The qualities needed for employees to be successful, employable, and competitive in a technologically advanced world have significantly increased. Although appropriate qualifications, performance in previous positions, and experience are still the starting point, companies must recruit employees with the brain fitness and mental flexibility to easily and quickly re-skill, upskill, move across multiple new ideas and understandings swiftly, and think about multiple concepts simultaneously. These skillsets require new approaches and instruments to recruit high-potential candidates who will thrive in fast-changing circumstances.
Jim Collins writes in his book, “From Good to Great”, that for people to engage in constantly changing job functions and for companies to progress in a disruptive business landscape, they must get the right person on the right bus on the right seat. To be able to do this, the journey starts with talent selection professionals who source the right people who have the skills and qualities required to execute particular job functions and the personality to fit in with the team and the company they are recruited into. Talent selection professionals usually start with a customized selection process consisting of various tests and assessments like personality and cognitive tests to get the best candidates. Most companies emphasize personality, qualifications, skills, and competencies when recruiting new employees, but not enough on the elements influencing their mental flexibility, change agility, risk of errors and mistakes, and how they naturally prefer to think, learn, process information, and solve complex problems.
Personality is the sum total of “nature” and “nurture”, or differently stated, the sum total of genetics and how the environment has shaped them. To understand a person’s personality, “nature”, or differently stated, the impact of genetics or a person’s neurological design should be the starting point before doing a personality test. Neurological design is commonly referred to as neuro-design. This will provide valuable insights about the candidate’s potential, thinking, learning, and communication preferences, and the potential risk for error and mistakes when exposed to increased complexities and rapid change.
Fit matters. When there is alignment between people’s neuro-design, the job functions they perform and the career choices they make, they are engaged and passionate about their work, because they get to express their natural gifts, talents, and preferences in the work they do. From a neuroscience perspective, passion is good fuel for the brain and body as the brain produces neurotransmitters that strengthen energy, brain health, and immune function. Performing job functions aligned with their neurological design will help workers engage more effectively in their job functions and be more effective, productive, authentic, happy, and fulfilled.
When there is a misalignment between who people are (their neuro-design) and the work they do, they work because they have to, not because they want to. They may even be very good at what they do, but may not enjoy, or be passionate about what they do. Various surveys and research on employee engagement across the globe, confirm this to be the truth for many employees. From a neuroscience-based perspective, the miss-alignment between natural preferences and job functions in the medium to long term will cause people to produce inhibiting neurochemicals. These chemicals will act as “bad fuel” for their brain, negatively impacting immune function and depleting their energy, resulting in illness, lethargy, disengagement, and unhappiness.
A Neuro Agility Profile® assessment aims to develop people and improve their performance. It measures brain potential, mental flexibility, brain fitness, and risk of errors and mistakes. This assessment fills these gaps when searching for “high potentials” and recruiting employees who are assets to their organizations. Although the NAP™ has not been developed as a talent selection instrument per se, it is a great instrument to be used in conjunction with talent selection instruments to fill the aforementioned gaps.
People make companies great. To grow a company from good to great, talent selection professionals must fill the vacancy with the right person for a particular job. A good starting point would be to establish which potential candidate’s neuro-design best fits the job functions required for the anticipated position. The following steps are suggested:
1. Do a Neuro Agility Profile® Advanced+ assessment on all team members the candidate is being recruited into. The NAP™ assessment is a comprehensive, multi-dimensional instrument that complements talent selection instruments. It is frequently used in concurrence with talent selection instruments at company assessment centers.
2. Conduct a High-Performance Team intervention, debriefing team members on their NAP™ profiles and the team profile. Identify the gaps in the neuro-design roles that team members fulfill that prevent them from functioning at optimum levels as a high-performing, agile team.
3. Get feedback from team members and the team leader to identify what characteristics, qualities, and skills are needed in the vacant position, and what the profile of the ideal applicant should look like.
4. Analyze the job functions, characteristics, skills, and qualities required for the position. Match it with the neurophysiological components of thinking, learning, and processing information. The following neurophysiological elements that impact how people learn, think and process information should be taken into consideration:
- Relative / functional lateral preferences
- Level of brain agility required
- Expressive/receptive preferences
- Figurative thinking, learning, and communication preferences
- Rational/emotional preferences
- Brain and sensory information processing preferences and potential risk for human errors
- Sensory learning preferences
- Intelligence preferences
- Stress coping capabilities
- Level of fatigue
5. Create an ideal neuro-design profile required for the specific job, based on matching team feedback with the job function analysis done by talent selection professionals.
6. Appoint the most suitable candidate who mostly resembles the team feedback and neuro-design job analysis.
7. The team leader should debrief the new candidate on his/her neuro-design, how that fits into the team profile, and the strongest contribution he/she can make to that team.
8. The above process will require that talent selection professionals have an in-depth understanding of the learning, thinking, and processing implications of the brain by doing Neuro Agility Profile® practitioner training in neurological design and how to apply the NAP™ assessment to determine people’s neuro-design.
Having followed the approach suggested above in an iron ore mine where the objective was to “fast track” the development of high potentials for future leadership positions, the client conducted an Organizational Climate Assessment (OCA) to determine if this approach, and the development interventions, rendered a sufficient return on their investment. The OCA indicates whether an intervention impacts the company’s bottom line and is worth implementing. A minimum result of 3.1% improvement result was required to prove a sufficient return on investment for the company. An 8,9% result (almost 3x the expected result) was achieved. 87% of participants were promoted to a supervisory or managerial position within 9 months of completing the program.
Aligning people’s neuro-design with their jobs is ideal for creating more ease, flow, and engagement in their work. However, people should not be disqualified for a job or new opportunities based only on their neuro-design. The fact is that all people can learn to be neuro-agile by developing skills that will enable them to utilize their whole brain to execute any learning, thinking or processing functions their job may require. To improve Neuro Agility people will have to do a NAP™ assessment to identify the areas in which they can improve and develop those areas. Should they not measure their Neuro Agility and improve in the areas they need to, they will still be less in flow, work harder and longer, enjoy work less, make more mistakes, and be less of an asset to the company.
By: Dr André Vermeulen