Certification Webinar Trains Human Resource Professionals on 360 Feedback for Leadership Development

Employers seek effective ways of developing leaders as the rate of change accelerates in workplaces worldwide. In response to this critical need, Performance Programs, Inc. now offers convenient and cost-effective professional certification webinars on 360 feedback instruments in Clark Wilson Group's Task Cycle(R) Series.

The Task Cycle 360 Feedback Series is the longest established, best researched 360 feedback collection available today. The Task Cycle is a logical sequence of steps essential to overall effectiveness of management and leadership. It is a scientifically validated, predictive model with well-researched mathematical foundations. The ten surveys in the Task Cycle series are role-specific and validated.

The Task Cycle was developed by Dr. Clark Wilson, who was the first to use 360 feedback for management development in 1973. Task Cycle research continues today and norms are continually updated based upon thousands of cases in the research database.

The 2009 certification webinars are scheduled on September 16 or November 12 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. (East Coast time). The two-hour session is conducted by industrial psychologist Dr. Paul Connolly, who was a close colleague of Clark Wilson. Connolly is also co-author of several Task Cycle Surveys published by Clark Wilson Group. Through the webinar and post-webinar follow-up, participants learn to administer, interpret, and provide coaching to individuals. The agenda includes: Key requirements and best practices in 360 feedback; the Task Cycle model, including an overview of psychometric background ; in-depth discussion using sample reports; review of several 360 assessments including Executive Leadership Survey, Leadership Competencies for Managers, and Survey of Management Practices; review of sample profiles and interpretation. Certification includes a 30-minute review of participant’s first case by telephone, as well as an extensive collection of 360 feedback support materials.

Investment is $600, which includes products and services that would be more than $1500 if purchased separately.

For further information, or to register, call Sonya Hamilton at 1-800-565-4223. Performance Programs is an authorized distributor and certification training provider for Clark Wilson Group.

The Perils of Accentuating the Positive

Since the early '90s, the pendulum of academic and popular thought on business training and development took a giant swing towards positivity and the search to build on one's strengths. It is an effect, in part, of the positive psychology movement. Positive psychology got a boost in the business world with books such as Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton and a parade of new book titles each year is evidence of its popularity.

Not so fast, says Rob Kaiser and the management and leadership thinkers he's assembled to look at the downside of focusing on the upside. Kaiser was co-author with Bob Kaplan of The Versatile Leader, for which PPI assisted in creating the online Leadership Versatility Index. Kaiser and Kaplan's versatility research shows that more than half of what separates the most effective leaders from the less effective is agility among all the leadership competencies. Those aspiring to greater levels of leadership skill need to bring up their challenge areas as much as they need to accentuate their strengths and comfort zones.

The Perils of Accentuating the Positive takes a thoughtful look at the strengths-based development paradigm in ten chapters that draw on decades of research and years of deeply related experience by the chapter authors. The book includes articles by Michael Benson, Steven Berglas, Anand Chandrasekar, Craig Chappelow, Guangrong Dai, Malcolm Davies, Robert Eichinger, William Gentry, Robert Hogan, Robert E. Kaplan, Jean Brittain Leslie, Morgan McCall, King Yii Tang, and Randall P. White. Loaded with practical advice, it provides the rest of what you need to know about the practice known as “strengths-based development.” Perils can be purchased through Hogan Press or Amazon.com

Another Way to Identify High Potential Candidates

We keep hearing about the importance of talent identification and management. We thought our friends and customers would like to know about a new tool: the High Potential Candidate Assessment Report from Hogan Assessments.

The High Potential Candidate Assessment Report allows employers to identify top candidates in relation to specific business competencies. It is based on research from a global sample of more than a thousand executive MBA program graduates. This sample group represents one of the highest-level talent pools ever used to create a profile of high potential candidates for leadership roles. The assessment involves three instruments and provides a highly integrated view of the candidate's strengths and challenges.

Visit our site and obtain a sample report for more information.

