Burning Questions: How Do We Get Our Leaders Speaking The Same Language?
As part of our on-going Burning Questions series we’re diving into the topics, concerns, and questions that we hear most commonly when we speak with HR professionals and leaders who are embarking on skills management initiatives. This week we’ll be taking a look at a question that most HR professionals and business leaders have grappled with at one time or another: “How Do We Get Our Leaders Speaking The Same Language?”
Getting alignment on the definitions of different dimensions and measures is critical to building analytical applications that generate trusted insights and can be relied on for making real-world decisions. However, getting that alignment is not always easy, and organizations struggle with it every single day.
Think about the classic clashes between sales and marketing. The marketing team has one view of the situation based on how they have defined key metrics, while the sales team has a completely different view – often in direct opposition to what marketing thinks. This lack of consistency breeds distrust in data, animosity between departments, and is a surefire way to discredit a new dashboard or analytical application before it gets off the ground.
When it comes to skills management, the single most important thing you can do is get alignment on the proficiency definitions that will be used to measure skills across the organization. You want to make sure that a rating of a 4 means the same thing to a sales manager as it does to someone in HR or technology.
In effect, what you want to do is create a rating system that can be applied accurately and consistently across the organization by different managers who are rating employees on widely different skills. So, how exactly do you pull that off? Below are 3 ways you can drive alignment and get company leaders speaking the same language when it comes to skills.
Choose a Rating Scale That Allows for Growth & Development
Some organizations will want to choose proficiency definitions with a limited range (e.g. a 1-3 rating scale). While this might seem like a good way to improve alignment – after all, there are only three possible ratings, what could go wrong? – it can lead to problems down the road. Take a look at the following example.
Needs Improvement
Meets Expectations
Exceeds Expectations
This scale has two big issues, it does not leave room for growth and the ratings are not specific enough to be applied consistently by different managers. In fact, using this scale will tend to result in highly subjective ratings, because these proficiency definitions are subject to the interpretation of an individual manager – what “Exceeds Expectations” for one may not even “Meet Expectations” for another. That is why we encourage granularity when defining a proficiency rating scale and equip Visual Workforce with a default 10-point scale baked in.
Tie Proficiency Definitions to Exhibited Behaviors
Whenever possible, it is best to tie proficiency definitions back to actual behavior. In the previous section, we looked at a 1-3 rating system that is used by many organizations in performance reviews. This scale, while simple, is also easily biased. Proficiency definitions like these are tied to manager expectations around the performance of an employee and not their underlying skills (check out this Harvard Business Review article for more information on biases in performance evaluations). A rock star consultant who meets their manager’s expectations will still likely have more finely developed skills than a new college hire who just finished their first project (even if they crushed it).
We have found that tying proficiency ratings back to how people behave, where a certain skill is concerned, is the best way to build a rating scale that eliminates bias. That way, each rating is based on behavior that can be identified and tracked for skills regardless of team, role, or skill type. This same rating system can be consistently implemented by managers across different departments and applied to hard skills (SQL, C++, QA Testing) just as easily as soft skills (leadership, public speaking, communication).
Use Language That is Already Familiar to the Organization
When defining proficiency definitions, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. If your organization already has language around skills and proficiencies that your managers have been trained on, use it! But, do it in a way that minimizes biases and sets your organization up for success by following the advice we have laid out above.
After all, there is nothing worse than collecting a whole bunch of data only to find out it is flawed because people could not agree on what exactly “Exceeds Expectations” means or who is “Advanced” versus just “Intermediate”.
If you want to learn more about this topic and the other burning questions that we’ve been hearing from people like you, download our new eBook, “7 Burning Questions in Skills Management.”