Select for Attitude, Manage for Outcomes through Behaviours

As a hiring manager, last year I decided to use a model to assess suitable candidates for my own team – Attitude, Skills and Knowledge or ‘ASK’. I love models (including acronyms!), as a useful framework to simplify a construct to explain my thinking to someone else. The further I’ve moved away from being a Scientist, the more comfortable I’ve become with ambiguity and shades of grey. The imperfection of models, and the nuances within and outside their structures.

But I digress, back to my own assessment of candidates. The most important factor in ‘ASK’ was attitude. Quickly followed by Skills, including transferrable skills. Whilst the perfect candidate would have both, plus the Knowledge of how to do the role, I found it hard to find perfection. As I’ve previously written, perfect is not ideal in my opinion, as the person has nothing to learn, and will quickly get bored with the role! Of course, if this situation were to occur, I’d rewrite the Position Description to ensure there were things to challenge the person with, so they could learn and grow.

Knowledge to perform the role can be learnt. The technical aspects of how to use the tools, systems and processes to deliver the desired outcome. Learning how to do perform the role can also occur within the ‘Attitude’ element of ASK. Breaking down Attitude into its own three components of emotions, behaviours and thoughts, or simply ‘ABC’ – Affective, Behavioural, and Cognitive – can lead to productive learning moments. Having said that, providing feedback on how someone feels or thinks about a task or activity is not as effective as providing feedback on how someone acts towards it. This feedback can be grounded in the observation of action, and a shared and agreed understanding of this action is more likely to occur than to change someone’s mind about what they think or feel.

I recently spoke with a client who had been struggling with an employee to get them to meet expectations. Earlier in the year, they offered the employee a choice – accept a lesser role or take a redundancy. Somewhat surprisingly, the employee chose the lesser role. Being clear on what behaviours were required going forward allowed the employee the opportunity to address the gaps and meet expectations. Moreover, they then displayed the standard of behaviour that had been expected previously, so was subsequently rewarded with an extension of duties. Not the former role, as this was no longer available, but an expanded role nonetheless.

Hearing this story reminded me of another model from my distant past. In the days that Cadbury had Learning and Development training, I learnt the DESC model for providing feedback.

D – Describe the observed action (the behaviour!)

E – Explain how it makes me feel

S – Specify the desired behaviour

C – may not be needed, so refrain from providing this upon the first occasion of giving the feedback. If the same observed action occurs, then use ‘C’ – the Consequences of not changing the action to the required state.

The story from my client suggests that this model was enacted successfully, and that the individual has not only changed their behaviour, but also changed how they think and feel about the standard required for their role. As a manager, it’s difficult to change how someone thinks or feels, it’s really up to the individual to choose to change (or not).

As we approach the year end, and no doubt many organisations have their annual performance reviews coming up, measuring the what was achieved, and the how it was achieved (the old Cadbury model!) may well be useful. Further, the how being classified as observable actions means it not as complex as ABC – it’s merely all about the ‘B’.

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