Measuring performance

Measuring performance with Wendy Mack

The types of assessments and the importance of understanding what you’re trying to measure

I am excited that you're joining me for an interview with Wendy Mack. Wendy is the Managing Director for the sales talent consulting practice at GrowthPlay where she leads the teams responsible for research, product development, and delivery. Wendy is an accomplished writer and speaker. Her publications include three books and numerous articles. She's combined twenty years of consulting experience with her unending curiosity to create value through content or on talent development, learning, leadership, communication and change, all things that I love talking about as well. Wendy, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Andy. I'm thrilled to be here. I've been following since your first episode.

I'm flattered. That's amazing. I have to ask, I’ll put you on the spot, what has been your favorite episode that you've read, the one that sticks out for you?

My favorite is the one that you posted with Christopher Lind, talking about technology, learning and his experiences at GE. I loved his professional examples but also the personality and how he demonstrates his beliefs in his work. It was educational and inspiring.

First of all, he’ll be happy to hear that. He and I become fast friends and he's one of the few people out there talking about technology, learning technology. In an overwhelming world, Josh Burson talks a lot about all the technology that HR and learning leaders have to deal with but doesn't give the solution. Christopher is trying to help with that. He has a show that broadcasts every week on LinkedIn called Learning Tech Talks that I highly recommend people look into as well. We're going to be talking about assessments and team effectiveness. Before we do, let's start with a little bit of your background and who you are and how you got to where you are, Wendy?

I have been in learning and development my entire career. I went to grad school for organizational communication. My first job out of a grad school was working for Huthwaite, which was a sales training firm. I have stayed in that arena my entire career focusing on aspects of learning, leadership development, and organization development. I have had the opportunity to run my own company. I had the opportunity to work for some large firms like AchieveGlobal and Wilson Learning. I have been thrilled to be with GrowthPlay focusing on the sales side of development.

You've had all these different jobs. I'm sure you've had opportunities to work in big companies, consulting and you've run your own company but why GrowthPlay? What attracted you to take this role?

There are a couple of things. What I love about applying what we know as talent development professionals to sales is that it's tangible. One of the biggest struggles we have in learning and development is how do we demonstrate our ROI. In sales, that's not hard to do. We can measure how we reduce the deal cycle, how we decreased time to revenue, how we’re getting bigger deals. I love the fact that it's the same principles that all of us have been trained in and you can see the results in a much shorter time so that's why sales. GrowthPlay is a woman-led company and we have a deep passion around selling as an act of service. Our belief is that I don't sell to you by manipulating you, I sell to you by serving you. We help sales professionals slip into their own, slip into their skin and say, “I'm proud to be in sales and I'm doing good for my customers.” It's been a treat of a ride for the last years.

Any assessment is simply a tool to use to gather information for some objective. Click To Tweet

Being in sales myself, I’m always interested in these things. I heard from a friend long ago the mantra, “Serve before you sell.” I try to live that out. I have a sales coach who is a woman who told me that I'm serving too much and I need to ask for more. There's always a balance. If you’re always helping people, you’ve got to tell some stuff. I’m like, “I will try my best to do that.”

Let’s talk about that.

Assessment Types To Look At

We should. Things are turning around and they're going well so far. At the beginning of 2020, I have a few new clients and a lot of great stuff coming. I do a lot of things in talent development. I run leadership development workshops. I run business simulations. I'm big on helping people align to strategy and all that stuff but I also talk to clients and get questions about assessments. I have clients who are dealing with, how do we measure what is going to be a great performance? How do we measure the performance of the people we have in place? I don't know as much about that area and that's why I'm excited to have you on. Let's start with a global view. What types of assessments are out there in the talent development world that people can and should be looking at?

Any assessment is simply a tool to use to gather information for some objective. In our field, we throw the term assessment out a lot. We might have internal clients who say, “We need an assessment.” If you think about it, there are all kinds of assessments. There are assessments to gauge performance. There are assessments for selection purposes, which is a lot of what I do. There are assessments to identify learning needs. What got me interested in this topic is I had a client who was relatively new to the field of L&D call and said, “We're thinking about an assessment and we're not sure if we should be using yours or cultural assessment or the Myers-Briggs.” I thought, “Those are vastly different things. They’re used for vastly different purposes.” The first place to start is, what is the question I'm trying to answer? We then can funnel down and get more specific into, what kind of assessment would be used for that?

