What is Incite Strategies’ iAdvance Process?
What do you think of when you hear the term “Leadership Assessment”? To many HRM's, the concept conjures images of Assessment Centers or even Assessment Instruments. While these are useful points of reference, what differentiates Incite Strategies’ Assessment Process, iAdvance, are two more human aspects. First, iAdvance is more “high touch” than “high tech.” Secondly, it is focused on observable behavior in both the organization and in associated results.
Individuals going through the intensive iAdvance process spend about three hours with an Incite Strategies consultant recreating their Leadership Biography, articulating “why they’ve done what they’ve done”, “how they got to where they are today,” and “what they’re looking to do going forward.”
While the data gathered during the interview is useful to identify patterns of behavior over a person’s career, the power of the iAdvance process comes from the references with whom the consultant speaks to validate or hone the hypothesis resulting from their individual interview.
How have clients used Incite Strategies’ iAdvance Process?
Clients typically use our Leadership Assessment process in one of two ways, and often employ a combination of both. The first is Third Party Assessments, where we come in to a business and individually assess specific leaders who have been identified as having additional potential in the business. The company either doesn’t have the skills internally to assess their leaders, don’t have the resources available, or want an objective view from external experts who can both calibrate talent and provide benchmarking based on other companies we’ve worked with globally.
Incite Strategies also offers intensive workshops for small groups of senior HRM’s who want to hone their own assessment skills to allow them to develop this competency within their own organization. iAdvance Workshops, ranging from one to eight participants, provide the tools and feedback based on conducting “live” leadership assessments with individuals in their business. We often hear from participants that this is the most useful course they’ve been to in their career because it is so action oriented and practical…it’s much more than just an ‘interviewing’ class.
How does your Assessment process differ from other assessment tools?
Our assessment process is not based on psychological instruments or on specifically developed assessment centers. We are not trained psychologists, but experienced HR Managers who know what it takes to be a successful leader in corporations around the world.
What competencies should we use to assess our leaders?
We certainly can provide you with our suggestions of what we’ve seen differentiate effective leaders from others, but it is also important to identify critical success factors in your business. Company culture is as important as global leadership attributes – one size doesn’t fit all.
And, if you have not identified critical success factors, we can work with you to determine what those are by interviewing key leaders in your business or operationalize your current company values to determine the competencies to assess against.
What level of individual should go through a Leadership Assessment?
That’s the beauty of the iAdvance process – it can be used with Emerging Leaders through Senior Executives; the amount of time spent on the interview, the number of references spoken with, and the content of the report can vary based on the level of the individual and how the information will be used.
Our company is global…have you used this process outside the U.S.?
One of our differentiators is our experience in working with leaders and HRM’s globally. We pride ourselves in taking cultural differences into account when assessing or coaching, but balance that with providing a consistent framework globally so that companies develop a common language and standards around assessing talent.
Certainly the individual being assessed benefits from going through the iAdvance Process…what are the other benefits?
There are numerous benefits to implementing our Leadership Assessment process across your business. Not only is it a key retention tool for the individuals, but it is a way of making “people are our biggest asset” come alive in terms of a creating a foundation for on-going development.
The benefits extend well beyond the individuals. A composite view of many individuals can give organizations a feel for the degree to which leaders are being assessed against consistent standards – Is the bar the same across functions? Business units? Countries? Assessments provide additional data to help increase the effectiveness of making the right decisions about talent when looking at moving people into new leadership roles.