What is Business Psychology?
Senior Team Development (Team building)
Client Challenge
Having already partnered with a leading global Pharmaceutical company to help assess their CEO and various other senior roles we were invited to help identify a new Business Unit Director from their shortlist of candidates. The company wanted to find the best individual with the right mix of strategic insight, transformational leadership and people management capability – essentially someone that could succession plan into a future Managing Director for the company.
Our solution
Initially, our role was to gather insights and constructively challenge the board on the key competencies that would drive performance in the role. We worked closely to understand the current organisational culture, top team dynamics and business workings of the Division so that our recommendations would take into account the ideal candidate fit.
Upon completion of a thorough job analysis and communication with key project stakeholders, we then selected an appropriate array of tools and exercises by which to assess the candidates’ core skills and abilities. A number of online psychometric tests were chosen based on their strong recommendation by the British Psychological Society, their relevance for the role, ability to adequately assess the required competencies, face validity and overall reliability (i.e. are they a good predictor of future role performance).
Our independence means that we are able to select only the most appropriate and highly validated psychometric instruments on the market, rather than being confined to using solely our own in-house tools. Every company is different. So we make sure to choose the ones that will make a difference for your company, based on our experience and expertise as Business Psychologists.
After completion of the initial job analysis and consideration of the psychometric profiles, each candidate was then subjected to a robust interview with one of Davis Associates’ lead Business Psychologists. This allowed the key competencies and leadership capabilities to be explored and the online assessments to be carefully verified, probing deeper into any highlighted areas of potential weakness.
To provide further balance, other exercises were developed including a strategic analysis presentation, management scenarios role-play and negotiation exercise. These were used to gather additional behavioural information on the candidates to inform our recommendations. On completion of the Executive Assessment Centre, we were in a position to give immediate verbal feedback to our client.
Results
A comprehensive, hand-written and tailored report followed shortly after. The report included details of the candidate’s behavioural strengths and limitations with regard the role as well as attributes such as how they may fit into the organisation’s culture and their likely impact on the team environment.
The chosen individual had an immediate positive impact on the organisation and over the course of their first year helped increase performance levels across the top-team, drive significant financial growth and improve levels of employee engagement.
