Ask Dr. Janice

Organizations of every size and description experience the cost and pain of bad hires and human performance failings. Online employee assessment tools promise to reduce the pain while improving performance, by improving ‘quality of hire.’  Nearly $2 billion per year is spent on such tools, but the chronic issues remain.

The most commonly used assessments have been around for decades, and they produce consistent measurements. But if the information is not having consistent and positive impact on the problems, then perhaps they are just not the right tools for the job.

Imagine for a moment that you are facing an important hiring decision. You might envision yourself a senior executive in a company facing stiff competition, or a middle manager in a high-pressure, fast-growing business, or a small business owner who can’t afford to make a hiring mistake.
You have three ‘finalists’. You have resumes and references. You have some employee assessment reports that describe each person from every angle: IQ, ratio of emotion to intellect, problem-solving skills, and stress response. And yet, you still feel unsure.

Situations like this play out thousands of times every day, around the world. Why? Because hiring has always been focused on experience, intelligence, and a range of other individual characteristics. But the usual documents and measurements, no matter how detailed, don’t necessarily give reliable guidance on the key points that every manager is dying to know: Which of these people will work best on my team? What are their ‘teaming characteristics?’

So now imagine what would happen in your organization if there was a way to feel sure—beyond a doubt—which candidate really is the right fit, in any job, for every new hire. And what if this ‘new way to know’ was a simple, low-cost, user-friendly online source of hiring and managing advice that both candidate and manager could immediately understand, accept, and constructively apply?

What is Role-Based Assessment?

Building on a 35-year foundation of research by Dr. Janice Presser and Dr. Jack Gerber, the Gabriel Institute has created, validated, and perfected technology that identifies and measures ten specific ‘Role-types’ or styles of group interaction. This technology—Role-Based Assessment (RBA)—incorporates a range of predictable group performance variables:

• Role-fit (the right people for the type of position in an organization or team)
• Job-fit (the right people performing the right tasks)
• Role pairing (known, replicable synergies between Role types)
• Coherence (expressed as positive, constructive, flexible teaming behaviors)

Putting a person with high Coherence in a position that fits their Role is a recipe for individual success. Building teams of highly Coherent people with the right mix of Roles for that team’s goals and objectives is the recipe for Coherent Human Infrastructure – a state of productive synergy that adds bottom-line value to any organization. And RBA can also predict potential dysfunctional behaviors in group activity, thereby providing safeguards against failure.

Using Role-Based Assessment

Perhaps the most notable, and certainly one of the most valuable, features of RBA is the straightforward quality of the reports. Other assessments produce page after page of data and snippets of information on discrete slices of a personality. Some assign letter codes, colors or metaphors from the animal kingdom. Virtually all require the user to correlate, calibrate, and infer how a given person will perform.

Knowing that a potential hire or co-worker is an ‘ENTJ’, a ‘Blue’, or a ‘Hawk’ is simply not as informative, nor as immediately useful, as knowing the person is a Vision Former, a Communicator, or an Explorer. When delving into an RBA Management Report, the ‘connection’ to Role-type brings the detailed information into sharp focus—and into the context of working relationships and job responsibilities.

Each Role-Based Assessment is available in two forms: a constructive and supportive Self-Directed (SD-1) report for the individual, and a Management-Directed (MD-1) report that covers the full spectrum of teaming characteristics, including management advisories and areas of concern.

Optimizing Team Performance

TGI has categorized and demonstrated the efficacy of Role Ratios™ as they exist in organizations. Role Ratios integrate qualitative and quantitative measures for evaluating and strengthening an organization’s human infrastructure. TGI calls these Coherent Human Infrastructure measures the CHI Indicators™ (pronounced ‘\’key’ or ‘chee’ as in ‘life-force’). CHI Indicators are the basis for TGI’s innovative, high-value management consulting services—solutions that can truly transform the way people work together.

The core RBA solution—Tools4Recruiting™—is stable and is proven to work as promised. TGI has reference-able customers, and is being featured in national HR forums, webinars, and publications. We also offer assessments and supporting advisory services for Teambuilding, Networking, and Entrepreneurship.

The Gabriel Institute is dedicated to helping organizations—large and small—improve quality and productivity, while securing a higher return on their investment in people. Each time we succeed in delivering financial and organizational performance benefits to our customers, we fulfill our mission of ‘making the workplace a better place to work’.