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Leading with Care? – The Key is Emotional Intelligence

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Leading with Care? - The Key is Emotional Intelligence

Back in a 2019 survey when the world was normal, 36% of the executives thought that Emotional Quotient (EQ) will be the most desired competence within the next three years. 25% of them extended the period with grace to five years. Within a year of this survey by Capgemini Research Institute, came the ‘new normal’ with radical tectonic changes in the world socio-economic system of which organizations are but parts of the whole. Thus, barring a few categories of business that rocketed, pandemic otherwise stormed most organizations with sweeping changes in the way business was performed.

Leaders well-known to exhibit visionary strategic insights and clockwork execution in the ‘normal’ are suddenly getting examined on a range of ‘new normal’ paradoxes. The latest mandate for leadership in the new normal; a critical behavioral measure as a determinant variable in this wavy covid-19 continuum that could have the most significant impact on a leader’s effectiveness – The Leader’s Emotional Quotient.

In the amphitheater of an organization, a leader irrespective of the rung of the organizational ladder he belongs to, has five arenas to perform –

i) managing process

ii) managing products or services

iii) managing people

iv) managing perceptions.

The way the leader performs in these arenas is determined by how he performs in the fifth arena which may directly not meet the eye of the organizational onlookers –

v) managing self.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is insufficient and only partially affords the above. Total leadership effectiveness is achieved through Emotional Quotient (EQ). EQ is the leader’s X-factor. The ability to make sense of the surrounding, usage of the sense made, and channelizing one’s own emotional energy in positive ways to ease stress, communicate effectively, empathizing with others, overcome challenges of relating despite differences, and transforming conflicts into collaborations.

These clearly are beyond the reach of cognitive faculties and calls for an active emotive faculty. Thus, without EQ ‘managing self’ is seldom a reality for leaders. The ill of this reflects gravely in the case of senior leaders of the organizations who are lonely at the top, bereft of any frank feedback, make key decisions that influence the strategic path of the organization. One wrong foot forward due to overuse of IQ and abandoning the EQ has devastating effects that could last long.

What’s even worse, a leader without EQ is on his way to becoming what is called a ‘narcissistic leader’. Someone full of himself and oblivious of what’s happening around, with an excessive need for admiration, complete indifference to what others feel, inability to take slightest of the criticism, and a heightened sense of entitlement.

While organizations ride the rollercoaster of Covid19 waves, their leaders need to play the role of resilience-provider providing for the emotional, physical, and psychological endurance of their people. Leaders are expected to demonstrate high degrees of empathy towards the employees and reassure them about the future. Leaders are to act on hope-restoration by infusing positivity.

Inspire people to adopt and practice a calm and composed approach to daily life regardless of what comes next, often providing necessary psychological, financial, and socio-logistic support to their people to facilitate their work-from-home realities. Above all, it is now that the leader must take personal responsibility and facilitate the performance achievement of his people.

To ensure this support to employees, leaders must adjust, adapt and be responsive to the uncertainties triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic across the organization. It is the leader’s EQ-based resilience response that can significantly influence his people’s resilience, well-being, engagement and identification with the organization, performance, commitment, creativity, and positive organizational citizenship behavior. Can any leader deliver these if he is not a High EQ Leader?

In a fleeting spell, the coronavirus has shown multiple deaths to many organizations. Many escaped deaths from a sniffing distance. This obviously has an unseen psychosomatic effect on an organization’s mindscape. Communicating bad news is a tough skill. Getting people to deliver even when the ‘new normal’ has most things ‘abnormal’. Few homes and domestic family processes are seldom designed to double-up as offices.

Yet, the leader needs to show business results through his people. Through self-awareness by high EQ, the leader uses a polite yet firm, tough yet loving, authoritative yet affiliative, demanding yet supportive style that creates an organizational climate that nurtures trust and performance.

The high EQ leader, therefore, is a ‘balanced being’ aware of his own thoughts, feelings and how the thoughts and feelings manifest as behavior. Being high on EQ is about having the ability to identify and manage not only one’s own emotions but that of others and groups too. EQ is a fundamental competency for effective leaders and is a reliable predictor of professional and personal excellence. Thus, the X-Factor of the leadership effectiveness is ‘High EQ’ and it impacts organizational profitability and performance.

Here’s an endorsement of the high EQ leadership-

“I have always lead people with affection. No success or achievement in material terms is worthwhile unless it serves the needs or interests of the country and its people and is achieved by fair and honest means.” – J.R.D.Tata

(Upcoming Next: The 5 things that a high EQ leader does)

[Disclaimer: Wherever a gender-specific pronoun is used, it should be understood as referring to both genders, unless explicitly stated. This is done solely for the purpose of making the text easier to read, and no offense or sexism is intended.]

This blog has been written by Baalmiki Bhattacharyya, Partner & COO at GrowthSqapes.

Covid-19 second wave – How is it impacting L&D?

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Covid-19 second wave - How is it impacting L&D?

As you read this, the equilibrium of normalcy in society seems to be in another battle. The battle between vaccine possibility and virus positivity. Both Covishield and Covaxin in India seem to be overcoming the accusations of efficacy, supply, and side-effects from all quarters, at least perceptually.

In a huge nation like ours where faith often rules over logic, perceptual validation competes with clinical validation. Though each substantial leap of the virus is being thwarted by eligibility leaps of a vaccinable population, clearly to us this wave is altered. Fear now seems to be a faulty evaluation of actual reality. No matter how much the authorities force penalties or whack us, there is a fair degree of anti-virus arrogance and disbelief.

‘Walking and talking encyclopedias’ declare herd immunity. Only if they can be convinced by eminent experts like Dr.Guleria, that herd immunity is achieved by protecting people through vaccination, not by exposing them to the pathogen that causes the disease. 

The factors that are driving the second wave, let’s face it – waning antibodies, not following COVID-19 appropriate behavior, pending vaccinations, and gung-ho festive celebrations are finally affecting business. With many local governments forced to re-introduce stricter measures like night-time curfews and sealing of premises in order to contain the spread, several plans that were coming to tracks of delivery are getting stalled or delayed.

What does this ‘contact-less continuity’ and delayed normalization mean for L&D managers?

Virtual boredom returns like a bad taste. At all levels of society, we were beginning to ‘get real’ , and getting back to virtual again is battling a lot of inertia.

Hope is also a paradoxically bad habit. It drives us in a direction and generates a dilemma. That’s what the L&D community is filled with as the second wave rises. Budgets and plans were made keeping the Hybrid Learning Model in mind, but the heart yearned for the off-line. Covid-19 enforced hybridization of learning.

Hybridization of learning could be defined as intermixing of different pedagogical elements that have the capacity of going beyond the traditional ‘walled educational interaction-­systems’ of facilitator and learner to create a new cyber-organizational entity.

What’s different in the Hybrid Learning Model?

A composition of internet-of-things (IoT) based educational technology and human beings turning learning into a new social hybrid. A new social system of learning, with its own social networks and mediating technology – the mobile apps, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, the changed LMS that talks through them, travels in the car and employee bus to other home-delivered byte-sized content carriers.

While the ‘echo chamber’ utility of a traditional conference room is not discounted, the new cyber-org entity would function as a room of discords and differences. Facilitating in the hybrid model is not smooth as silk. The virtual environment generates new psychodynamic elements in the learner much different from in-class.  

So, project managers and program managers are back on the drawing board. And within the hybrid, the blended will be put to test. All elements of L&D will swivel around these. Is there a better model than the Corona Virus Learning Model? 2021-22 is the Year of the Corona Hybrid Learning Model. It May sound bizarre at the moment but once it passes the test, it would enter the future BCP-DMP manuals.

How can the L&D community cope?

Without judgment and without trying too hard to force-fit, the L&D community needs to accept that theory continues to be put into practice. The conjectures that happened in magazine articles about real growth through virtual methods are now a reality. As a capability building community we must be “paying attention in a particular way: on (our) purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.” (Kabat-Zinn, 1994, p. 4).

That’s what being mindful is all about. This would give us an inner sense of flexibility to accept, connect, and collaborate. The ‘flexibility to accept’ is a cognitive process and a biological reality that we may not be conscious about that we undergo. So, let’s be thoughtful and mindful of what we cook with our thoughts. That should help us cope. Another point. Resilience is for us too. Learning too is business.

L&D community can no more brush aside technology as the snooty’s show. We got to come out of our technophobia, adopt and adapt to stay in business.

3 ways to ensure efficiency, effectiveness, and efficacy in capability-building endeavors in the Hybrid Learning Model?

The North Star: Zero-surprises project management is the north star for program managers, project managers, and learning team leaders. The inertia of taste, preferences, and fatigues of Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meets forced by the quirks of  WFH, needs a disciplined approach to help us accomplish more in terms of a learning culture with the hybrid model, so that we do not spin out of control. For efficiency, it is mandatory that the unstructured virtual environment of the hybrid model becomes empirical and project-oriented.

The Visible Impact: “Change in behavior is the only indicator of growth” (Lewin). For capability-building interventions, this translates into a change in behavior that gives a visible needle movement in business. Traditional indicators of effectiveness are no indicators in the current context and methodology of capability building. Program managers and business managers need to identify fresh needles on their dashboards whose movements they will track. That’s where L&D and business have the mandate to co-own, connect, create and collaborate.

Not the Medical Paradigm – What creates fruitful learning and how to measure it? Does a good facilitator always lead to great learning? In other words, can any facilitator, in real or virtual mode, create learning even when participants do not learn well; and can participants learn despite facilitation that is substandard? The observation that surgery was successful, but the patient died anyway is what medicos can afford. As learning community members, our reality lies in the ‘belief that we have on our own capabilities to impact others learning’, as different role holders of the learning organization. On the other hand, each of us in the learning community also has a larger goal – that of generating belief in people that learning would change their world for a little better. ‘Learning is learner’s responsibility’ – true, but that does not absolve ours. 

Satyakki Bhattacharjee
Managing Partner – Growthsqapes

This blog has been written by Satyakki Bhattacharjee, Managing Partner at GrowthSqapes.

FTM Development

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FTM Development - Making tomorrow’s leaders, today.

Making tomorrow’s leaders, today.

As we reflect upon the heading, our mind may be wanting to first understand what leadership is.  Simply put, leadership is a set of behaviors that leaders manifest to influence organizational growth via people management. Leadership capability and bench strength are crucial determinators of an organization’s success.

In the context of above, the First Time Managers (FTM) form the crucial base of the leadership pyramid. In terms of pure statistics, FTM is almost 70% of the total leadership pool and supervises around 80% of the workforce. However recent research shows that a large majority (up to 87%) of FTM wish they were given the chance to learn and progress when they first assumed their role, and nearly half (48%) felt they were grossly undertrained for their new role. This builds the case of a clear need for sustained FTM development, more so in the wake and the aftermath of the Pandemic.

Our experience and understanding arising out of working in the area of FTM development, in both domestic and international markets, reveals 2 paradigms. They being

  1.  The struggles and challenges faced by an individual transitioning into the FTM role and those faced by a tenured FTM are different.
  2. The sustainability of the FTM’s learning is very crucial to their success.

Hence, GrowthSqapes believes only singular and a differentiated approach for both paradigms above would make leaders out of the FTM and pave the path of building tomorrow’s leaders today.

Let’s look at the two approaches of developing FTM.

Approach 1: Develop those FTM who are transitioning into the new role.

In this case, the need is to assist and prepare the new managers for the transitioning process – for both leadership skills and emotions. Hence the focus of development is on:

  1. Understanding oneself – awareness of one’s strength and development areas to build confidence to take on a managerial role.
  2.  Understanding of the new role– the expectations, responsibilities attached, and the measures of performance. 

Approach 2: Develop the tenured FTM (already spent 12-18 months in the role)

In this case, the need is to develop the managers with a focus on skill development pertaining to:

  1. People Management – effectively managing people and driving team performance
  2. Leadership style– adopting situational leadership styles to coach and motivate the team to achieve the team deliverables.

The success of any FTM development journey depends on 3 levers:

  1. Establishing relevance: “What is in it for me?” for the participant.
  2. Personalization at scale: Providing personalized inputs to each participant.
  3. Seamless experience: Providing a seamless & engaging experience across modules and creating a continuous connection throughout the learning journey.

GrowthSqapes has been working with large MNCs as well as traditional Indian organizations in the area of FTM development. Our observation has been that; based on the organizational priorities of FTM development, the focus on key skills varies. However, most organizations choose to undergo a 3-6 month blended learning journey so that they are able to create learning sustenance and ensure sustainable development of the FTMs. The organizational benefits for these learning journeys, both for the participants and the organization are being acknowledged and the business impact is being felt.

