Case Study
One of our clients was a large multinational that had rapidly expanded its operations into various Africa countries. This expansion was not sustainable without the right human capital and the company therefore embarked on a project whereby it could identify individuals who could be developed into country management positions.
Corporate HR asked senior managers in the various countries to identify individuals who were excellent performers in their current roles. 25 employees were identified and these formed the organisation’s pool of high performers. We were requested to put this pool of employees through a battery of psychometric tests, to assess them in terms of their potential or capability. Our methodology was to profile the country management role in terms of the level of cognitive ability required by this role as well as the emotional capabilities required by this role. We did this using our proprietary job profiling tools.
The profiling exercise indicated that country managers should posses the cognitive capability typically found amongst middle to senior managers, and that they should possess the following Emotional Capabilities:
Empathy Trust Team Work Assertiveness Interpersonal Confidence Interpersonal Awareness Emotional Resilience Self – Confidence Conscientiousness Self – Discipline Initiative
Once assessed they would be placed in a Talent Matrix. As regards Cognitive Level they would fall into any one of those listed as per the table that follows. As regards Emotional Capabilities into one of the following categories:
Natural – such employees possess most of the required emotional capabilities with some development areas Fit – such employees possess many of the required emotional capabilities, but also possess many development areas Stretch – such employees possess few of the required emotional capabilities and would probably be playing to their weaknesses in a leadership role.
Of the 25 candidates in the performance pool only 6 were clearly identified as matching up with the psychological capabilities required for the country management roles (primary capability in green). Another 2 had the cognitive capability but needed quite a bit of development regarding their emotional capabilities (secondary capability in blue ). 5 employees had the cognitive capability but not the emotional capability indicating that they could be developed into senior specialist roles but not leadership roles (specialist capability in purple). Nearly half of the high performers (12) did not have the cognitive capability for a country manager role.
Had all 25 employees been fast tracked into country manager roles based on their performance in their current roles, then we would have expected a high failure rate with significant financial and non – financial costs to the organisation.