The assessments that we have at GrowthPlay, the Chally Assessment happens to be specifically focused on, how do I find the right people for the right sales roles? There are other assessments. I know you have familiarity with BTS. A simulation is also an assessment. An interview is an assessment. I love how Josh Bersin said also on your show that we don't necessarily need to be stats experts in L&D but we have to know what problem we're trying to solve. We have to use tools and other data to help us solve the problem. To me, that's what an assessment is. It’s a tool to help give us information that helps us work better together, team effectiveness, make better hires, focus our performance and improvement efforts in the right area or identify what learning people need.

There are many out there. You're right, I'm familiar with simulations which can often act as assessments. We've had Rich Dapra on the show. He was at BTS for a long time and also at Liberty Mutual, and other big companies before that who has used simulations throughout his career as assessments. How do we know which assessment to use and is it different for sales versus other types of functions?

We're going to put to the side performance assessment and we're going to focus on assessments to use as part of our intervention. A lot of times people are attracted to things like personality assessments and I truly believe that those can be useful for certain applications. To try to make sense out of the world of assessments as it applies to L&D, I came up with a simple framework and I think about it as strengths, style, and skill assessments. All are relevant for what we do but they measure different things. For example at GrowthPlay, our Chally Assessment is similar perhaps to Hogan, which I believe you're certified in. It’s similar to others that identify what you’re naturally good at. What are your natural aptitudes, your natural strengths? That's a strengths assessment. A style assessment might be any of the myriad of L&D tests out there. DISC, Myers-Briggs, Birkman and those can be helpful because they help us understand how I like to communicate and how you like to communicate. Also, how we can communicate well together or work well as a team together.

Skills assessment is more about, how good am I now at what I need to do for my job? I know it might sound simple, but to me, it's been helpful as I talk to my clients, figure out what you’re trying to measure because one assessment isn't going to give you all of those things. For example, we sell a strengths assessment and we believe in using that for hiring, for placement decisions, and self-awareness. We have clients who say, “My stakeholder wants us to redo the assessment in two years to see if there were changes.” There won't be changes because what we're measuring with any strengths assessment is our hardwiring, how we are naturally. If I'm looking to use an assessment to gauge improvement in learning, I'm going to be better off using some type of skills assessment.

Measuring Performance: One of the biggest struggles in learning and development is how to demonstrate your ROI.

I haven't heard it explained this way and there are many different assessments to choose from. If I'm thinking about, “We need to get better at hiring the right people who are going to be successful in a role.” That's probably the top reason people start looking at assessments. We're hiring. We don't want to waste time. We don't want to get the wrong people in. We want to find people who are going to be successful. We want people that are going to model the right values and behaviors. Which of these should we be thinking about?

The number one thing I would encourage any of your readers to do is focus on finding a predictive assessment if it's going to be used for hiring purposes. What a predictive assessment does is it helps you ask all the questions you did and get the right people in the right roles when you don't know anything about them. We know for a fact that a lot of us can be good at an interview, but it doesn't mean we're going to be good at the job. A lot of times, the decisions we make as hiring managers, we go on our gut, we might go on rapport. It doesn't tell me if a person is going to be good at a job.

What a good hiring assessment should do is help you predict specifically who's going to be successful in the job you're hiring for. I'm stressing in the job you're hiring for because there's no one such thing as a good predictive assessment or a valid predictive assessment. You always have to look at what success, what particular job. In what we do at GrowthPlay, for example, we know that there are twelve different fundamental types of sales roles. What you said about serving others, about being a giver, you're going to be successful in what we call relationship sales, which is different from new product field sales, which is different from inbound inside sales. A good assessment helps you not only say, “Is this assessment good? Is this assessment valid for the job I'm hiring for?”

Looking at the job you're hiring for, what are the characteristics or keys to making it successful in choosing an assessment? You mentioned a predictive assessment, I think about it, “Are you going to be a match for this?” I've done a couple of those, it was The Predictive Index. I still remember there's a blurb from I was speaking out of ATD conference. I had somebody on who was there and she read my results and I said, “What kind of job should I be thinking about in the future?” She said, “You shouldn't because you won't ever be good working for anybody else.” I was like, “That’s why I’m an entrepreneur.”

I love that example and if I could follow-up on that because there are two ways of using assessment, I do believe, as you did. There are certain aspects of who we are as people that are going to tell us, “I need a job where I interact with people.” I work from home. I'm on the phone, I'm on video all day, every day. One way we can use assessment is to understand ourselves and understand the way we like to work, the way we prefer to interact with the world, what our values are and then we can go out and we can match ourselves to the employment choices we make.

