The name of this blog comes from our mission at INFLUENCE: “To empower people with clarity and confidence.”
Our objective is to provide brief but meaningful topics (under 500 words) that inspire, educate and empower leaders through resources both inside and outside of INFLUENCE. This week’s edition is provided by David Salmons.
As a tsunami of workers exit their careers, the World Economic Forum offered the following observation in their Future of Jobs Report. They indicated that by 2025, advancements in technology will likely displace 85 million jobs and create 97 million new jobs.
Accelerating change drives the need for adaptable employees. A shrinking hiring pool, however, compounds this challenge and underscores a strategic necessity: Organizations must proactively hire and develop flexible employees specifically for changing roles. As that can be difficult to strategize, some experts offer solid ideas for how organizations can address this with modest adjustments.
One idea involves making tweaks to formal interviewing processes. A good example is the use of standardized pre-hire assessments that explore an applicant’s willingness to learn new competencies. TTI’s DISC assessment is one example, where the “S” scale measures, among other things, an individual’s interest in new experiences and opportunities.
The lower an individual scores on this “S” scale, the more likely they are to thrive in roles that require adaptation.
Likewise, interview questions can be tailored to determine an applicant’s flexibility, for example, by asking them to describe when they last learned a new skill, or how drawn they are to learning opportunities in general.
On the other hand, efforts to develop the growth capacity in existing employees may involve not only teaching leaders to coach, but also what’s come to be called “peer coaching.” That is, where all employees are taught basic coaching skills such as open-ended questions and active listening.
Where these basic skills exist, organizational coaching cultures develop, helping employees recognize and adapt to opportunities with peer support while reducing some of the burden on leaders tasked to manage change.
That’s not to say that creating a peer coaching culture is a simple event. It’s an ongoing cultural initiative that requires leadership input.
Aaron Hurst, author, CEO and cofounder of Imperative, addresses peer coaching when he writes: “There’s certainly a role for instructors, such as showing someone how to display empathy or presenting research about the benefits of effective communication. But to develop these skills, people need to look within and bring more of themselves to the surface in their interactions with others. In peer coaching sessions, that’s exactly what they do.”
The good news is, experience shows that the more employees engage in peer coaching over time, the more they grow and adapt to change.
In conclusion, flexibility will continue to be critical for organizations and employees. Proactive steps to grow corporate flexibility include interviewing processes that help identify flexible new hires, as well as cultural adjustments that teach basic coaching skills to all employees.
Both of these initiatives can grow organizational flexibility as they identify and improve capacities to adapt.