In our daily professional activity as experts in the evaluation of professional competencies, we detect a common confusion in many Human Resources departments: the overlapping of concepts between the evaluation of managerial performance and the evaluation ofsoft skills.
Both may use 360-degree methodologies, but the object of measurement, and therefore the strategic impact they offer, are radically different. Understanding this difference is the first step to stop measuring only the past and start investing in the future of teams through an effective assessment of managerial potential.
Most traditional 360 evaluations are inherently focused on "What you did" as an employee. They focus on managerial performance evaluation based on tangible results.
These tools seek to answer crucial questions for operational management and objective review:
Were quarterly sales targets achieved?
Were projects delivered on time?
Were key performance indicators (KPIs) met?
This approach is critical for transactional management, determining bonuses, incentives or tracking task accomplishment. It measures operational effectiveness and final work product. However, it leaves us with a crucial unanswered question for business leadership assessment:
Why was that result achieved (or not achieved)?
This is where Servitalent, supported by our flagship Steelter® tool, introduces a paradigm shift in the assessment of managerial competencies. Our specialty is measuring the "How you did it", the engine that drives or slows down the achievement of those results.
Soft skills are the underlying behaviors that enable you to interact effectively, manage complexity, exercise sound business leadership and adapt to change. Measuring "How" through a job competency assessment means analyzing:
Conflict management: how did the professional address disagreements with a teammate?
Adaptive leadership: How did he/she inspire and guide his/her team despite the pressure of the environment?
Resilience and flexibility: How did he/she react to an unexpected change in priorities?
This approach does not judge the end result, but rather diagnoses the inherent capacity and potential to succeed in a sustainable way, and is key in any executive assessment center.
Servitalent's role, using Steelter® as its primary tool, focuses precisely on providing development and training managers with objective and strategic metrics on soft skills.
We are not talent developers, we are talent mappers. Our intervention can be summarized in two critical phases, which are often the weak points of internal skills assessment programs in the company:
Before investing in training, it is vital to know the real situation. Thanks to Steelter® and its specialized methodology for assessing executive competencies, we can:
Define the soft skills crucial for success in a specific role or team.
Measure accurately and objectively how these competencies are manifested on a day-to-day basis, gathering feedback from superiors, peers and collaborators.
Quantify the exact distance between the desired profile and the current profile (e.g., a 40% gap in "Critical Thinking" in the management team).
This accurate diagnosis ensures that the development plan is surgical and relevant, focusing resources on the areas that really need to be improved after the assessment of professional competencies.
Once the training, coaching or mentoring plan has been executed (the task of the development specialists), we go back into action to close the HR competency assessment cycle.
By repeating the Soft Skills 360 assessment with Steelter® some time later, we can isolate and quantify the impact of the development program on employee behaviors.
We measure whether the competency (the "How") that was identified as weak has improved through training. This provides a robust metric on the Return on Investment (ROI) of any talent development initiative based on an assessment of managerial potential.