As managers, we work so hard to deliver targets and objectives that it's easy to forget the behavioural side of management. But the fact is, individual behaviour is a key contributor to so many aspects of organisation behaviour and performance. Many people forget the importance of understanding employee behaviour to their detriment.
Ready to Begin with Behavioural Profiling?
Taking external influences out of the equation, behaviour is probably the biggest single differentiator that any organisation can have in the competitive marketplace, and it affects employees and customers alike.
Consider the impact that the behaviour of just one employee can have on customers, colleagues, team members and suppliers - be that positive or negative behaviour. Here are some examples:
- A motivated, helpful employee assists a customer with a query, goes the extra mile for a colleague and solves a problem for a supplier. Those stakeholders are all left with a positive impression of the business and its brand.
- A rude, unwilling employee speaks dismissively to a customer, lets down a colleague and ignores a supplier. All of these stakeholders feel negatively about that individual and about the business as a whole.
For this reason, it's vital that businesses seek to understand and develop positive and desirable behaviours within their organisations. Behavioural profiling is a powerful tool that identifies an individual's psychological preferences, default settings and motivators.
Much of our behaviour is driven by subconscious factors that we believe to be externally driven, but in many cases, our own perceptions, attitudes and motivators drive how we behave. Developing self-awareness is the first step in understanding why we behave as we do - and why others behave as they do. By deepening this understanding, we can seek to positively influence ourselves and others.
The Impacts Upon Recruitment
Behavioural development helps people to flex their natural styles in certain situations to become better leaders, managers, salespeople and team members. This is important to know for every aspect of employee development, but perhaps particularly most relevant during recruitment. An applicant's behavioural defaults and preferences can greatly help to improve recruitment outcomes and ensure that the right person is hired for each role and that he/she fits culturally within the organisation and team. Find out more about behavioural-based assessments here.
Enhanced Teamwork And Leadership
Understanding employees' individual behaviours can go a long way to optimising the performance of a team. Organisations can train their workforce to understand this model and to develop flexing tools, supportive language and approaches that deepen their understanding of behaviour, its power and its inherent ability to change for better outcomes. Leadership behaviour is also naturally made better and more consistent with the knowledge of behaviour change models and this sets desirable standards across the business with the 'shadow of the leader'.
The Need For Training
The trick to success is to create behaviour change models and training programmes that are tailored to the business's needs, and built around clearly defined, objective outcomes. Behavioural training is an investment that can reap profound rewards and gains across the entire organisation - bringing in the right new talent, encouraging better engagement for performance, better serving customers and generally creating a powerful, positive brand in the marketplace. Now that you understand the importance of understanding employee behaviour, you can use this to improve your business.
Find Out More
PDW Group is a leading provider of business training courses, with particular expertise in leadership development training and behavioural modelling. To find out more, please contact us today.
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