Are your Development Centres demotivating talented people?

Posted by Anne Hamill

Often organisations want objective benchmarking of people who managers rate as having high potential. A common ‘gateway’ to the high potential pool is by using a Development Centre to identify the best 2-3% of talent for fast tracking. But there is a risk – the risk of demotivating 50% of your potential high fliers – those who DON’T get tagged as high potentials.

Why might DCs demotivate many of the people who attend them?


• Assessing at first attempt. The tasks on a DC are usually ‘stretch tasks’, designed to assess potential for future performance. This means that you are often assessing people on their first attempt at an unknown task. To avoid the ‘grapevine effect’ (where later participants perform better than early participants due to word of mouth knowledge of the exercises), there is often little information about what the day contains. This means that DCs can discriminate in favour of quick-thinking ‘hares’ who react well when thrown in at the deep end. Those people who excel in the workplace by virtue of their concentrated effort and focus, simply don’t have the time during a DC for the discretionary effort that makes them outstanding. Is it really fair to assess long term potential for leadership based on how someone performs on the first occasion where they have to address a performance issue, for example? The best leaders may not have done well at their first attempt, but they are committed to a lifetime of learning and improvement. Does your DC allow people to demonstrate their ability to prepare well? Does it measure the ability to analyse and reflect on mistakes, and to improve quickly? Arguably, the ability to learn is one of the two most critical aspects of high potential in the 21st century. To measure this, you need to design a DC which involves a period of learning. This can take place before the DC, or after it. The key point is that it is the performance after learning that is assessed.
  
  
• DCs rarely measure true drive. Another crucial element of high potential, found in pretty much anyone who progresses to major responsibilities, is the sheer amount of focused energy they can muster, to make important things happen despite the pressure of a busy daily workload. You can’t assess this kind of drive in a single day. In addition, the design of a DC, where every exercise is neatly divided into its own allocated timeslot for focus, can actually remove drive in the face of competing priorities, as a factor that impacts on success! Most people can show drive for a single day of activities. Do you have an element of assessment that assesses the ability to deliver over months, when there are competing priorities?
  
  
• Competition – Does your DC generate competition? Even when people are told that they are not competing for a position, the atmosphere at DC is much more likely to be competitive than collaborative. Competition increases where participants don’t know each other well, where there is little information, where they are being observed by assessors, and when there is a win/lose component (like the entry to a talent pool!). The 50% not selected may feel bruised and angry – and yet according to their managers, these are some of your most talented people! Does your DC help people to bond as a cohort, and reward people who help others to improve?
  
  
• DCs favour extraverts who develop their thinking in conversation. Yet introverts are a substantial part of our talent pool. Introverts need time to reflect to give their best performance – they prefer to think out their views, and then express them. DCs often disrupt introverts’ natural quiet thinking process, as they have to concentrate to work out their views while confident extraverts are giving voice to a range of half-developed ideas in discussion. In addition, introverts in a group discussion may see 4 competing extraverts hammering out a strategy; they may feel that their best contribution lies in coordinating the discussion or summarising rather than pushing yet another set of views. Does your DC provide thinking time for introverts prior to discussion? Does it look at the ideas produced under ideal introvert conditions – quiet time to think – as well as under ideal extravert conditions – lively debate?
  
  
• Development is planned, but often doesn’t happen. The DC should motivate people to engage in development based on the feedback – but it often doesn’t. Due to pressure of work, reports from the DC may be delayed by several weeks. There is often no urgent commitment that drives the development plans, once the DC is over, and decisions have been made. Does every participant actively drive development after your DC? Does everyone who makes it into your high potential pool show equal commitment?

T&P has been experimenting with various ways to create truly 21st century Development Centres. Some ideas are simple – asking everyone to record their thinking on a topic, prior to a group discussion. This allows introverts as well as extraverts to work at their best. Some ideas are revolutionary – like equipping cohorts of high potentials to collaborate in workplace learning prior to assessment – with the aim that everyone aces the DC.

Are you up for the challenge of rethinking conventional Development Centre practice to make the experience motivational for ALL your talented people?

Like this article? Read The Hare and the Tortoise to review some of our ideas.