is to show how they relate to leadership competencies. Suppose you want to assess customer focus. One relevant personality trait might be extraversion. An extravert has better social skills than an introvert to build relationships with customers. You could also look at dominance and anxiety. People who are overly dominant might not listen very well and, if too anxious, they might not control their temper with difficult customers. It gets more complicated than this, however, because being customer focused is not just about relating to people. It is also a way of thinking and making decisions. Leaders with a strong customer focus think about the impact their decisions might have on customers. They regularly analyze customer trends and respond quickly to customer feedback. Notice that these customer focused behaviors imply a decision-making attitude; they are not interpersonal skills, so knowing that a candidate is extraverted is not of much help.

Behavioral assessment

When auditing internal leaders for succession planning or talent management, you may already know enough about their basic personalities. Those with dysfunctional personalities wouldn’t likely be on your high potential list anyway. If you have any leaders with interpersonal problems, then sending them out for remedial coaching, including a personality assessment, might be a good idea. But if you have identified a pool of high potential leaders with no obvious personality problems, then what you really want to know is whether they can actually deliver against your organization’s leadership requirements. A behavioral assessment focuses on this need in the most direct fashion. Further, executives find behavioral assessments helpful in planning their development because the emphasis is on modifiable behavior patterns or habits, not on relatively unchangeable personality traits.It is widely agreed today that leaders come in a wide range of shapes and sizes. Some lead with quiet conviction; others are cheerleaders. Some are great at execution; others are creative visionaries. If your assessments focus on personality rather than behavior, you may be locked into a particular type of personality that you demand to see in all your leaders. http://www.leadersdirect.com/assessment.html