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VUCA, a military term used to describe the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous nature of war has for several years now, been applied to business realities in the corporate world. The uncertainties that the Covid-19 pandemic has fuelled are sufficient to make even those who were previously in denial, finally admit that special abilities are needed to weather this storm and to survive and thrive beyond it.

This is why we, at PeopleSearch, have always advocated a nuanced approach to layoffs and hiring during a crisis.

Many companies that have no choice but to cut jobs primarily use an individual’s salary and job function as determinants. However, as several experts have pointed out over the years, you should focus instead on identifying and keeping individuals with the right traits to thrive in a VUCA environment, regardless of their current job roles. These individuals would have the ability to adapt, learn and bring value to other roles that might not even exist yet. Their contributions to your business recovery and growth could far surpass that of others with a certain required skillset, but who are unwilling to learn new things.

The same goes for hiring during a crisis. While most shy away from this, many have shown that strategic hiring of individuals with the capabilities to help your business through the crisis, and into recovery and future growth would actually serve you better than keeping your workforce stagnant. The status quo could result in your having to constantly put out fires rather than focus on recovery and growth.

So what are the right traits and how do you identify them in the people working for you now and in new hires?

BEYOND COMPETENCIES. IT’S ABOUT POTENTIAL

In order to retain and hire the right individuals, you have to go beyond CVs and competencies.

In an article on 21^st Century talent spotting, Claudio Fernandez-Araoz, an executive fellow at Harvard Business School and author of It’s Not the How or the What, but the Who, wrote that when he joined the executive search profession in the 1980s, it was perhaps apt to focus on competencies.

 “The time was right for such thinking, because technological evolution and industry convergence had made jobs much more complex, often rendering experience and performance in previous positions irrelevant. So, instead, we decomposed jobs into competencies and looked for candidates with the right combination of them. For leadership roles, we also began to rely on research showing that emotional intelligence was even more important than IQ.”

However, he points out that today, “competency-based appraisals and appointments are increasingly insufficient.”

Indeed, the skills that help you succeed in a particular role today, may become irrelevant “if the competitive environment shifts or the company’s strategy changes.”

Fernandez-Araoz puts it simply:  “The question is not whether your company’s employees and leaders have the right skills; it’s whether they have the potential to learn new ones.”

Many business and leadership experts agree that the focus must shift from competency to potential.

HOW TO DISCERN

But how can you successfully discern potential?

Researchers admit this is much more challenging than assessing individuals for competence.

The first step is to identify “qualities that are hallmarks of potential”, according to Fernandez-Araoz.

He states five key qualities as follows:

Motivation: a fierce commitment to excel in the pursuit of unselfish goals. High potentials have great ambition and want to leave their mark, but they also aspire to big, collective goals, show deep personal humility, and invest in getting better at everything they do. We consider motivation first because it is a stable—and usually unconscious—quality. If someone is driven purely by selfish motives, that probably won’t change.

Curiosity: a penchant for seeking out new experiences, knowledge, and candid feedback and an openness to learning and change

Insight: the ability to gather and make sense of information that suggests new possibilities

Engagement: a knack for using emotion and logic to communicate a persuasive vision and connect with people

Determination: the wherewithal to fight for difficult goals despite challenges and to bounce back from adversity

The next logical step is to be able to assess whether an individual possesses these qualities.

Fernandez-Araoz recommends “mining his or her personal and professional history.”

You can do this through in-depth interviews or career discussions, and rigorous reference checks “to uncover stories that demonstrate whether the person has (or lacks) these qualities.”

For example, to discern curiosity, he recommends looking for signals that the individual genuinely enjoys learning new things and pursues opportunities for self-improvement.

The person should also be able to “recalibrate after missteps.”

He suggests asking the following questions:

• How do you react when someone challenges you?

• How do you invite input from others on your team?

• What do you do to broaden your thinking, experience, or personal development?

• How do you foster learning in your organization?

• What steps do you take to seek out the unknown?

The key is to always ask for examples and details.

Founder of Staffing Advisors, a Washington DC-based executive search firm, Bob Corlett suggests the following to identify people who are comfortable with and can handle ambiguity:

• During your interview sequence, ask a few deliberately ambiguous questions,  and see if they clarify your question, or just blunder into their answer.  Someone comfortable with ambiguity will be able to recognise it, and also be curious enough to clarify your question before answering it.

• Make some aspect of your work sample testing deliberately ambiguous. Again, you are looking for where they recognize and question their own assumptions.

• Finally, look for a pattern of resilience in their background – of taking calculated risks and then taking responsibility for their results.  Some people can’t admit failure (or learn from it) and if you can’t risk failure, you can’t embrace the unknown.

While experts offer multiple techniques to identify the right employees to future-proof your organisation, most agree that for such employees to succeed, those in the highest ranks of leadership need to adapt as well, and learn to nurture such talent.

The current crisis should lend momentum to a paradigm shift in this arena.