This blog has been written by Baalmiki Bhattacharyya, Partner & COO at GrowthSqapes.

The Leader As a Coach

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The Leader As a Coach

The Evolution of Coaching

As the corporate world grapples with job losses, anxiety, and related issues resulting from “Work From Home” in the current pandemic and tries to make sense of the “new normal“, the challenge being faced by the corporate leaders is; how to develop the intangible and yet extremely important competencies of being a coach to the team to help them in keeping their heads above water as they navigate through the troubled waters of these times.

The word “leader” and “coach” now has greater importance and significance than ever before. Earlier, the leader needed to command, control and direct the team. That’s not what today is. Owing to rapid, constant, and disruptive changes, the leader today needs to give more of support and guidance rather than instructions to unleash fresh energy, innovation, and commitment in the team.

Additionally, today, with the senior leaders having to don the new role of a sounding board, allowing people to leverage their strengths and looking at areas in their lives which were never spoken of and yet seem to have the potential to compliment their existing strengths, the role of the leader has transformed.

In short, the new role of the leader is to become a coach.

The basic philosophy on which coaching functions is that “we human beings are extremely capable of change and transformation at any point of our lives and becoming the best version of ourselves”. Provided the change is for our betterment, is based on trust and is done in a safe and non threatening environment, it has the potential to make us better than we are.

The coaching we’re talking about—the kind that creates a true learning organization—is ongoing and executed by those inside the organization. Data of the last about one decade shows that evolved and progressive organizations moving away from the command and control culture and managers/leaders are shifting paradigms from being just managers and becoming more of coaches to their peers and colleagues.

The Case for Coaching

Athletes, musicians, and people from different professions have always given a lot of credit to their coach for their success. Roger Federer and Serena Williams, two cases in point, have won the maximum number of Grand Slams between them and they give a lot of credit to their coaches time and again for their success.

The leader as a coach does not play the sport for the team member, but he will stretch you, encourage you, show you the mirror, will almost certainly create insights which would lead to immense learning for the team member about themselves and would hold the team member accountable for their performance for the future. Great leaders who are great coaches listen well, which is the hallmark of any great coach.

While every leader at the helm of affairs may bring in their own strengths, at the same time” listening”, empathy and understanding of things not being said and still being understood is an art that is becoming more and more important as organizations develop leaders for different levels.

But, for leaders who are accustomed to tackling performance problems by telling people what to do, a coaching approach often feels too “soft.” What’s more, it can make them psychologically uncomfortable, because it deprives them of their most familiar management tool: asserting their authority, a trait which a lot of leaders acquire from their predecessors.

Read this example. In one study, when asked about their intent to develop their reportees, nine out of 10 leaders decided they wanted to help their direct reports do better. But when they were asked to role-play a coaching conversation with the same reportee, they demonstrated much room for improvement. While they know what they’re supposed to do: “ask and listen,” and not “tell and sell”, that behavior doesn’t come naturally in the leaders, because deep down they’ve already made up their minds about the right way forward, usually before they even begin talking to the reporter.

So their efforts to coach typically consist of just trying to get agreement on what they’ve already decided. That’s not real coaching—and not surprisingly, it doesn’t play out well.

Therefore, coaching as a developmental approach requires a paradigm shift in thinking and behaviour in which encouraging exploration of possibilities plays the most crucial role. And, while coaching is something which can be learnt and there are models which can be helpful, leaders must allow the coachee to formulate their own thought and ideas…and support them along the way.

For leaders, it may be quite an uphill journey initially as it requires an effort in letting go of their inherent managerial style. However, the development of coaching ability is a great skill to help the leader meander upwards in their leadership journey.

GrowthSqapes has robust solutions and strong capability in developing leaders as coaches.

This blog has been written by Rupender Khaira, Associate Partner at GrowthSqapes.

Social Network Selling Vs Digital Marketing

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Social Network Selling Vs Digital Marketing

Circa: 2000: A business headline: “Seven out of ten executives believe that technology will replace human interaction with customers in the next decade.”

Circa 2019: A business headline: “78% of social sellers outsell peers who don’t use social media.”

Sales is a dynamic domain and in the VUCA world, it has become more vibrant as an art and a science. This dynamism is attributed to the ever-changing relevance or importance of the various “cogs in the sales wheel”, customarily known as the sales process, over a veritable time-lapse of the last 20 years.

Hence, a component of the sales process which was appropriate at a particular point of time in the past may not be relevant today or in the future. The most significant contributing factor to this dynamism is the advent of technology and the infiltration of the social network in our lives.

What is Social Network Selling?

Social network selling is the art of leveraging and capitalizing on your social networks to find the right prospects, build trusted relationships with existing customers, and ultimately, help you achieve your sales goals by engaging with both prospects and customers at a personal level.

The concept is very akin to that of inbound marketing with the goal being: overall improvement of sales and marketing efficiency by building more deeper relationships with target audiences. The social selling process is characterized via engagement through the use of social media tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

The cogs in the Social Network Selling wheel

Observations and studies show this is how social network selling works

  • Instead of spending time on cold, outbound prospecting, the sales team members focus on generating conversations and engagement throughout the sales process.
  • The sales team members participate in social media, share a mix of interesting branded and non-branded content so that they are perceived as expert curators, and build relationships organically over a period of time.
  • Over time, the visibility that the sales team members bring via the content that they have been collectively sharing starts trickling back to the organization as a whole, thereby strengthening the value of the brand and influencing the customer’s purchase decision positively.

Is Social Network Selling, Digital Marketing?

An answer to the above pertinent question is that by definition, social selling isn’t conventional selling. It sits at the intersection of sales and marketing of the online and offline worlds. While, unlike social marketing, social network selling is aimed at cultivating one-on-one relationships versus a broadcast to many, it draws similarity from the fact that sales have the relationships and the expertise in “selling” but marketing is often on the frontlines of the brand value proposition and the story that is needed to optimize those “selling” interactions.

With the help of industry-validated content, GrowthSqapes’ social network selling solution brings to you the expertise to up-skill your sales team members to develop and sustain the art of leveraging social media for sales outcomes.

This blog has been written by Baalmiki Bhattacharyya, Partner & COO at GrowthSqapes.

Managing vintage people during Organizational Transformation, The Vintage-Agility Human Capital Model©®

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Managing vintage people during Organizational Transformation, The Vintage-Agility Human Capital Model©®

The Existential Question

Particularly those organizations which have existed for many years, a time comes when it faces an existential question that must be answered. “The conventional (read traditional) model of our operations, should we continue with that? Will it be potent enough to help us enter the new age economy?” Is what the board room deeply contemplates. For the courageous ones, this often leads to a deterministic enterprise-wide planned changed intervention – the organizational transformation.

