Reference Profile Series: The Unicorn (stop looking for it...)

Ever found yourself searching for that perfect candidate who can somehow be innovative and detail-oriented, people-focused and results-driven, all at once? Stop right there. This eye-opening episode debunks the myth of the "unicorn employee" – that mythical 18th reference profile that simply doesn't exist.

Click HERE to get your very own Reference Profile.

Related TBC Episodes:

• Head, Heart, and Briefcase

1. The Collaborator Manager
2. The Operator Manager
3. The Promoter Manager
4. The Altruist Manager
5. The Strategist Manager
6. The Guardian Manager
7. The Specialist Manager
8. The Maverick Manager
9. The Artisan Manager
10. The Persuader Manager
11. The Captain Manager
12. The Controller Manager
13. The Adapter Manager

HERE ARE MORE RESOURCES FROM REAL GOOD VENTURES:

Never miss a good opportunity to learn from a bad boss...

We use The Predictive Index as our analytics platform so you know it's validated and reliable.  Your Reference Profile informs you of your needs, behaviors, and the nuances of what we call your Behavioral DNA.  It also explains your work style, your strengths, and even the common traps in which you may find yourself.  It's a great tool to share with friends, family, and co-workers.

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Provide your feedback HERE, please!  We love to hear from our listeners and welcome your thoughts and ideas about how to improve the podcast and even suggest topics and ideas for future episodes.

Visit us at www.realgoodventures.com.  We are a Talent Optimization consultancy specializing in people and business execution analytics.  Real Good Ventures was founded by Sara Best and John Broer who are both Certified Talent Optimization Consultants with over 50 years of combined consulting and organizational performance experience.  Sara is also certified in EQi 2.0.  RGV is also a Certified Partner of Line-of-Sight, a powerful organizational health and execution platform.  RGV is known for its work in leadership development, executive coaching, and what we call organizational rebuild where we bring all our tools together to diagnose an organization's present state and how to grow toward a stronger future state. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the Unicorn Profile
• 1:42 Understanding Behavioral Flexing Profiles
• 4:31 The Trap of Seeking Contradictory Traits
• 8:09 Job Fit and the Whole Person Model
• 11:05 Hidden Burnout in Top Performers
• 14:40 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Transcript

John Broer: 0:04

Welcome back everybody to The Bossh ole Chronicles Good to have you here, and this is another installment of our reference profile series. This one's a little different because I'm going to encourage you to stop looking for this one because it doesn't exist. But in our hiring and our recruiting practices many times we get caught looking for the unicorn. So there is no 18th reference profile. I just wanted to drop this episode in to make everybody aware that if you're looking for somebody who can do everything, you're looking for that unicorn. You're going to be looking for a long time. So let's jump in! Well, it's good to have you back joining us for another installment of The Bossh ole Chronicles, and I'm flying solo today because I just wanted to drop this episode in as we start to see the finish of our reference profile series. So far, we have done 13 of the reference profiles and if you go into the show notes for this one, you will see those 13. These are great ways to learn about each of the reference profiles. We still have four more to go, and we will be getting those published in the next couple of months. So the whole series of the 17 PI reference profiles will be available for you to use and to share. But the one I really wanted to talk about today was the unicorn. When I'm doing workshops or working with managers or leadership groups, we always encourage them to dig into their own self-awareness based on their behavioral DNA, and that comes from completing the PI behavioral assessment, understanding the reference profile, getting a read back and digging into the data. And you can do that too. I mean, just go into the show notes. There is a link for you to complete the PI behavioral assessment. We'll send you your reference profile information. There are short videos about each one on our website at realgoodventurescom.

John Broer: 2:33

But there is one reference profile that a lot of people look for and it just doesn't exist, and that is the unicorn. For those of you that have been listening to us over the last oh wow, almost five years, you know that of the 17 reference profiles as we start to understand a person's behavioral DNA, there are three. That is the adapter, and we did that one just recently. The other one is the individualist, which is coming up. We're going to be doing that and we have the altruist. That was one of the early ones we did. Hannah from our team is actually an altruist.

