Power is in Personality, Part II: Lean On Your People During a Crisis

Organizations need to be prepared for a number of scenarios when operating during an economic crisis. Since the pandemic, the ability to plan for the future has become virtually impossible, so employers have to build contingency plans that are flexible and adaptable to varying factors.

One way employers can accomplish this is by leveraging their greatest asset: their people. If employers are hesitant to add to their teams without knowing the future of their revenue stream, getting to know the skills and talent that already exist within the company is an effective and economical way to get the make the most out of what you have, even when times are tight. A little creativity can go a long way. Now is the time to work smarter, not harder.

The Power is in Personality

Before you can get creative, you must first seek to understand your employees’ strengths, abilities, natural tendencies, and unique personality traits. Get to know what drives each person, where their interests are, and what motivates them. A motivated employee is one who can reach their full potential — even during times of adversity.  The more managers understand about their teams —  and the more employees understand themselves — the more accurately they can find the roles and tasks that make their people happy.

By targeting these things, managers can rearrange, reassign, and reorganize how work is approached, tackled, and completed. Teams may be smaller, but they’re working together and working effectively. When you understand how personality affects learning, behavior, and production, you can identify roles that work with those personality traits to cover any gaps during uncertain or stressful times.

Lean on Your Teams

Understanding the innate abilities and strengths of your teams helps managers manage better, coworkers understand each other more, and individuals do work that serves them. Consider your business goals and align them with the talent you have, and then determine how you can leverage your talent to accomplish what’s important. Some of the key competencies to look for and leverage during times of crisis include:

• Empathy: An empathic person considers how the things they say and do affect others, and in times of crisis, they consider what others are going through. Everyone is in this together, but everyone’s situations are unique. Some coworkers will have children or elderly family at home to care for. Some coworkers may fall ill. Whatever the situation, an empathetic employee knows that everyone’s experience is different, and they’ll handle change with grace and respect.
• Urgency: A person with urgency feels compelled to complete a task quickly and efficiently. When things can change dramatically and with little warning, an employee who operates with urgency knows that deadlines cannot be missed and tasks cannot be put off, and when things do inevitably change, they react quickly.
• Adaptability: The only thing we can count on in this moment, is that we can’t count on anything. Adaptable employees can accommodate shifts in priorities, facilitate changes, and work with flexibility. Being adaptable in an unpredictable environment is critical for keeping work flowing.
• Self-Management: Many of us will be working from home for the foreseeable future, so the ability to manage one’s own time, set one’s own priorities, and organize one’s own workload is the foundation of working successfully on a remote team. Managers need to know who can operate independently and provide them with the resources those employees need so that managers can place more focus on those who aren’t as proficient in self-management.

What the Caliper Profile Provides During a Crisis

The Caliper Profile was specifically developed to gauge what an individual is capable of – not what they’ve done in the past. It seeks to shed light on what they can achieve in the future and what motivates them today to get them there. When an employee is engaged, motivated, and inspired — and their personality is aligned with the role — the entire team is lifted. Right now, that’s exactly what organizations need.

So, how do you translate what the Caliper Profile reveals and how it applies to getting through the pandemic? Meet with your employees and ask questions about how they’ve handled adversity in the past, how they’ve recovered from mistakes, and what it is about their role that they enjoy doing (or what are they interesting in taking on)? What projects have they worked on that got them excited, and why? By being open and honest about what the company needs and how you envision their skills helping to make that happen, employees are more likely to be open and honest about what they believe they can accomplish and what they’re interested in taking on.

Unique circumstances require unique solutions, and getting creative with your talent can help your organization weather the storm while building skill sets from within. To learn more about the ways Caliper and our consultants can help your company find and harness the power of your people, reach out today to get started.