The Role OD plays

Whereas there are agile transformation experts who lay down the cognitive process of transformation, it is the Organization Development (OD) experts who hold the hands of the organization to enter a new world of work in terms of value creation, innovation, process integration, and collaboration. The organization faces fundamental dilemmas akin to balancing Hobson’s choice – what to do with vintage employees? Vintage is characteristic of high quality.

Nonetheless, vintage is also characteristic of not being in tune with modern times though being a solid citizen. In the context of organizations, the ‘high quality’ of people is time relevant. When the organization wants to shift from a traditional model of operation to a more contemporary model to adapt to the shifting waves of the new age economy, how it deals with the vintage employees is a direct reflection of any gap existing between its espoused values and enacted values about its workforce.

The Vintage-Agility Human Capital Model©®

Our Vintage-Agility Human Capital Model©® is a logical yet sensitive application that offers to facilitate astrategic plan and decision-making in this area. When viewed through the lens of ‘fit for future’, the human capital can be seen through the two axes of Vintage and Agility. The resultant four zones clearly offer the strategic necessities that are merited.

When Applied as an Intervention

Our experience of running this intervention for an European beer major has resulted in painless management of “people matters” during an organizational transformation endeavor – a rather sensitive issue otherwise. This brewery organization was traditionally a family business for generations which is traveling the cycles of times since 1870, high on passion and innovation and wanted to shift gears to match the speed and character of the new-age business dynamics.

People who were high on vintage, low on agility, and were in the zone of obsolescence were “to be dealt with”. The brewery family first wanted to push these people to the zone of capacitive potentiality to explore areas on which it was possible for them “to be developed”. They were imparted new technology, a new work attitude, and new skills development training to reduce the gap between what they were earlier good at and what their new roles demanded to become performers today.

Being a historical family business, they had a humanistic approach and believed in the Y-theory way of managing their human capital base that the theory-X way. Putting anyone in the zone of obsolescence was the ultimate step that was used when it was thoroughly falsified that these people can be developed. It was validated in many ways before being conclusive that they have reached such high levels of obsolescence attitudinally as well as by skills, that they cannot be developed.

The Effect

The efforts made with these people were recognized by the people themselves. They, therefore in many cases volunteered a good-humored separation. The brewery family management ‘took care’ of them for lengthy periods of the rest of their lives socially, emotionally, and economically. The identity of belonging to the organization was reinforced in many different even after the separation. One family director shared the spirit rightly – “the marriage is called off, but the human relationship remains”. sense of identity that the people derived by ‘working for the brand’ was changed but never robbed off.

The Lessons Learnt

The above success story has many lessons to learn.

  • Potential agitations in organizational transformational endeavors are indeed made smooth and harmonious by effective OD intervention.
  • The Change Engine moves in a pair of tracks – the mechanical process reengineering, and the humanistic people process management.
  • OD interventions prevent derailment of the change engine.
  • Not all organizations need to be financially as generous as the brewery company, but emotional generosity and inclusion are possible without expending a penny.
  • Employment ceases, ambassadorship continues.
  • Organizational Identity and identification are significant constructs that are often ignored in transformation exercises with huge long-term ramifications.
  • Holistic approach to organizational transformation through the diagnosis of conscious as well as unconscious processes yields better results and business impact than the Reductionist quick-fix approach.

(Disclaimer: Names of client system are withheld under a non-disclosure agreement.)

GrowthSqapes does extensive work in the area of OD. Feel free to reach out to us.

This blog has been written by Pete Harpum, Partner at GrowthSqapes.

Re-imaging Sales in a Virtual World: 4 Success Mantras

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Re-imaging Sales in a Virtual World: 4 Success Mantras

In the early 2000s one of the leading business newspapers in India published a report which said that 70% of senior executives believed that technology would replace human interaction with customers in the next couple of decades. Data of last year shows that in the B2B sales domain, approx 75% of social sellers outsell peers who don’t use social media to engage with their customers. In the current “Covid Crisis” context the latter figure is only going to move northwards.

As the shock settles in, sales professionals are thinking (as they must) of ways to respond to the several questions that are coming in their mind pertaining to their business sustainability and of ways to be prepped for the actions they’ll need to take with their customers to lead their business in the “new normal”.

As an inference from the second data point above, it is interestingly conclusive to note that the rate adoption of digital technologies by customers also has been very high. Therefore, metaphorically speaking, B2B sales professionals just need to cater to the already existing appetite. Let’s look at 4 ways in which sales professionals can respond to the demands of the market, situation and their customers.

Connect with existing customers immediately:

A helping hand in crisis is remembered for long. Hence sales professionals and sales leaders must deeply analyze and understand the main customer challenges and identify the actions they can take for them immediately. One way of doing this is to gather data from the field and other related indicators to create a scenario-based forecast that draws a realistic view of demand and supply. This being done, they must deploy an agile but phased approach to ensure quick and targeted responses to each customer.

Start regimented “Social Selling”:

Social selling is about leveraging and capitalizing one’s social networks to find the right prospects, to build trusted relationships with existing customers and ultimately to help the sales person achieve his sales goals. The social selling process is characterised via engagement through the use of social networking tools like LinkedIn, Facebook , Twitter and the like.

In a digital world, the sales person needs to have a well-defined personal strategy, that is aligned to the organisation strategy, to reach and engage with the right target segment. Since, in the digital world, social selling is a cost-effective digital way of generating leads, it is also crucial to build discipline into this approach and measure the activity metrics in a regimented manner.

Develop “Virtual Executive Presence”:

In the interest of the company’s image and the personal brand of the sales person, it is crucial for the sales professional to cultivate a strong virtual executive presence.

Some ways in which this can be done is by progressively building a digital persona, positioning one-self as a domain expert, engaging with customers on several socially and economically relevant topics, sharing one’s thought leadership and networking with industry leaders as much as possible. Concurrently, sales persons also need to sharpen their knowledge and skills to operate digital /virtual meeting platforms and make virtual presentations to communicate, interact and sell in a digitally professional manner.

Digitalize the customer experience:

In a digital world, a unique and improved digitalized sales experience offered to the customer truly leads to a differentiated customer experience. Towards this, the sales person would necessarily have to leverage digital technologies to make product presentations and demos, use new age digital technologies like Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality or 3D Computer Vision or Extended Reality to create an impact and activate the customers’ buying motivators.