New Research on Leadership Versatility

When it comes to leadership competency, more is not always better. Research shows that the most effective leaders know how and why to balance their skills--and to avoid overreliance on their comfort zones. At a December 15, 2008 webinar, PPI hosted author and researcher Rob Kaiser in a presentation of his work on Leadership Versatility. Kaiser explained why the ability to switch gears and exert different leadership skills at different times results in better business outcomes. You can view the Leadership Versatility webinar on our web site.

Rob Kaiser, coauthor of the book, "The Versatile Leader" (Pfeiffer, 2006), studied top leaders for more than ten years with Bob Kaplan of the consulting firm Kaplan & DeVries. Their work resulted in the Leadership Versatility Index® (LVI) a 360-degree assessment tool with a radically new rating scale. Not just cosmetic, the features they developed were awarded a U.S. patent and hailed as revolutionary by MIT's Sloan Management Review. Rob Kaiser is a partner with Kaplan DeVries and a thought leader with over 100 publications and presentations on leadership.

The webinar discussion includes:

1. An up-to-date leadership competency paradigm that you can put to work in your development programs.

2. The ways that traditional measurement scales can lead executives to counterproductive behaviors and a new alternative measurement scale.

3. Research that shows the relationship between leadership versatility and positive business outcomes.

4. Practical application of the leadership versatility model to reduce executive derailments.

We hope you find the webinar interesting and look forward to talking with you about how this research fits into your executive development efforts.

Nonprofit Leaders More Skilled than Corporate Counterparts

Nonprofit Leaders Rate Higher in 360 Feedback

Never assume anything.

It’s an old warning—and one that proved true again when we studied leaders of nonprofit organizations in partnership with Community Resource Exchange during 2007. CRE, a 27-year-old New York City consulting organization, provides high-value capacity building services to nonprofit leaders and organizations.

"Leadership in for-profit endeavors is widely studied," says our associate Jean Lobell, a Managing Director at CRE. "The same is not necessarily true for nonprofits, but the lack of data never stopped people from assuming that nonprofit leaders are less skilled than their for-profit counterparts."

"Imagine our delight and surprise," she says, "when our study showed that nonprofit leaders, as seen by their managers, direct reports and peers significantly (alpha > 0.05) outscored for-profit leaders on 14 out of 17 skills." The study is based on Clark Wilson Group’s validated Survey of Leadership Practices™, a competency-based 360-degree feedback instrument.

The strength of the findings was a surprise to both CRE and PPI, as well as to a group of nonprofit leaders who had participated in the study. While it is premature to declare that nonprofit leaders are clearly more effective, this study challenges the assumption.

Want full details? We were pleased to have the study featured in the Nonprofit Quarterly, a highly respected magazine that focuses on themes of critical importance to leaders in the nonprofit sector.

Executive Leadership Competencies Mapped to "FYI" Competencies

Many organizational coaches and HR departments rely on Lombardo and Eichinger's For Your Improvement: A Guide for Development and Coaching. Performance Programs recently mapped the 4th edition of the book, popularly known as FYI, to all the items on two validated 360 feedback surveys: Survey of Leadership Practices and the new Executive EQ. Both are published by Clark Wilson Group.

This is an effective way to bridge the compentency-based 360 feedback into developmental action plans. For more information about these maps, please contact Paul or Sonya at 1-800-565-4223.

How Can We Increase Job Competency with 360 Feedback?

A core competency statement describes the capability required to do a job successfully. Many organizations have conducted extensive studies of core competencies. We're often asked to use competency study results and customize useful feedback questions to reflect those competencies.

Generally, we limit 360 feedback questions to behaviors that people can change, especially if the feedback is being used for development. This maximizes the opportunity to design effective training. We review each of the competencies for its observability by others.

Customized 360 feedback is usually not validated. However, an organization can obtain validated items or groups of items to create a hybrid survey. For validated competencies, the Task Cycle® Surveys from The Clark Wilson Group are an excellent source. If your organization's competencies match part or all of these, you can capitalize on this research by adding them to your custom 360 feedback questionnaire.

For more information, visit www.performanceprograms.com