Using Feedback in Organizational Consulting (Division 13: Fundamentals of Consulting Psychology) by Jane Brodie Gregory & Paul E. Levy

Author:Jane Brodie Gregory & Paul E. Levy
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781433819520
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Published: 2015-02-15T14:00:00+00:00

PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE

In the Introduction to this book, we introduced Sylvia, a consulting psychologist who works for a small firm that specializes in executive assessment. She spends a great deal of time consulting with client organizations that want assessments of current leaders or candidates for leadership positions so they can identify the best candidates for hire or succession and develop their current or future leaders. Over the years, Sylvia has learned through experience how important it is to consider individual differences when providing assessment feedback to clients. She has learned to invest time in getting to know her clients before delivering feedback so that she may tailor her approach to their attitudes, expectations, and tendencies toward feedback. Failing to do so increases the likelihood that clients will get defensive, be dismissive, and be less inclined to use feedback for personal development and improved performance.

A private equity firm has hired Sylvia to provide developmental assessments to the top seven leaders of a financial services organization recently acquired by the firm. The private equity firm believes these leaders have the capability to grow the business, but not without significant investment in the leaders’ development and capacity to better motivate and inspire their small workforce. Each leader will work with an executive coach for 6 to 12 months, but only after going through an intensive assessment process with Sylvia’s firm, which partners with the executive coaches to ensure continuity.

Each leader completes a battery of online assessments, which includes measures of personality, cognitive ability, learning agility, motivation, and potential derailers. After completing the assessment battery, each leader has a 1-hour interview with one of Sylvia’s colleagues, who inquires about past job experiences, relationships at work, concerns about current and future challenges, and self-perceptions. In addition, Sylvia’s firm conducts multisource feedback (i.e., 360° feedback) interviews for each leader: talking with peers, direct reports, and the company president to whom the leaders report. Another colleague at Sylvia’s firm synthesizes the data from the assessment battery, one-on-one interview, and multisource interviews into a detailed report. Sylvia sets up time with each of the seven leaders to provide feedback and help them get the greatest possible value from their assessment report.

As Sylvia prepares for her meeting with Elizabeth, the organization’s director of risk and compliance, she spends time reviewing the assessment results to get a feel for Elizabeth’s personality and motivations. The assessment battery did not measure all of the individual difference variables that have been examined in feedback research, but it did provide important insights on variables, such as Elizabeth’s personality (high conscientious, high neuroticism), motivational orientations (learning/mastery oriented, moderately prevention oriented), and trait affect (moderately high levels of social anxiety). Sylvia also concludes from the assessment and other data that Elizabeth has a strong internal locus of control. Sylvia knows from experience that she can get a sense for an individual’s feedback orientation, self-esteem, and self-efficacy by asking relevant questions at the beginning of a session.

Sylvia joins Elizabeth in her office for a 2-hour session

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