Optimum Talks Blog

You Must Diagnose Before You Can Prescribe

You’ve hired the best people for your organization. Now it’s time to identify the high-potentials that can take on leadership roles. This is a fundamental business investment designed to sustain your organization’s profitability now, but more importantly, into the future. Essentially you are determining who can lead while you can mentor them; who will lead when you’ve moved on. Before the selection process can begin, it’s crucial that company leaders identify the unique skills and assets that each person can bring to your team.

This entails defining the set of activities that will accelerate future leaders’ development and get each ready to lead by developing their self-awareness. Just as a physician evaluating a new patient performs a diagnostic exam before prescribing a course of treatment, you must assess high-potential leaders. Performing a diagnostic assessment enables you to select proper development solutions. To ensure a proper assessment, your diagnostic tools should include:

• A 360-degree surveys or simulations
• Validated personality traits inventories
• A tailored knowledge and experience review interview or questionnaire

These three methodologies will generate a wholesome view of the high-potential leaders’ strengths and development needs.

Having collected meaningful information you can now ask the vital question that target your high-potential candidates’ self-awareness:

“What is it that one is aware of when one is self-aware?”

In a nutshell, there are two answers:

1. On the one hand, you can be aware of your identity: how you think about and evaluate yourself.
2. On the other hand, you can be aware of your reputation: how others think about and evaluate your behaviours.

It is critical that a leader, particularly one who is part of a development process, is aware of both the impact of his or her behaviours and his or her reputation as a leader.

Self-awareness is particularly critical if there is a gap between the self-view and the reputation. When both are aligned it is considered self-accuracy.

Leaders who are highly self-aware and “honest with themselves” will recognize their challenges and gaps in order to maximize their strengths. The higher the self-awareness, the more likely the leader will improve.

Performing a good diagnostic before the prescription avoids wasting time, energy, and money. It is the right way to accelerate leadership development, for your high potential candidates and the people they will lead to sustain your organization in the future.