The flip side of that is, as an employer, using the right assessment to help me find the right person for the job. The reason that I like that you brought up that distinction is because the inside out, we could start with something that's more personality-based. We could start whether it is a Myers-Briggs or a DISC, all of those give us a different slice in understanding ourselves, those help us make the inside out decisions. However, if I'm going to use an assessment as an employer to screen you in or out of potentially moving on to the next round, I shouldn’t have used any of those same assessments. Any of those styles, any of those personality assessments are not valid for the purpose of, are you the right person for this stuff? I can talk more about that.

Using Assessments For Job Search

You obviously have a lot of knowledge and passion there on that stuff, which is cool. It's interesting. I took that assessment and there are a few people out there taking those. One of my friends was into it. Nick Elkins sent it to me. Do you think more people should be taking those individually before they're applying for jobs to try to figure out, “What is going to be the right type of job for me?” I know there are a lot of companies using these, what about individuals using them when they're getting into their job search?

It's hugely helpful. I don't think it's ever going to give us the answer. I think about each assessment I've taken in my life in the years that I'm certified in as being almost like an MRI and it gives me a little slice of understanding who I am. When I'm equipped with that self-knowledge, then I can ask better questions. Even though I said don't use style assessments for hiring, I developed a style assessment for us here at GrowthPlay that simply says, “What kind of a seller are you?” It’s a basic level but we know that there's a big difference between people who are going to thrive and love closing quick sale cycle, big deal, different from what we call a wizard. I'm a wizard. A wizard is somebody who likes to jump up to a whiteboard and architect out a solution that's going to take three years to implement versus a builder.

A lot of people can be good at interviews, but it doesn't mean they're going to be good at the job. Click To Tweet

One of my colleagues is excellent. When she has a client, she keeps that relationship forever. Her clients follow her from company to company versus what we call the expediter, which is somebody who's good in fast-paced, high pitched, often inbound call center type of sales. We have a quick ten-question, little self-assessment that helps people identify what kind of selling they prefer and then that can get them headed in the right direction. You then want to dig into, do they have the natural aptitude for the job? Do they have the skills for the job? That quick assessment is a good way to get started.

Assessments In The Sales Space

Let’s talk about using these in sales because I'm thinking about this and Chally is the assessment that’s used in the sales space. Full disclosure, GrowthPlay is a partner of ours at Advantage. We do work together and bring you in to clients, especially on the sales side. We're looking for this assessment out. Is the way to use this to start by thinking about, “What type of seller do I want?” Should I be thinking more about the skills or end result? Do I want a wizard, farmer or whatever? How should sales managers be thinking about this when they go to hire someone?

I love what you said, “Should I start thinking about the kind of seller I want?” We often do jump there but what our research shows is that we want to step back a couple of notches and say, “What are we selling to whom?” As our product or our solutions go through the lifecycle, we're going to need different kinds of sellers. Stepping back and saying, “Am I a new product that people haven't heard from before?” is then going to help me say, “I might need that closing salesperson.” Versus my product to evolve and it's mature enough that it's going to require us to get in and configure a complicated solution. Stepping back first and looking at the market is key.

I'm passionate about this. You could probably tell because we have many clients come and they said, “We've got the job description. Help us find these people.” We step back and ask some questions and we say, “How do you know that's the right job description for where your market is? How are your buyers going to buy?” I don't know or we'll see a lot of clients, no harm, no foul, they'll call all salespeople the same thing. They'll call everybody an account executive but they're selling to three different markets with three different products in different parts of the lifecycle. We’ve got to pick that apart more and get into what you were saying, “What are the fundamental activities of the seller to sell in this market to these buyers?” What skills do they need to have or will they need to develop to be successful there?

These are things that I bet a lot of people are not thinking about. In sales, time is money and you're sitting and thinking, “I’ve got to get somebody in this seat to get out there and start selling so I can get on with the other things I'm doing.” It sounds like it is a worthwhile investment to stop and thinking about, “What are we selling to whom? What are these behaviors that we want to see? Are there even different roles here that we should be defining?” Not everybody is an account executive or an associate. There are hunters and farmers and relationship managers and wizards or architects. I know a lot of tech companies, they have account executives, they also have sales engineers who come in and help in the process. They realize the benefit of having technical people there who are not your outgoing salespeople but they can speak to customers and also speak the language of the technology. Is that the main idea behind that?

That is perfectly said, Andy. You almost exactly recapped the framework that we have, which is on our website if anybody wants to check it out. Those are all selling roles and there are twelve fundamental different ways of selling. Chances are, you're going to be naturally wired to excel in 2 or 3 of those. I'm going to be naturally wired to excel in 2 or 3 of those. Our research shows that most people can sell if you open up the way you think about selling the way you describe. The fill that sales engineer is different than a solution architect, different than an executive. Our research shows that few people can be a top performer in more than 1 or 2. It's fascinating. It's like a big puzzle. Helping companies get the right people and helping people get in the right jobs.