John Broer: 3:15

Those three reference profiles are referred to as our flexing reference profiles because they have the really unique capacity to shift and adapt to where they're needed. Now, that's part of their superpower, but it's also part of what can be their kryptonite. Of the 17 reference profiles, those three can have the tendency to get pulled in so many different directions they actually feel like they're a bit spread out or spread too thin. They're a bit spread out or spread too thin. Those are the three that may have unicorn characteristics, but that's not really our intent, or that shouldn't be our intent to try to spread people so thin or get them to do so many diverse things that they literally become burned out. And I will tell you, I believe because some organizations don't use this kind of data to optimize job fit. That's why our disengagement levels are at a 10 year high, according to Gallup process.

John Broer: 4:21

You start to fall into that trap of looking for somebody that can do everything. Then you have to hit the brakes and try not to be looking for that unicorn. Now what does that look like in reality and I've had this shared with me. For example, I've had a hiring manager say well, you know what we're looking for? Somebody who can connect really quickly with other people. They've got great vision, they're innovative and they're comfortable with risk. And I also need them to be very focused on process and precision. In other words, I mean they can take a lot of detail, they can coordinate it, they're highly efficient and they're focused on the nuances that allow a process to function effectively. Now, in our world, those are on two different ends of the spectrum. Actually, you could look at our competing values matrix and you can say, well, that's like saying, well, we want somebody who has the characteristics of that innovation and agility group which are the persuaders, captains, mavericks and venturers, and we also want them to have the process and precision capabilities of more stabilizing reference profiles, like the operator, the artisan, the guardian and the specialist.

John Broer: 5:34

In the science of PI, the one thing that we stress is that the wider the patterns become, so when you get your data, you'll notice that your behavioral DNA it looks like there's a pattern. The wider the pattern, the more intense those drives and those combinations of drives are and it takes more energy to adapt. It doesn't mean you can't adapt. It means that your wiring is more established at these more intense levels and therefore adapting to the extremes on the other side of the spectrum takes a lot more energy and is more difficult to accomplish, takes a lot more energy and is more difficult to accomplish. You'll see, in some cases some people have patterns that are very, very narrow. Well, those narrow or more moderated patterns suggest that it takes less energy for somebody to adapt. The adaptation still takes energy.

John Broer: 6:22

Bottom line is this If you're saying I want somebody who's innovative and people-focused and they're going to go out there and take that hill, and I want them also to be focused on process and precision and efficiency and be really well organized, you're asking them to exist at two different ends of the behavioral spectrum. Let's look at it another way. You have a request and say well, we're looking for somebody who is super focused on teamwork and building a great experience for other people, they're supportive, they're transparent, they're empathetic, they can connect with other people without any issue whatsoever and at the same time, we want them to be driven and competitive and demanding and drive other people and move them forward. Well, once again, we're looking at two different ends of the spectrum, meaning you have one side that is going to be more like collaborators or promoters in what we would call the teamwork and employee experience end of the spectrum, and then, on the other side, results in discipline. Well, that's where you're talking about a controller or an analyzer or a strategist or a scholar Two totally different ends of the spectrum. And so I would ask you to think about how you are strategizing and setting up your job alignment process. In other words, whether it's for prospective employees, these candidates you're looking at or people that are already in the building, our existing employees, how are we verifying and confirming alignment to what's required in the job? And that's where these analytics make it so transparent.

John Broer: 8:02

And again, you've heard us say this before low engagement, high turnover, poor performance, absolutely the number one variable that influences that, and there are more variables, but the number one variable is poor job fit, and if you don't have the data to compare that, if you don't have a job target to compare to somebody's behavioral DNA, you will never know that. And then what ends up happening is we start to blame the person. Now, like I said, there are a lot of different variables that influence job fit. You know we use the whole person model. We talk about head, heart and briefcase Well, and we've also added baggage to that. But you know we have a couple of episodes that talk about the head, the heart and the briefcase. That's the whole person model and in the head, that's where the behavioral and the cognitive data lives.

