Are you the type of person who loves to take personality tests? Maybe you seek out the latest, buzzworthy personality tests to learn more about yourself, compare your results with friends or coworkers, or maybe — just for the fun of it. Personality tests can help show you a lot about how you tick: your beliefs, values, strengths, and weaknesses.
When it comes to your dental practice work environment, I believe that gaining a better understanding of the personalities of your team, how they work together, how they complement each other, and even what personalities you may be lacking, can put yourself in control of crafting your ideal work environment through informed, empowered hiring. That’s why I make it a point to always include a tool called the Predictive Index (PI) in my practice management coaching process. What’s PI, and why is it an essential part of my process? Read on to find out.
How the Predictive Index Works
The PI is not a new idea: it’s been in practice for over 60 years, helping corporations and small businesses around the world understand how their employees work together based on their personality types. It’s also a critical tool in designing a more strategic hiring process.
The PI uses a very simple, straightforward test (called a Behavioral Assessment) that asks test-takers to select words that describe the way they believe they are perceived. On the second list, test-takers must select those adjectives that they believe accurately describe them (according to their own beliefs). The test is untimed and consists of just two questions. It’s easy to administer, the results are easy to understand, and the pay-off for understanding how your organization ticks is most definitely worth it.
The Behavioral Assessment measures four areas of each test-takers personality:
- Dominance, or their need to influence people and things around them.
- Extraversion, or their desire for social interactions.
- Patience, or their need for stability and calm.
- Formality, or their comfort and need to follow rules and precedents.
These four areas —or drivers—are then assessed in regards to the adjectives each test-taker selected. Based on how each employee thinks others perceive them, as well as how they perceive themselves, the PI can understand their unique relationship to each of these four drivers.
The Results
People fall into one of 17 different profiles, including “Strategist”, “Adaptor”, “Scholar”, and “Craftsman”, just to name a few. These labels help to show the person’s strengths, desires, motivations, and fears, helping you to understand why they work the way they do. As part of my practice management coaching, I help managers translate the Behavioral Assessment findings, and construct a better understanding of their team’s unique dynamic, and how to utilize each member’s strengths – as well as help build upon their weaknesses.
Once you understand your current team’s personalities, and what unique skills and insight they can contribute to your practice, you can then understand the type of people you need to hire to design your “dream” team. Hiring can’t begin until you have a clear understanding of which prospective candidates will be most effective and satisfied in your open position. Hiring is something that doesn’t come easily to many managers; it’s an extremely difficult task, but one that is vitally important. I can help provide insight during this process to improve your chances of finding the right person to build up your dream team, as well as be there to supplement the new hire training process. While hiring the right person is essential, bringing them on board and giving them clear expectations and goals from the very beginning is just as important.
I’ve seen incredible results with implementing PI in my own case studies, and statistics from the PI website report that:
98% of users feel PI enhances their hiring process, 70% of respondents say PI helps to remove bias and subjectivity from their hiring process, and 67% of respondents say PI has helped them recognize stronger employee engagement throughout their organization.
I know as a manager and former dental practice administrator that stepping back and seeing the big picture of what is motivating your employees can be difficult. That’s why I build PI into my process — to give administrators the information they need in a succinct, efficient way. I’ve been helping administrators analyze PI results for years, and can offer experience to help coach them through the results, as well as the dream team design process to improve the future of their practice. I believe you can’t start working towards solutions until you fully understand your current problems; that’s where PI comes in handy, and why I recommend every manager use this proven, eye-opening tool.
To learn more about this incredible hiring and leadership tool, visit the Predictive Index website. And for more information on Prosperity Dental Solutions, and how you can begin growing your own dream team, contact me at 817-975-4576, or contact me online.