GrowthSqapes’ several Sales Capability Development Solutions empowers you to train and develop both the skillset and mindset to be able to sell in a digital world.

This blog has been written by Baalmiki Bhattacharyya, Partner & COO at GrowthSqapes.

Leading a strategic organizational transformation

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Leading a strategic organizational transformation

What and why needed?

Organizational transformation is the process of transforming and changing the existing organization structure, corporate culture and employee behavior to reap certain strategic business results. It is affected by visible action taken by organizational leaders to move from the present to the future in order to achieve a specific outcome or benefit or to respond to the changes in the VUCA world that may be adversely impacting the organization. This blog underlines the steps that can be taken to cause a successful transformation; written in the context of a real-life case pertaining to NWO, which is predominantly an upstream operator and asset owner, exploring and producing in the North Sea, Africa, and the Middle East.

When the price of a barrel of oil plunged by more than 80% the market dynamics had already changed. Nord-West Oelleitung GmbH (NWO) met the challenges of these new market conditions by implementing an extensive organisational restructuring and behavioural change programme. Implemented in a matter of months, this programme led to a new more agile organisation ready to react to industry changes and embrace new opportunities as they arise. NWO, puts the success of the programme down to one simple reason, “We had a plan and we stuck to it”. It might sound like a simplistic approach, but with over 700 employees affected and the business-critical implementation carried out in a matter of months, this simple tactic proved its worth.

Onboarding the right people:

To help them execute the plan, NWO brought in transformation consultants. The tight timeframe and extent of the changes led to the transformation team taking a bold approach to strategic change management. In addition to carefully planning and documenting a series of initiatives, including workshops and training sessions, they decided to use a pull model to allow time for support on an ad-hoc basis. Transformation Leader Dr Pete Harpum explains, “We started this programme with a very clear idea of the key processes and behaviours that the business needed. But we also knew that we couldn’t just take a training manual approach to a transformation of this size. We needed to incorporate flexibility to deal with the unpredictable issues we knew would emerge as the programme unfolded.”

This combination of a clear strategic plan plus scheduled and ad hoc support meant the strategic transformation programme was completed in a matter of months with visible benefits from the start. Furthermore, its success was underlined by the fact it was carried out with minimal impact on production and zero incidents.

Meticulous planning:

Planning the organisational transformation started and putting success measures in place is crucial to the success of the initiative. At NWO an internal team looked at the restructuring needed to achieve greater agility in delivering business critical projects while reducing operating costs. The resulting design of the new organisation was created around a strong matrix structure that aligned the new teams with a clearer focus on the business instead of being organised around functions. To handle the organisational change, NWO established a cross-functional Transformation Management Office (TMO) comprising of a secretariat, HR and the transformation consultants. Part of the TMO, Jane Smith was involved in the scoping of the strategic transformation and describes the changes as “incredibly sensitive” as they affected around 700 employees. “Some people were promoted, some demoted, people got new managers, new areas to work in. So it was all about finding the right operating processes and rhythm for the company,” she says.

Mapping the right skill:

Ensuring that the right job is mapped to the person who has the appropriate skill set is important to ensure the success of any change initiative .Although they were brought in as external consultants, the transformation team worked as an integrated part of the TMO, located on site, and were able to complement the NWO team with their unique skills.“We used the skills of the transformation consultants but the process was still very much internally driven. This was definitely part of its success. No-one could say that we’d used consultants who didn’t understand our business. We knew which processes were necessary but not how people would react. This was where transformation specialists could help,” said Jane Smith. “Each consultant in the transformation team had a different profile and area of business expertise. It was a good opportunity for us to learn from them and take advantage of their key skills,” says Fred Brown, Head of HR at NWO.

Agility in management:

The VUCA world demands that the change is implemented before it becomes necessary to change again. Therefore to avoid the insecurity and inefficiency that any transformation programme breeds, the process was fast and intense – lasting just a few months. All employees were presented with the case for change in their teams and then held individual meetings with their old, and in some cases new, managers to discuss questions, concerns and plans.

Once the transformation was underway, the benefits of the flexible approach to the change process taken by the consultants were clear. Any issues were spotted and managed in a timely manner before they escalated or became negative office gossip that could heighten insecurity. In many ways, this approach also pre-empted the resistance that is encountered when external consultants are involved in creating new organisational structures.

Managing stakeholders:

 Transformation is driven by the key stakeholders, hence keeping them in one’s good books definitely helps. “The managers at NWO are highly professional dedicated individuals who have been hired because they can deliver. Therefore, they’re not the sort of people who think they need help. Our approach and presence on site as part of the team meant we could provide the coaching and role modelling they needed without putting it into a formal structure,” says Pete Harpum. It might sound like an unusual approach but this fluidity meant the transformation team could react as needed in a more dynamic way.“It probably appeared coincidental when we showed up at the coffee machine to talk to the individuals about what was going on. But for us, this was carefully thought about. Working closely with the TMO, we had already identified peoples’ specific sensitivities and had anticipated their needs,” explains Pete Harpum.“By having the transformation consultants on-site, we could get change management support immediately and therefore we could adjust to what the organization needed,” says Fred Brown, Head of HR at NWO.

Building cohesive teams:

In addition to this ad-hoc individual support, the transformation team also facilitated a series of over fifty customised workshops. By focusing sessions on actual needs, the teams involved were able to create vision statements for their teams, clarify roles and responsibilities, identify team ground rules, establish efficient and value adding activities, and improve the effectiveness of team meetings as well as identify opportunities in terms of strategic feasibility and cost reduction.“Again, we knew what we had to achieve and by not scripting each session down to a fine level of detail we could maintain our focus on the people and teams affected by the change and their actual needs. And it paid off. During one session, a team in the Sub Surface Function found savings of £80 million in one hour. This kind of initiative wouldn’t have happened had we had not let the workshop be led by the people involved,” says Pete Harpum.

Measuring success:

No transformation initiative can be called a success unless the success measures are achieved. Nine months down the line and the new organisational matrix structure was in place. 200 people switched jobs, managers and teams and the organisation had the agility required to face future challenges. Looking back, Jane Smith is pleased with the way people have embraced the new structure. The overall process was a success from a business perspective. The change was never easy but it has been well managed and during the process, NWO has managed to maintain stable production and reduce the number of incidents. The transformation project has been vital to the company. It was well executed as could be seen in the fact that production indicators actually increased, which had never happened in previous change management programmes.