To Sell Is Human

What I'm thinking of there is, you said there are twelve different types of sellers and you said something like, “Everybody can sell in their category.” There are a lot of people out there and probably many people reading, thinking, “I'm not in sales. I can't sell. Sales is not something I do.” Do you think that is true or do you think it's not true that people need to discover what their style is? I'm not saying everybody needs to go into sales. Daniel Pink says, “To Sell Is Human.” We're all selling ourselves all the time. No matter what we're doing, if you're in learning and development town and you're creating a new program or something, you've got to sell it to the executive sponsor, to the business. It sounds like it might be helpful to learn what your style is.

I completely agree. It's funny because To Sell Is Human immediately came to mind. I was trying to remember the stat and he says, “Eight in ten people have sales as part of their job.” It could be selling a product or selling a solution or it could be selling ideas internally. We know from LinkedIn that for the 2020 prediction of hot jobs, three of the top twenty are sales-related jobs. It’s customer success manager and account executive at enterprise-level sales in the tech space specifically and chief revenue officer.

Measuring Performance: As your product or your solutions go through the lifecycle, you're going to need different kinds of sellers.

I do believe that we can all sell. I don't believe that everybody should be in a sales job. I do believe that there are jobs that help to reinforce the sales process. I'll give you an example. We were chatting about my move to Colorado. I wanted to get to Colorado and I had an opportunity with a great company with a big name and I took a sales job because I was convinced like, “This company is great. I can't wait to get to Colorado. I know I can do this.” It turned out, it was an outbound, find new logo, drive new business sales job, which I am not wired to do. I'm wired to get on the phone with somebody who has a need, who is interested and needs help figuring out how it's all going to work. Having awareness keeps helping us identify sales as a whole, it’s a huge profession but what's the slice of it that I might do well in and how do I make sure I end up in the right slice?

Talent Development Trends

Understanding that is important. Wendy, I always ask guests about trends they’re following. Is there a trend you're following in talent development that we haven't talked about yet?

Reading to a lot of your blogs, a lot of your other guests have talked about trends in terms of AI and individual learning. When I look at it through my job and my lens of the assessment world, something that's fascinating that we haven't figured out yet is what information can be gleaned from us by what's out there publicly available. Anybody will be able to read this blog. I don't know for how long, 20 years, 50 years. Can they read this and can they make a decision about what would be good for this job or not? We're trying to figure out the ethical implications of that, as well as the accuracy implications of that. Keeping an eye on that whole, overused AI world as it applies to selecting the right people from the start is going to be bigger and bigger in addition to, as your other guests have talked about, how we develop people.

What's been your greatest accomplishment in your career so far?

If you had asked me that a couple of years ago, I probably would have talked about the books I wrote or the articles I published. I'm going to get a little choked up but its people. When I look back at the team that I've gotten to work with, I feel proud. I feel good for knowing that they are each more confident and competent on an individual level because of the work we did together. Everybody's working well as a team. As I started thinking more, it's about that day-to-day impact that we have on other people that is my proudest accomplishment.

What's been your biggest failure or mistake you've made?

I don't know if we have time to list all of those. It was funny because I did read Rich's episode with you and he talked about taking the wrong job. I've had that happen for sure, getting the glamour of the name.

I’ve had a few people talking about that.

A good hiring assessment helps you predict specifically who's going to be successful in the job you're hiring for. Click To Tweet

I want to think back all the way as a new talent development professional, right out of grad school, I was probably 24, 25.

Is it years ago?

I was hired to develop basic training for a tech company on how to give coaching feedback. I spent a lot of time designing the course, making sure the course would be interactive, the materials would be great. They came in and they talked to this little training module at the end of four and a half days of other training the managers have been through. It was Friday afternoon, from 1:00 to 4:00 or 1:00 to 5:00 and four and half days of other training which was about changing how managers manage and going from being an entrepreneurial company to being a more managed company.

I came in to a group of exhausted learners who were hired and not happy with what they'd heard for the first four and a half days. I've come in all bubbly, thinking, “Isn't this fun? We're going to learn how to coach and give feedback.” It was an abject failure. People were yelling. They were saying what a waste of their time it was. Their arms folded and heads down and people leaving. I was upset. I picked the wrong profession. Long story short is I ended up working with that client for another ten years after I started my own company and I still would run into people. I will run into people in Northern Virginia who will say, “I was in that class. Remember how faster that was?” I want to put my head in the sand but every one of them says, “I appreciated how you handled it.” It wasn't the content. It wasn't, “Did it sink in?” It was, “How are we, with each other as human beings, at the moment that people remember many years later?”

