Nowack, K. (2003). Aligning Career Paths. Executive Excellence, 20, No. 4, 9-10.
You have seen it happen in every organization--high performing independent contributors or specialists are
promoted into leadership roles with disappointing performance. To maximize job satisfaction and cultivate
retention, organizations should take steps to identify and align the career path preferences of their
internal talent. These career path preferences are based on stable clusters of interests, values and
motives that underlie each employee. These career path preferences are highly predictive of job
satisfaction and organizational commitment.
Understanding the Four Career Path Preferences
MANAGERIAL -- This career path preference is best characterized by those
interested in continually moving vertically up the organizational ladder into traditional supervisory and
managerial positions with increasing spans of control, responsibility, power, and authority. Typical
career anchors and motives of these individuals include power, influence, leadership, control, task
accomplishment, status, managerial competence, and directing others. Appropriate organizational rewards
for these individuals might include: upward mobility, promotion, special perks, titles, and organizational
symbols of success (e.g., profit sharing incentive plans, company car, stock options, financial planning,
expense account, club memberships, etc.).
Nowack, K., (2002). Does 360 degree feedback negatively effect company performance: Feedback varies with your point of view. HR Magazine, Volume 47 (6), June 2002.
Multi-rater feedback can raise more questions than it answers. How is an employee to react, for example,
when his manager gives him negative ratings, while feedback from his direct reports and peers is laudatory?
Research suggests that disagreement between rater groups is common—and that the resulting confusion creates
challenges for employee development. Nowack, K. (2001). Repressive coping and social support: In search of a "super" repressor. Unpublished manuscript. In recent years, the growing interest in social support as a mediating variable in the stress-illness relationship has been paralleled by a growing concern of the role that negative affectivity (NA), positive affectivity (PA) and self-deception play in influencing reports of stress and well-being. A growing research base has shown that individuals high in self-deception who also report low NA (repressive coping) are associated with significant and adverse physiologic, cardiovascular and immune responses. Furthermore, positive mood (PA) has been studied less frequently but current evidence suggests that it is associated with higher functional and in vivo immune responses, physical health and psychological well-being. Expanding previous research on defensiveness, this study explored the role of self-deception, NA and PA with self-reported social support. In the present study, four groups of Ss (N=122) between the ages of 60 and 70 participated in an 11-day intensive preventive health promotion program for the elderly. Measures of social support (Stress Profile Social Support Scale), NA (Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale), PA (Cognitive Hardiness and Psychological Well-being) and self-deception (Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale) were obtained. Ss scoring above the median on self-deception and below the median on NA were categorized as repressors; those also scoring above the median on PA were categorized as "super" repressors. Individuals high in self-deception reported significantly higher social support compared to others. A significant three-way interaction was found between defensiveness X NA X PA providing some limited evidence for the existence of the hypothesized "super" repressor using cognitive hardiness, but not psychological well-being, as a measure of PA. These findings suggest that measures of defensiveness be included in future social support research. Additional research should continue to explore whether "super" repressors (high defensive, low NA and high PA) may be most vulnerable to adverse cardiovascular and immune effects. Nowack, K. (2001). Gender differences in self-other ratings in multi-rater feedback. Unpublished manuscript. This study explored the relationship between gender, self-ratings and other ratings on a validated multi-rater feedback instrument (Manager View/360). Analysis of variance by gender and rater were conducted for 1218 Ss using a multi-rater feedback instrument measuring 20 managerial competencies derived from job analyses of supervisory and management positions in diverse industries. Analysis of variance with the aggregate data revealed that males (N=801) significantly reported higher self-ratings than females (N=417) in the competencies of active listening, oral presentation, delegation, team building, conflict management, and problem-solving (all p's < .01). Separate analysis by each rater group (direct reports, supervisors, peers, team members) revealed that other rater groups significantly rated females higher than males on the majority of 20 managerial competencies (all p's < .01). Supervisor ratings of both men and women were significantly more critical than other rater groups overall. However, supervisor significantly rated females higher than males in 12 of the 20 the competencies including two-way feedback, oral communication, oral presentation, vision/goal setting, planning/organizing, administrative control, performance evaluation, rewarding/recognizing, interpersonal sensitivity, performance management, coaching/developing others and leadership/influence (all p 's < .01). These findings suggest that males tend to inflate self-ratings relative to females in the areas of communication, task management and problem solving. These results are consistent with prior multi-rater feedback research suggesting that women are consistently evaluated more effectively than their male counterparts. Nowack, K. (2000). Occupational stress