Growthsqapes offers multiple solutions in leading and managing change from diagnosis to implementation.

This blog has been authored by Pete Harpum – Partner at Growthsqapes.

Building Customer Centricity In A Crisis

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Building Customer Centricity In A Crisis

It’s been more than four months since the current COVID 19 crisis caught us off guard and sent almost the entire world in a lockdown. A direct fallout of the lockdown has been a grinding halt to the world economy with a severe erosion of business and consumer confidence. As governments learn to deal with the crisis in several ways, businesses are realizing that getting new customers would be extremely challenging.

While we see governments taking steps and measures to ease lockdown and restart business activity , the corporate world is learning and embracing the fact that COVID 19 crisis is here to stay here for the near and medium term. However, as they prepare for the long haul, what is also brewing as a thought in the mind of organisations is –under a pandemic situation, which has created a new normal, how do organisations remain customer centric and continue to command customer loyalty?

Let’s look at 4 actions that organisations can take to remain centric to their customers’ needs in the new normal.

Reach out

In times of crisis, a helping hand is remembered for long. Reaching out to customers will be the first step towards delivering a message of customer centricity.

Anything that can alleviate the customer’s pain is a crucial one. Also, creative and novel ways of engagement are critical success factors. How organisations rationalise cost and reward loyal customers would be an important consideration to be made.

For example, introducing loyalty programs for existing and new customers is one natural way to go. Other ways can be loyalty points transfers, incentivising customers who have been with the company for a long time, deferring installment payments, a longer credit cycle or multiple ways of accepting payments.

Create and offer a digital experience

As more and more consumers spend more time online it is but obvious that they search for digital equivalents for in-person activities. Hence, organisations that would want to succeed must move quickly to accommodate the massive shift to digital channels to offer a digital experience. It’s highly likely that consumers will prefer to use many of these digital offerings even after the crisis hence slowly combining a in- person and digital experience (PHYGITAL) would be most effective. Many companies, from mobile carriers to food-delivery services, have made targeted investments to build or augment their digital capabilities. Several themes have emerged. Successful companies have used an agile, iterative approach and design thinking to identify new digital opportunities beyond their comfort zone.

Let’s take the example of Tesla, a brand known for raising the bar of customer experience. Tesla’s sustained commitment to reinventing the car-buying process using digital has proved especially prescient. Its state-of-the-art digital showroom and virtual user guide offer customers an immersive online experience, and the contactless car delivery is tailor-made for the current environment.To broaden its online reach in China, the carmaker partnered with Alibaba on a T-Mall online store. From December 2019 to March 2020, Tesla saw its sales in China double while other carmakers experienced a 50 percent drop over the same period.

Focus on health and safety

The Covid 19 pandemic’s massive health implications have made health and safety the most important concern for consumers. Therefore companies must keep these issues front of their minds as they plan their transitions to the next normal. Companies that are able to create a “contactless customer centric experience” will be able to pacify the customer’s concerns more effectively.

Take an example of India. Many companies in India have started transforming into a contactless safe delivery model. Walmart-owned Flipkart is in the process of hiring 4,000 people, Reliance Retail and Arvind Fashions are building processes for a surge in e-commerce and phone orders, and training manpower for safe contactless operations.

Process feedback fast

The increase in digital penetration also means that companies will have more dynamic feedback data at their fingertips pertaining to customer sentiment, experience and value. Companies that are more proactive and responsive in a real time basis to the feedback of customers will be able to harness their loyalties. At the same time, companies which will invest in technology and systems required to harness data and analytics tools to deliver exceptional customer experiences will command customer loyalty.

Let’s look at what an airline did. They developed a data-driven system using machine learning to predict and act on customer satisfaction and revenue performance. By taking actions based on predicted customer sentiment and outcomes, the airline was able to more effectively focus its effort on customers that were most at risk of defecting and achieved an 800 percent rise in customer satisfaction and a nearly 60 percent decrease in intent to churn.

Under the new normal, the customer experience landscape is evolving with each passing week. Companies which build capabilities to become more customer centric at this time will definitely stand out.

This blog has been written by Rupender Singh Khaira, Associate Partner at GrowthSqapes.

How Covid19 Pandemic will bring in an Agile Digital Learning Culture

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Covid19 Pandemic - an Agile Digital Learning Culture

The coronavirus has offered one collateral benefit. It has given Learning & Development the means to finally achieve the ‘the last mile’ coverage. Naysayers in L&D with fixed mindsets are still hoping that virtual learning will vanish with the virus.

However, courtesy the disruptive changes, virtual organizational learning and development is the ‘new normal’ to which CHROs, L&D leaders, managers and learners must adapt boldly.

COVID, post-COVID, lockdown or not – The inevitability of new skill development by learning, unlearning and relearning faster than before will continue to remain top-of-the-mind problem recall for organizations – private as well as state-owned.

The shifts in technology, life-expectancy in general, nature of work practices and new age gig economy business models have generated a deep need for continuous, lifelong learning and development. It is ‘Learn or Perish’.

In most professional business organizations, Learning has got elevated from the outer circle to the inner core of talent management. Come COVID-19, leading organizations are taking initiatives for “home delivery” of learning to their people in a more customized way, integrating work and learning more seamlessly than ever before.

CHROs are on a thoughtful yet hot pursuit for added learning-transfer technologies and digital learning solutions to augment the process of last mile home-delivery of executive learning.

According to a survey, almost 94% of CHRO and L&D leaders consider it a top-priority to ensure that the coronavirus does not make learning episodic. They want to keep learning as a perpetual capability building, skill-building endeavor that ensures a fast-footed workforce with new skill and competence to adapt boldly to the changing business scenario.

Like every crisis, the corona pandemic is also throwing up opportunities. Organizations must exploit the momentum generated by Covid-19 to proactively build a learning culture that is new and updated digitally. Time is ripe to raise the building blocks of an Enterprise Digital Learning Culture.

Digital Technology alone will not build the Enterprise Digital Learning Culture. In most organizations, only 20% of employees exhibit truly effective learning behaviors. As behaviors construct an organization’s culture, it is absolutely necessary that organizations drive base-level interventions to induce positive effective learning behaviors in their employees.

It is simple, can capability-building happen without the learner’s initiative and willingness? Thus, besides the technology platform it is the employee’s new behaviors as learners that would build a truly enterprise digital learning culture. Here in, lies the bits and bytes of Digital Learning Transformation.

