To achieve a true mindset of innovation takes commitment. Kuczmarski submits that eight building blocks that rest on three interconnected platforms:

Have you ever tried a new diet or committed to a New Year’s resolution only to lose momentum a week or two in? Have you asked a friend to check in on your progress or—even better—to join you? That’s a form of peer coaching that helps with accountability, and it’s just as applicable in the office as in the gym.

If you follow our blog then you already know that we agree with much of what Marc Effron and Miriam Ort have to say in their book One Page Talent Management. The “must-do’s” in their chapter on talent reviews and succession planning is right on: managers must communicate results of a review with the employee, and they must follow up on action items.

The Kolbe A, B and C Indexes® provide a holistic understanding of the natural instincts and unique talents of each employee. Understanding these instincts enables you to form synergistic teams and empowers managers to develop effective approaches for successful leadership. Any size company can benefit from the Kolbe Wisdom® system.

Without neutral observation, effective feedback is nearly impossible, whether that feedback is aimed at a process, a group of people, or an individual. When using feedback to help people improve their processes or change behaviors, follow a few simple guidelines to make that feedback effective.

Achieving a goal should yield growth, so make sure that each goal you set is attainable, but isn’t such a breeze to accomplish that it requires little to no effort. That means that a goal must be specific, too, so that the employee and the manager have a metric and can clearly see whether it’s been met.

The essential components of an effective role description

Regardless of whether we’re talking about the Indianapolis Colts or the editorial department of the Indianapolis Star, there are a number of characteristics common to successful teams:

BLOOM® enables Human Resources managers to get rid of the countless spreadsheets they likely use to track information and to instead manage roles -- including descriptions, education and training requirements, and now Key Resource Areas (KRA) -- in a centralized, web-based location. When it comes time for an employee’s review, BLOOM® pulls in the person’s corresponding KRA and other applicable data that their supervisor will rate as appropriate.

Dealing with conflict takes self-awareness, respect, careful listening, honesty, and structured dialog in order to be positively resolved. Disrespect breeds an unhealthy approach conflict.

At Insight, it’s no question what tool yields the most useful assessments: the Kolbe Wisdom™ system. We’ve used Kolbe for over twelve years now because it’s different from the other indexes; it neither seeks to identify personality style (affective) nor to measure intellect (cognitive), either of which the majority of other tools seek to do.

In his book, The Manager’s Book of Questions: 1,001 Great Interview Questions for Hiring the Right Person, John Kador identifies seven types of questions that serve specific purposes in a job interview: