Managing for Strength: Why Talent and Personality Assessments Are Good for Business

So-called “personality tests” and talent assessments have long been a staple in the corporate world. But in many respects, manufacturing businesses are a different beast, and often have to have more prescriptive operational policies and processes to ensure predictability.

So as a manufacturing leader, you may have wondered: Are assessments of a person’s talents, work style or strengths worthwhile for manufacturing leadership teams?

In my view, the short answer is yes.

That’s because whatever your company may have on the balance sheet, your greatest asset is your people. And understanding your team’s individual strengths, communication styles and approaches to problem-solving not only helps you identify and develop talent, it also helps you build stronger and more resilient teams.

In this post, I’d like to explore how assessments of individual talents, work style and strengths can have a profound impact on operational excellence, employee engagement and company culture.

Personal Assessments Create a Blueprint for Organizational Strengths

Despite the name, personal assessment tests do much more than identify personal traits. They’re tools for identifying talents and strengths, and even work styles.

This kind of information is important for any business that wants to scale, and manufacturing companies are no different. In fact, with so many different roles and business process dependencies, it’s crucial for manufacturing organizations to have a solid understanding of their people’s strengths, and the work styles that work best for them.

There are many assessment tools to choose from, and it really just comes down to which one resonates most with your company’s culture.

Here at Syte, we often use the CliftonStrengths assessment with our clients. Judy Moore, Syte’s People Operations Consulting Director, is a certified CliftonStrengths coach, and works with our clients to help them understand their team’s talents and the most effective way to manage and grow them.

We also like the Enneagram model and use it when we’re getting to know our clients and how they work on a deeper level.

Other companies prefer tools like DiSC to understand dominant traits and human behavior in different situations. Whatever assessment tool you choose, you’ll gain valuable insights into how your employees perceive situations and communicate, and under what conditions they thrive.

Three Ways You Can Use Strength Assessments for Your Organization

On an individual level, self-awareness is obviously a good thing. But manufacturing leaders who have a solid grasp of their team members’ strengths and working styles can leverage that insight to build their organizational muscle — for everyone’s benefit.

Develop (and Retain) Top Talent

Having a focus on people’s strengths is a critical success factor when you’re managing and hiring people for the long term. When you’re looking to hire new employees, you’ll have a blueprint of the work environment they’re joining, from both an operational and (just as important) a psychological perspective. You can use this information to gauge a candidate’s suitability in a way that goes beyond the nuts and bolts of the role you’re filling and their own professional skill set.

For existing employees, a talent assessment tells you what they’re good at and the kind of environment they thrive in. This information is a boon to managers: They can provide more tailored and targeted coaching, and ensure their employees are set up for success.

This leads to higher employee satisfaction and engagement, and that’s not just good for morale — it’s also good for business. Gallup has found that organizations that rate highest in employee engagement also reap a slew of other benefits, from significantly lower rates of absenteeism to fewer product defects and workplace accidents.

Focusing on talent — hiring talent, developing talent, and retaining talent — makes for a much stronger business over the long term.

Build Stronger Teams

If you’ve been reading our blog for a while, you’ll know that we are huge proponents of building strong teams for long-term growth and success. We like to think about this using our 3 Cs model (connection, collaboration and communication), and talent and work style assessments play directly into that.

First of all, they facilitate mutual understanding, which helps build connection. When we know more about how our colleagues and leaders think and respond to different situations, we can relate to them better.

Second, these tools enhance our ability to work together, which fosters more collaboration. Knowing our coworkers’ individual work styles helps us adapt and adjust so that we’re all getting the best out of each other, instead of working against individual synchronicities that we don’t understand.

Finally, these deep dives into personality traits lead to deeper, more meaningful conversations and open up greater communication. This is such a critical piece for any organization, but particularly during times of disruption and transformational change. Having a deeper understanding of what drives your team members can help you tailor your messages, and employees having an awareness of what drives their colleagues’ actions and perceptions creates more transparency and trust.

Transform Your Organizational Culture

Team-building is foundational to building a strong work culture — and the exercise of going through these assessment tools can be a team-building exercise in itself. People love learning about themselves, and sharing results with coworkers is another way to build connections and a sense of belonging.

But this exercise can also have a much deeper and far-reaching impact.

Knowing the strengths and working styles of your colleagues can shift team dynamics and support a stronger organizational culture that emphasizes understanding rather than judgement. 

When we develop an awareness of the way others think as merely a matter of difference (and not as a matter of “right or wrong”), it opens up a whole new way of communicating and collaborating.

Not only do we benefit from considering new approaches and perspectives (instead of reacting and judging them), we also find the psychological safety and confidence to show up more authentically. We can voice our opinions and offer an alternate view to discussions when we think it’s necessary, without fear of repercussions.

Work culture is one of most powerful accelerators to growth, and a culture that fosters awareness of self and others is one that encourages collaboration, innovation and trust.

Knowledge Is Power: Use It Wisely

Manufacturing companies will always need to rise to new challenges and innovate in order to scale and thrive. The surest way to make that happen is to leverage the talent and personal traits of your workforce to harness all of that potential — and identifying those strengths and personal styles is the first step.

Are you thinking about a talent and strength assessment for your organization? We’d love to help you get started! You can schedule your complimentary consultation session right here.