One of the many comforts of technology is its ability to provide independent learning experience across all age groups. That takes care of your Millennials as also your Baby Boomers.

Efficacy of experiential learning in virtual mode

The efficacy of experiential learning towards behavioral modifications and holistic development is well accepted. However, here’s the big question – Can experiential learning happen virtually? CHRO, L&D leaders, Facilitators and Participants need to remind themselves that virtual is only a medium.

Behavioral learning is based on principles of having an experience, reflecting on the experience, learning from the experience and conducting self-trials from what has been learnt. If the facilitator can create an atmosphere in Zoom or any other virtual classroom, where participants can have an experience, reflect on it, learn and experiment – one can remain confident that experiential learning can be made effective even through virtual means.

Of course, the facilitator needs to be competent in understanding the norms and nuances of the virtual medium and must be adept in the skills to induce and intervene effectively in the virtual lab.

Moreover, in its true sense, experiential learning has its noiseless presence even in certain conventional skill development programs – task-related skills, decision-making skills, project management skills etc. Skepticism in the efficacy of experiential learning in virtual mode, also jeopardizes the progress of these conventional programs through the virtual learning methods. What must be kept in mind is that Virtual is just a medium.

Elements of Enterprise Digital Learning Culture

  • Convert In-person offerings to Virtual offerings – Organizations need to change the way learning and development is approached. It is now a mandate to abandon conventional training and development approaches and migrate to an agile learning mindset of perpetual learning that is digitally-enabled, self-paced and gives personalized experience. At all levels, an assortment of digitized offerings from micro-learning to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) needs to be made available through which the organizations can easily serve the learning needs and capability-development initiatives of its employees.
  • Adaptive Learning Delivery – Any curriculum, anywhere, personalized and delivered by any means other than in-person – is the new normal. If your organization has a practice of delivering customized learning programs to address the unique learning needs of an employee through just-in-time feedback, next-steps, and resources rather than just rolling out a one-size-fits-all learning experience – you are in an Adaptive Learning zone. However, the next level in the maturity curve of adaptive learning is a stage when the algorithm of your learning-technology platform decides on what learnings to offer, timing of the offer and how much of the curricula to offer based on the individual’s learning behaviour, memorized as patterns by the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) of the platform.
  • Learning Mobility Programs & Tools – The culture of enterprise digital learning is reinforced when the organization initiates to offer the content and meet the learning objectives through Gamification. Learning is fun when the learner can score, compete with others, have a sense of winning and achievement and gets excited to avoid a loss. However, the bits and bytes of digital learning transformation lies in influencing the employees to use the tools. L&D managers’ task is to highlight to the employee, how the skillsets that the employee requires to perform a particular task are fast changing; and use the ease and attractiveness of the gamifications to make the employee come to the okay graph of using the gamified tool and learn. Gamification is also a great leveller. To a considerable extent it equates learning across all organizational grades and levels and builds a common learning vocabulary of growth. That gets exchanged in the organization’s chatbot or learnbot. Bosses use gamification as an opportunity to put across the point that, learning is fun and business, but not trivia – an important perception determinant towards building a digital learning culture enterprise-wide. Besides, the collateral gain of effortless employee engagement.
  • Digital-First learning Strategy – With changing business dynamics, the half-life periods of most skills and competence are diminishing fast. Obsolescence, substitutions, double-hats to reduce headcount, role reversals, role redundancy created by robots and computers are realities. Organizations must focus on high-speed reskilling and upskilling if they want to avoid these management menaces. Therefore, the Board, CEOs and CXO level leaders must on-priority first focus on the ‘Learning and Development Strategy’   within the HR Strategy, stressing more than emphasis on digital learning ecosystem. The leadership must align L&D Strategy to HR Strategy in such a way that L&D becomes the essential process that compliments the core business process. One of the many way to endorse and elevate the importance of learning in the organization is by linking learning to the reward and recognition plan. Incentives to learn drive learning. Skills-based pay policies working well are glowing examples, particularly in the manufacturing sector. A standard blended learning formula is 70:20:10. Within this, 70% of learning is acquired using on-the-job experiences, 20% over informal learning by interacting with others, and the 10% by formal learning methods. Each organizations must formulate its own blended learning ratio based on its specific business essentials.
  • Effective Learning Governance
    Organizations willing to adopt an enterprise digital learning culture must put in place an effective learning governance model. Learning governance significantly improves decision-making and helps to align your learning strategy with your larger business strategy. It helps ensure that learning is not adhoc and episodic but strategically planned at all levels and flawlessly executed at every part of the organization. Efficacy and efficiency of learning programs and organizational development interventions are direct outcomes of prudent planning and monitored execution. Robust learning governance creates efficiency within the learning ecosystem, ensuring an effective decision-support system for the entire stakeholder-base of the learning community. Keeps learning tuned to changing times like Covid-19 and its shifting business trends.

Conclusion

Coronavirus has physically separated us but systemically united us. Digital and biological worlds have fused people and technology despite social distancing. This is to stay at least till the foreseeable future. It is beyond doubt that this would impact the way people work and business organizations generate value. Across all industries, national economies and human societies – the future of work is going to get redefined in terms of knowledge, skills and competencies.

Fast economic recovery is what nations would expect; bold adaptability is what business organizations would want to respond with. That boils down to how people perform at work in the post-Covid world. Continuous capability-building, reskilling and upskilling at all levels are definitely not optional. These mandates have to out-speed the speed of spread of the coronavirus. Learning & Development has to grow into an enterprise-wide culture.

This blog has been written by Satyakki Bhattacharjee, Managing Partner at GrowthSqapes.

Sales Competencies In The “New Normal”: 2020

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Sales Competencies In The “New Normal”: 2020

Sales has been around since we started bartering as cavemen. Evolving progressively over the centuries and decades, the pace of change in the B2B selling world has gained a lot of momentum in the last decade. With the advent of the new informed buyer, the buying landscape has also changed significantly. What the buyer expects from the salesperson now is a lot different from earlier. Additionally, the emergent circumstances of Covid-19, known as the new normal, are forcing companies to look at restructuring and re-skilling their sales force to build resilience and make them successful in that new normal era.