management: Effective or not? In P. Schnall, K. Belkie, P. Landensbergis, & D. Baker (Eds.). Occupational Medicine: State of the Art Reviews, Hanley and Belfus, Inc., Philadelphia, PA., Vol 15, No. 1, pp. 231-233 This chapter critically reviews the research literature on the health and organizational effects of individual worksite stress-management interventions. Individual stress-management interventions are defined as techniques that are designed to help employees modify their appraisal of stressful situations or deal more effectively with symptoms of stress. Diversity of stress techniques, use of varying health outcome measures and methodological limitations makes it difficult to reach firm conclusions about the efficacy of stress-management interventions. Nevertheless, current research suggests that individual stress-management interventions are generally effective in reducing negative individual health outcomes but not consistently producing effects on job/organization-relevant outcomes, such as absenteeism turnover, productivity, or job satisfaction. Researchers and practitioners should design more comprehensive stress-management interventions that attempt to modify stressful aspects of the work environment as well as helping individual employees learn to manage stress through improved appraisal and coping skills. Nowack, K., Hartley, G, & Bradley, W. (in press). Evaluating results of your 360-degree feedback intervention. Training and Development, April, 1999. This article describes a post-program survey approach to evaluating the effectiveness and impact of your 360-degree feedback or multi-rater system intervention. A description of the design, administration, and analysis of a post-program evaluation survey is presented along with several sample survey questions. STEP 1: DEFINING WHAT TO EVALUATE AND MEASURE The first step in evaluating your multi-rater 360-degree intervention is to define what you hoped to accomplish in the first place. The use of a multi-rater intervention should always be purposeful and tied to specific business needs and strategic organizational objectives. The business needs and objectives should be directly tied to your evaluation approach. STEP 2: DESIGNING A MULTI-RATER EVALUATION SURVEY The key to evaluating your multi-rater feedback intervention is the development of a well-constructed survey. The following steps should be considered when designing and developing your survey instrument.
STEP 3: GATHERING DATA USING YOUR MULTI-RATER EVALUATION SURVEY STEP 4: ANALYZING YOUR DATA AND SUMMARIZING YOUR RESULTS Once you have your returned surveys in hand, you are now ready to analyze your results. With the use of commercially available statistical software (e.g., Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) or spreadsheet software (e.g., Excel) you should be able to generate basic data analyses useful for your evaluation study (e.g., item frequencies, chi-square analyses, analysis of variance, correlations, t-tests for specific analyses). SUMMARY If you are using multi-rater feedback interventions in your organization, you should be attempting to evaluate their use and effectiveness. By designing and administering a well designed multi-rater feedback evaluation survey, you can explore how well program participants have gained self-insight and transferred this learning into new behaviors back on the job (level 2 and 3 evaluation). Carefully developed, a multi-rater feedback evaluation survey allows you to better understand what you can do to ensure that your organization is implementing "best practices" in these types of training and development interventions. Nowack, K. (1999). 360-Degree feedback. In DG Langdon, KS Whiteside, & MM McKenna (Eds.), Intervention: 50 Performance Technology Tools, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, Inc., pp.34-46. The major goal of 360-degree feedback interventions is to facilitate purposeful individual or team behavior change. Successful behavior change at the individual or team level requires three necessary conditions:
Multi-rater or 360-degree feedback interventions involve the systematic collection of specific information from multiple sources to enhance awareness of individuals and teams. Most commonly, data and information are collected from multiple sources that have a relevant, and hopefully accurate, perspective to share using focus group, interview, or paper-and-pencil instruments. The data collected are commonly summarized quantitatively and/or qualitatively and shared with one or more members of the organization in an oral and/or written manner. The most common form of multi-rater or 360-degree feedback interventions today typically utilizes an off-the-shelf or in-house designed instrument measuring critical competencies required for competitive performance. Most feedback from these interventions is collected from multiple perspectives (e.g., one's supervisor, direct reports, peers, team members) and is summarized in the form of a written and/or computerized feedback report (often including graphic comparisons of self-other perceptions, written comments, and narrative information). The most common uses of multi-rater or 360-degree feedback interventions include: Executive/management coaching, training and development, career counseling, succession planning and development, training needs assessment, training evaluation, and performance appraisal and evaluation. Despite the growing popularity of multi-rater of 360-degree feedback, a number of issues emerge in the use and implementation of such organizational interventions. These include such things as:
The chapter includes a real-world case study and answers to the current issues and questions regarding best practices in the use of 360-degree feedback interventions. References are also provided for additional readings in the multi-rater or 360-degree feedback literature. |
|
Content and design ©1999 Organizational Performance Dimensions - All rights reserved Site design by Chromatic Concepts |