The Maya Angelou quote, “People won't remember what you said but they remember how you made them feel.”

I did feel like a huge failure and I almost quit.

It’s a great lesson. No trading tech on Friday afternoon, especially when you're making people do role plays and stuff. As an experienced facilitator, I could definitely tell you that but early in my career, I’ll be like, “Sure. Let's do this.” I'm sure that's what they want. Wendy, what is a book that you often recommend or has made a big impact on you or maybe some book that can help our readers learning more about assessments?

If people are interested in assessment specifically or in using data to make better talent decisions, I cannot recommend more Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. You know him from Hogan. I can't remember if he was one of the founders. He's the chief talent scientist at Manpower. He writes all the time in Harvard Business Review. He has a book called The Talent Delusion that is phenomenal. I didn't know too much about this space before I started in this particular role. I swear it's my bible. My mind is all marked up in tabs and pages about how to use data to make better decisions about how we find, select, develop and retain employees. It should be almost a required reading for anybody in the talent world.

Advice From The Pro

To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others

I don't know if we've had that book recommended on here before. I’ll definitely take note. For anybody reading in talent development or HR who's looking for a way to accelerate their career or be more successful, what's one more piece of advice you would give?

Probably everybody has said it but reading. My first job when I got out of grad school, I went to work for Huthwaite. I remember I worked for somebody who is probably about my age and he said, “The number one thing you need to do is get Harvard Business Review.” I have been subscribed to Harvard Business Review for years. Keeping up, staying current, listening to podcasts, going to conferences like the one you're having. We are accounted on to help other people learn, being ahead and constantly being learners ourselves. It has served me well so I can't imagine it wouldn't serve others well.

I consider myself to be a constant and continuous learner, always reading, listening to podcasts, that sort of thing. I try to make time for reading every morning. I read about 25 books a year. It's been helpful for that. I go to a lot of conferences. I invest a lot of my money and time doing that. I love connecting with people and learning and that's why I'm hosting my own conference with my friend Bennett Phillips, the Talent Development Think Tank. There will be another one so make sure you check it out at our website TalentDevelopmentThinkTank.com. Wendy, for anybody who wants to get in touch with you or find out more about GrowthPlay and the assessments that we talked about, where's the best place for them to go?

LinkedIn is the first place I would come to. I've got a lot of articles that I've posted about the assessment world on LinkedIn. Anybody I connect with and accept connections with anybody so that's a good place to start. Also, you can reach out to me at WMack@GrowthPlay.com directly.

GrowthPlay is a partner with Advantage our sponsor. With me being affiliated with Advantage, I’m a distributor representative, if you will, where it goes play on the Chally Assessment. If anybody reading is thinking, “I'd like to talk about getting those into my organization,” reach out to me. Hit me up on LinkedIn or send me an email. I'd be happy to set up a conversation with Wendy. Either way, connect with Wendy. This has been a fascinating conversation for me, learning more about the assessment world and the different types of assessments and the ways that people can engage with those and how you can find the best people, especially in sales. Thanks again, Wendy, for coming on and sharing all of your wisdom, experience on the show.

I appreciated the opportunity, Andy. I hope to talk again soon.

Take care.

Thanks.

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Thank you so much for reading this episode. I am always grateful for everyone who reads, who subscribes and who have left reviews on iTunes. By the way, if you haven't done that yet, it would mean the world to me. Head on over to iTunes, take one minute, write a quick review. It helps our show grow and I appreciate your support. As my gift to you, I have created a report of the top five trends impacting talent development. If you have haven't grabbed that report yet, you can head on over to AdvantagePerformance.com/trends. You can download my report of the top five trends impacting talent development, as well as sign up for our newsletter to get updates on everything that is going on. Thanks again for reading.

• GrowthPlay
• Christopher Lind– Previous episode
• Learning Tech Talks
• Huthwaite
• Chally Assessment
• BTS
• Josh Bersin - past episode
• Rich Dapra - episode
• Liberty Mutual
• Hogan
• DISC
• Myers-Briggs
• Birkman
• The Predictive Index
• To Sell Is Human
• Manpower
• The Talent Delusion
• TalentDevelopmentThinkTank.com
• LinkedIn – Wendy Mack
• WMack@GrowthPlay.com
• LinkedIn - Andy Storch
• iTunes - Talent Development Hot Seat
• AdvantagePerformance.com/trends