To meet today’s challenges, companies world-wide are searching for ways to do more with less. While many strategies offer streamlined processes and ways to add value, the biggest opportunities to meet this challenge lie within the talent themselves and are critical to future success:

• Finding the right talent
• Retaining your top performers
• Ensuring your best employees have the opportunity to thrive

Managing talent can be tough, but it doesn’t have to be. The key is to understand the current needs of the organization and what each unique individual brings to the job to help you make tough talent decisions.

While education, experience and intelligence are important, you simply cannot uncover the true picture of human talent without conducting a total person analysis that includes an assessment of behaviors, values and personal skills. Together, these areas present a more in-depth approach to truly understanding an individual’s unique characteristics and how they apply to performance on the job.

In particular, a behavioral assessment will reveal HOW someone will behave through their natural style in dealing with four different areas: problems, people, pace and procedure. With a better understanding and appreciation for people with different behavioral styles, communication can be enhanced, conflict can be reduced and a better job fit can be made. With an assessment of motivators, you can reveal WHY people act, or what drives a person to take action. People can be managed more effectively in an environment where their motivators are naturally satisfied. Finally, an assessment of an individual’s personal skills will allow you to determine WHAT specific talents your employee will naturally excel in and can ensure you are leveraging the skills they bring to the table. Different than hard skills, such as engineering techniques or medical procedures, personal skills are more intangible, such as teamwork, personal accountability and self management.

Together, this total person analysis will give you a more complete picture of personal talent so you can make tough decisions with support, rather than relying on education, experience and intelligence alone. How would a total person analysis benefit your talent management initiatives in hiring, leadership development, succession planning or team building? You'll never know until you try it.