Let us first look at some of the changes in B2B buyer behavior which is impacting the way B2B sales is evolving:

  • Today’s buyers are well-informed. A tsunami of information is available at their fingertips even before they interact with salespersons. The expectations that customers have from salespersons now has evolved as someone who can seek and provide useful information which will help the customer to make their purchase decision.
  • They have become more demanding and are looking for customized solutions. They will not mind spending that extra dollar to get what they are looking for. A recent research* shows that 80% of B2B buyers expect companies to interact with them on real time. Unlike earlier, they are involving specialist procurement teams to evaluate vendors and offers, making the decision-making process more complicated with multiple stakeholders with their individual interests and influencing power.
  • Clients are increasingly influenced by the information they get on social media. In fact, this works both ways as clients are also able to influence more by providing information concerning products and brands – a function that used to be the sole responsibility of businesses a decade ago.
  • Commoditization of industries has made customer experience the differentiating factor. 85% of B2B marketers agree that consistency across content, teams, and channels is the backbone of an effective customer experience and 65% of business buyers will switch without personalized interactions.
  • Almost,the entire buying process is happening on virtual/remote mode. In fact, with the current Covid -19 pandemic, in some product categories, it has now become 100% virtual and there is no F2F meeting between the buyer and the salesperson at all. This means that building trust and giving that personal touch is so much more difficult now.

Given the above scenario, let us look at what it takes for the salesperson to be successful in today’s environment; in the below 2 categories:

1. Skills and competencies which were required earlier but are now gaining importance:

  • Personal Branding – the ability to build and nurture a personal brand that portrays expertise. This is a differentiating point and critical for adding value, especially in luxury selling. It would include leveraging social networks to strengthen one’s brand.
  • Rapport Building – This skill is central to the entire customer experience and more so because of the post-Covid 19 situation where rapport-building has to be done remotely. 73% of customers say companies’ trustworthiness matters more than it did a year ago.
  • Influencing – Today’s salesperson communicates and behaves more like a consultant. They speak with gravitas and are more equal in every way to the buyer. The skill of influencing adds that cutting edge that makes a salesperson’s offer irresistible to the customer.
  • Value Creation – The professional salesperson understands that value is created through the entire sales cycle starting from the first touchpoint to every single interaction and communication whether through email, phone or face-to-face meeting.
  • Persuasive Story-telling – Buyers don’t want to hear about your product or service. Good salespeople know this and weave the product or service they’re selling into the larger story that bends and blends with the customer receiving what they want (which is usually not your product, but a key benefit).

2. Competencies which need to be developed and adapted to match the demands of resilience under the new normal:

  • Digital Proficiency – the ability to leverage digital tools and platforms over a variety of digital devices as well as sales force automation and marketing automation to generate results.
  • Prospecting and Referral Generation – In the phygital age (i.e. physical + digital), the ability to generate leads as well as referrals through quality social connections and getting warm introductions and, attracting a growing volume of the right relationships. To enable organizations and sales professionals build resilience, Growthsqapes is creating new and exciting offerings in the space of social network selling.
  • Providing Insight –the ability to create new demand by proactively bringing new insights to target prospects. Salespeople should be able to do big-picture thinking and evaluate alternate scenarios to bring out value in their proposition.
  • Buyer Process Map (BPM) Recognition–salespeople should understand that there are multiple buyer process maps and have the ability to recognize where the buyer is in the buyer journey.
  • Sales Process Execution – the ability to sell the way the buyer wants to buy. The sales process execution should be dynamic and in sync with the BPM to increase the conversion ratio.

Successful capability development of a B2B salesperson depends on nurturing and embedding the above skills and behavior elements in the personality of the salesperson. For customized interventions to develop the sales competencies in the new normal feel free to contact Growthsqapes.

*independent research done by author

This blog has been written by Mr Sandip Mitra, Associate Partner at GrowthSqapes.

Why BEI?

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Why BEI?

Hiring managers use a variety of structured and structured ways of interviewing to assess the fitment of a potential recruit in an organisation, across all levels of hierarchy. Some methods use business cases, some use psychometric instruments, some use the simple traditional face to face questioning method. All of the above methods provide an opportunity to evaluate candidate’s personality, cognitive abilities and his/her fitment in the organisation’s culture. In evolved organisations, one of most preferred methods used by hiring managers is the use of psychometric assessments.

While psychometric instruments provide a comprehensive evaluation of candidates cognitive ability and personality, what is does not measure is the response of the candidate in a realistic business situation. This is where an advanced method of structured interviewing, as known Behavioural Event Interview (BEI) comes in. As a method, BEI gathers evidence of past behaviour against a well- defined competency framework; which provides a highly reliable indication of likely future performance in the role so long as the role and work environment remains stable in the future.

As against traditional interviews, BEI is a dynamic form of interviewing. In this method, the interviewee is guided to tell about both successful and unsuccessful outcomes in recent business roles whilst the interviewer skilfully probes and clarifies exactly how success was achieved. Owing to the reason that the interviewee is recalling their actual behaviours with regards to a particular business situation, accurate recall is enhanced and even the most nervous interviewees are given the best chance to accurately portray evidence of their strengths and weaknesses.

It is this dynamic style, which differentiates behavioural event interviewing from more traditional, structured or critical incidence interviewing. The experience is more pleasant for the Interviewee and more profitable for the interviewer in terms of gaining an accurate picture.

Empirical evidence suggests that Behavioural Event Interviewing has shown approximately 50% more predictive validity than traditional interviewing and research suggests it is especially effective when evaluating candidates for senior roles. This method is used to capture evidence of individual performance against a set of business situations within the framework of a competency model that is required to succeed in a dynamic and challenging role. As said earlier, research shows that the best evidence of future performance is found in the evidence of the behavioural competencies that the interviewee has displayed in the past.

Accordingly, during this type of selection interview, the role of the interviewer is to collect and collate as much evidence as possible of the behaviours that the candidate demonstrated in some specific situations. This demonstration is used to evaluate whether the correct competency was displayed and whether it was displayed at a particular role for the intended role.

While BEI is an effective method of selection interview, there is a caveat that needs to be kept in mind. As this interview process places a lot of emphasis on the interviewing skills of the interviewer to collect and collate detailed evidence during an interview, consistency in the application of the skill and the following of the right process is extremely important to get the right results. Consistency and is best achieved by the interviewer undergoing formal training to learn the skill of BEI.

GrowthSqapes’ programme on BEI enables you to develop the skill of BEI which is critical to ensure success of the interview process and select the right candidate.

This blog has been written by Satyakki Bhattacharjee, Managing Partner at GrowthSqapes.

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