John Broer: 8:51

The briefcase is our word for a person's resume, and so if somebody is struggling or failing, it could very well be the place we want to start to say well, wait, do they even have the skillset, do they have the tools and the experience to be able to do the job we're asking them to do? And the briefcase or the resume is the easiest thing to build. And then, when you look at the heart, do they even want to do this? Do they have the passion, the interest, the core values that align with the kind of work that we do? And sometimes that is misaligned and also with the behavioral and the cognitive capabilities and the traits. Is there misalignment there?

John Broer: 9:26

So that's why you have to look at the whole person and at the same time, we don't want to fall into the trap of trying to find a single individual that can do everything that is required when you start to look at the different positions in your organization, you'll realize that there are different traits, different characteristics, different skill sets that are required to be successful in this role. And the more time you invest in understanding that, you will start to see a different picture revealed, a picture of different types of people. And when we're talking about that kind of differentiation and diversity in an organization, we're talking about head, heart and briefcase, behavioral diversity, cognitive diversity. Every single job has a different level or a different requirement of each, and if you just try to find that one individual who can do it all, you're going to be looking for a long time. And also for those of you that think, oh, no, no, no, no, we got a number of those people in our organization that can do it all. I would be willing to bet, based on all the years of this talent optimization work that we've done, that I've done. I can assure you that you may have people that are excelling and give the appearance of being able to do it all without any reservation, without any bumps in the road. But if you were to look at their self-concept compared to their self-graph, if there is a real misalignment to the job, I can assure you there is a level of anxiety, frustration, burnout, perhaps disengagement that is taking place. Maybe they figured out how to cope with it.

John Broer: 11:08

We just recently had an example where I was helping a client do some analysis around job targets and their top performers. What does the data from their top performers tell us about what that job target should look like? And there was one individual and this person's data was shared with me as the epitome of success and they have the best numbers. It turned out that this person was actually not a strong match to the target. That resulted and you could see in the entirety of this person's data they were adapting significantly. Now I didn't realize this, but somewhere in the few weeks of these conversations taking place, this person left and apparently expressed a high degree of frustration with what they were experiencing, the burnout, the emotion associated with it. But nobody knew it until you saw the data.

John Broer: 12:03

Now, unfortunately, our timing was such that this person had made the decision to leave, even though they were the top performer. Had the data been available earlier and this was a new application, but had it been made available earlier and the manager could have seen this, they could have interceded and worked with this person and addressed this frustration that otherwise did not surface. So the perception that somebody is a unicorn, they can do it all, they're amazing and we're just going to let them be successful and not really be aware of perhaps the turmoil that they could be experiencing otherwise, that is not revealed. That gets us into real trouble and we lose great talent. And this is somebody that maybe could have been refit into a different role. Maybe their perceived need to adapt was such that it could have been managed or coached, but they lost a great performer because at that particular time they just didn't have the data to see what this person may be experiencing.

John Broer: 13:04

And, at the same time, when you just look at performance as the only metric to say, hey, this person is a great example of who we want in this role, in reality, when you get down and you do the diagnostics, you realize actually that's not the case, and so we need to be very intentional about using the data to help inform how we recruit and promote and identify optimized talent. You know helping people find meaning and fulfillment in their work. So I appreciate you're letting me drop this one in here about the unicorn. I want to encourage all of our listeners if you think that you're ultimately just looking for that one person who can do it all, just stop and back up and realize that there is a better way to assess job fit and optimize job fit within your organizations through some very, very simple and powerful analytics. So keep checking back. We're going to do the final four reference profiles here in the next couple of months and you will have that full set of 17 reference profiles and then the 18th, that unicorn one. We'll just drop that in there, of course, just to remind everybody. Stop looking for the unicorn, because they just don't exist, and let's base our talent optimization and our hiring and our recruiting in reality and that objective data will always, always make transparent those really critical people decisions. Thanks for listening everybody. Keep checking back and we will see you next time.

John Broer: 14:40

On the Boss Hole Chronicles. Thanks very much for checking out this episode of the Boss Hole Chronicles. It was so good to have you here and if you have your own boss hole story that you want to share with the Boss Hole Transformation Nation, just reach out. You can email us at mystoryatthebossholechroniclescom. Again, mystoryatthebossholechroniclescom, we'll see you next time.