Bob invites you to check out his video training series developed to explain and help digest the personal development report. Additionally, you can learn how to read the data sheet here.

I’ve lined myself up in front of fish tank on purpose for this particular video because the fish are going to be part of the story. I know many of you read the transcript and enjoy following the blog that way and I think that’s great. But I also know many people watch the video, and I’ve heard that you like to see the fish. So, go ahead and watch the fish while I talk if you like. But the other reason is because we talk about putting people into environments that really suit them well. And that we have the right type of person in a job and in an environment that really does match up well with them.

So, I was talking to a candidate about this and how it all kind of ties together and I said, you know, you can be a beautiful fish but if you are a fresh water fish and you are put in a salt water tank, you’re not going to do really well. And if you are a cold-water fish and you are put in a warm water tank you’re not going to do really well. So, it has nothing to do with the beauty and the quality of the fish. You need to put the right fish in the right kind of tank. And you need to put the right type of people in an environment that suits their behavioral nature, and provide them with the kind of coaching and the mentoring that suits their needs.

Yes, there are many different ways to get jobs done and different behavioral styles can definitely be successful in the same environment. But you the manager make the difference because you know how to create the environment that just like putting a fresh water fish in a fresh water tank and a salt water fish in a salt water tank. Hope this makes sense. Thanks for your time, thanks for listening.

As I think you all know, I have an opportunity to talk to people every day about their personality style and their personality profile. And many people look forward to the conversations, and many people, especially candidates, are a bit nervous about what the profile is going to say about them. And lo and behold, in the eyes of the beholder the profile is seen as a positive picture of their personality style. And the reason is because it focuses on the strengths of the individual, what the person does well. And if that is what you do well, be it a relationship builder, or create harmony, or create process, all of those things make you feel good about yourself. And so it’s really common, at the end of the conversation, that the individual will say to me, “Gee, I’m not as bad as I thought I was”. I laugh and I say, “Well, yeah. You know, you’re not. In fact, there are a lot of really positive things about your personality and there are a lot of things that you can be very effective in doing.” The conversation turns out to be very much an affirmation of the individual’s strengths and it feels good. It feels good for them. I have to tell you it feels good for me, too, because we’re talking about positive things and it’s very relevant because we can build and grow from our strengths much faster, much more effectively and have a lot more fun doing it, than always worrying about what we do wrong. You know, I think we heard enough about what we did wrong when we were kids. It’s time to move beyond that. And, yes, I know we sometimes have that little boy or little girl on our shoulder telling us that we suck, but you know, there is more to life than that. If you can truly embrace what you do well and what your strengths are, then you can actually take on those things that you’re not as comfortable with, and recognize the need to consciously adapt your behavior to deal with those things, but celebrate the fact that you actually bring a lot of strengths to the table. So it’s true, maybe you don’t suck as much as you think. Did you ever think of that? You should. Thanks for your time.

I saw this mask when I was out shopping with my wife for the holidays and, of course, like anything, whenever I see something like this my thoughts always go to business. I thought about a kid holding this up like this and thinking that the person whom you get to see is the mask, not the real person. And I got to thinking about this as it relates to the hiring process because, let’s face it; whenever a candidate comes in to see us, no matter what they may say about wanting to be sure that it’s a good fit for them, too, people put on a mask, and that mask is what they think you want to see. It’s just human nature and it can be very difficult for us to decipher whether we’re looking at the real person or if we’re looking at the mask.

One of the tools that we provide to help you with this is the Behavioral Profiling tool that breaks out for you the basic, natural self, as in who the real person is, and then how we get to see that person. Think about how relevant that is for you when you’re trying to make a hiring decision, because is it the person with the mask who is going to show up or is it, in fact, the real person? And we know that in terms of providing motivation, guidance, leadership, coaching and everything else, it needs to be the real person whom you’re motivating not the mask. Thanks for your attention, I look forward to being with you again.

We’re going to review an email that I received over the weekend. These are the kind of emails that can really make a weekend special let me tell you. I’m going to leave off the details because they’re irrelevant to the story but it reads like this:

It says, “Hi Bob. I have recently joined a company. My current employer doesn’t
know this yet, so please keep that quiet. Please find copied here with, the name of the Human Resources Manager. She is our Senior Human Resource Manager and we have discussed using your services as part of our recruitment process. I would also be interested in you conducting an analysis on the existing sales team as a way to understand more deeply the team we already have in the field.” And it’s signed by this individual who is the new Senior Vice President of Sales.

So this had great meaning to me for a lot of reasons. Obviously it’s a new prospect. It looks like the sales cycle is going to be relatively short. The SVP of Sales has worked with us. He gets it. He understands what the value is. How great is that?

