Balanced Versatility
People who are strong in both traits are versatile and can exhibit either behavior as appropriate to the situation. Such people rarely exhibit the other 3 traits even under stress.
Aggressive Imbalance
People who are strong in the dynamic trait which is represented on the Y-axis tend to exhibit aggressive behavior. Such aggressive behavior often masks an underlying vulnerability. For example, bluntness is often used as a means of evading or deflecting attention from oneself when one feels vulnerable.
Passive imbalance
People who score low on dynamic trait but high on the trait along X-axis fall under passive imbalance. Such passive behavior could be an area to explore with the individual to identity improvement areas.
Balanced Deficiency
People who score low on the dynamic trait and the passive traits could be probed to check whether they are in the right jobs which are in line with their life themes. Executive coaches could also probe on how these counter – productive behaviors are coming in the way of performance
12 Paradox Pairs
Harrison Paradox assessment includes an analysis of 12 main paradoxes, which are
These 12 paradoxes result in 12 ideal paradoxical behavioral competencies as follows
Be confident and clear about ideas while openly considering all issues.
Respect oneself while striving to improve
Be straightforward and direct while being respectful of others.
Express your needs while being helpful and conscious of others needs.
Be highly self-motivated while managing stress and respecting others.
Be persistent in overcoming obstacles and trying new things.
Be logical while at the same time value intuition.
Be organized while at the same time adapt to changes.
Be willing to take risks and carefully analyse the risks for pitfalls
Enforce rules and guide performance while maintaining positive relationships.
Be responsible for decisions while collaborating with others.
Maintain a positive attitude while being mindful of potential problems.
Benefits of using the Harrison Assessments
Some Benefits of using Harrison Assessments for coaches are that – they can quickly gain rapport and trust, facilitate core values and easily overcome resistance for development.
Additionally, this also helps the executive to understand their unique strengths & identify key areas for development
Paradox Technology™ analyzes and determines a broad spectrum of potential counter-productive traits without the person having the slightest idea it is happening. This is vitally important since negative traits usually account for 60-75% of the factors that determine job success
Approaches to using Harrison assessments in Executive Coaching
There are different approaches to use Harrison assessments depending on whether the client organization is using Harrison assessments or not.
In these organizations, as part of Harrison assessment implementation, the organization would have
Defined Job Success Factors for all key roles.
Employees who take the assessments get a complete set of 9 developmental reports.
Coaches can use
Job Success Analysis report to understand how well the executive is fitting the current job success factors.
Development for Position report to further explore with the Executive the various opportunities to improve and help them implement a feasible action plan.
“How to manage, develop & Retain” report to identify the essential, important and other factors which the executive needs to focus on to improve his performance.
Paradox graph the coach can go an exploratory conversation with the executive to better understand themself.
Traits and Definition report provides the Coach an insight into the primary work preferences and personality factors which the executive has. This report also shows the Life themes, Strengths and Preferred focus and traits which the executive does not prefer to use.
Organizations which do not use Harrison Assessments
In such situations, the Executive coach can use the Paradox graph and Traits and definitions report only to help the executive. It may not be prudent for the Executive Coach to suggest creating Job Success factors for the role which the executive is playing currently and then go about using all the reports which this step can enable.
Some of the potential challenges could be
Conclusion
Executive coaching in a scenario where many organizations use psychometric assessments, it is advantageous for Executive Coaches to equip themselves with relevant skills to understand and interpret many different kinds of tools. Harrison assessment, being one of the leading workplace Preference inventories addresses the area of Job Success. Executive coaches can build this into their practices and also their Self development plans, depending on the target clients that they work with.
References:
Training material from Harrison Assessments International Limited.
http://www.psychometric-success.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaching#Executive_coaching