What’s really interesting as a business person and as a sales person is to really
grandfather where this came from because this obviously didn’t start with this company and it didn’t even start with the company that this person worked for. It started with a company one before that. Because the individual that brought our product to the company where this person was started with us about 10 years ago and we worked with that person for a number of years with that company. He then moved over into this new organization and brought our services with him.

The writer of this email was one of the managers that when our services were initially presented, kind of rolled his eyes and said, “What do we need that for?” Well that was about five years ago. We had an opportunity to work together obviously over those years and now we’re going to continue to have an opportunity to work on that.

All of this started with a cold call. All of this started because somebody who was on my team had the guts to pick up the phone and call a senior level executive and talk to them about what we did and engaged them in conversation. So for all of you cold callers out there, banging your head against the wall wondering what they’re really worth, when you strike the gold line, you can write it for a long way. This client will be the seventh client that we will do business with over the last decade that all came from that one sales person picking up the phone to talk to one prospect.

So keep at it even though it’s hard. Even though you may get disappointed based on the percentages, remember we’re not playing baseball. Nobody cares about your batting average. All we care about are hits. Keep swinging for the fences.

You maybe aware of a quote from Henry David Thoreau – probably
something he came up with on a rainy day, when he was sitting at Waldon Pond,
which said, “most of us live lives of quiet desperation”. I’ve always found that quote
disquieting and I really feel that it doesn’t necessarily apply to everybody equally. And
I’ve never really felt that it’s applied to me. But there are times of quiet when I think
about the service that Opus provides to our clients. And I really try to understand the
value that we can bring to you, by utilizing our services.

I think its important that we all feel that we do something of value. And so I give this
probably more thought than other people do. And I really think the value is around
helping you understand motivation, what motivates you as an individual, what’s
important to you to help somebody confirm and affirm your own motivators, and then to
help you understand what motivates the people around you. Because if we understand
what people are motivated by, then we can understand what we can do to help them
accomplish what’s important to them.

And it’s not the things as much as it is the intangibles. We all have them, the desire to
win, the desire to be part of the team, the desire for security, the desire for harmony.
Whatever it is, we all have motivations that go beyond what we normally see. And
our job, and what hopefully we do well for you, is to help you understand your own
motivation and what motivates others. And for doing that then maybe, maybe Thoreau
didn’t get it right as it relates to OPUS.

I want to talk with you today about a situation that just recently happened with a candidate. I had an opportunity to do a personality profile and candidate assessment for a person who is applying for job as product development manager. We reviewed the personality profile, and as we always do, talked about his career path. When I asked him to recount his work history, the candidate said to me, “Gee, I don’t know which version of my resume you have in front of you,” which I thought was a pretty interesting statement. So, I had him talk to me about his career and what he did, and while he was talking, I flipped open his LinkedIn page. When I looked at that, it made perfect sense why he asked about what copy of the resume that I had, because his experience on the LinkedIn page didn’t really bear a whole lot of resemblance to the resume that I was looking at.

For instance, it did show that they had been a product manager back in the early 2000’s, 2001 to 2004. It also showed that he had been the senior VP of sales and marketing since 2005 and the VP of finance for that time as well. Well, neither of the sales and marketing role or the finance role were listed on the resume. The only thing on the resume showed from 2000 to present was the role of being a director or VP of product development. So it raises the question, what do you really expect to see on a resume? Do you expect it to be geared for you, only focused on the things that are important to you and your job, or do you expect the resume to be an accurate reflection of that person’s work history. Does it concern you when you realized that not everything is listed on the resume and that goes to job functions, job titles, dates; and maybe even leaving off certain jobs that they have determined are not relevant to the position that they are applying for. So take a minute if you will, fill out the survey on these questions and let everybody else know what your perspective is.

Thank you very much. We’re really trying to figure it out that as it relates to a resume, should it be bold or bull? Thank you.

Now we are able to look at that picture because it is her Facebook picture and you could see that behind her she has somebody standing there that clearly has some form of a drink in their hand and it was a “happy time” kind of a picture that was taken. That’s what we received.  As I normally do when somebody does their personality profile, I talk to the individual, review the results of that profile with them, make sure that they feel that it is an accurate reflection of who they are, talk to them about their past, what they have done – and then have a one-on-one conversation with the hiring manager, sharing the results of the profile, talking about the strengths, talking about how the person aligns with other successful people they have in their organization and sharing my perspective on the fit for the candidate.

So here are the four questions I would like you to consider from this particular incident.

Number one, should I have talked to the candidate about the fact that their picture appeared?

Number two, should I have talked with the hiring manager about that particular picture?

Number three, if you were the hiring manager and you found out that the person had a picture like that, would it have effected your decision to hire or not hire the person?

And number four, should either the hiring manager or human resources make it a practice to check the social network of a candidate or before extending an offer to that person?

One last point, this is not a candidate that’s in the United States.

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