Ever wish you could clone your best and brightest? Until we figure out those messy scientific, legal and ethical issues, it’s probably best to use human capital intelligence instead.

Savvy HR leaders already know that the key to making better talent decisions involves having a thorough understanding of what makes their high performers so successful. While organizations are becoming better at capturing the performance metrics through performance evaluation that speak to results achieved, there are still many questions about which types of data to collect, how to analyze the data, as well as how to most fully utilize the information to make talent decisions.  Workforce analytics is still a mystery.

As HR leaders, you should absolutely ensure that 360 degree feedback is included as part of this comprehensive performance data. Without 360 degree feedback, your data really only gives you a sense for WHAT has been achieved -- not HOW it is being accomplished or the impact of these behaviors is on others within the organization. Further, 360 degree feedback data is widely considered to be the most comprehensive and accurate picture of performance due to multiple perspectives/sources.

Once you have a complete collection of performance metrics, you can review which competencies/behaviors are driving top performance and which are contributing to leadership problems/issues. Your results will provide clear evidence for the specific competencies/behaviors that should be selected for, rewarded and developed within your talent pool. This Success Profile, as it is often referred to, will offer the organization a consistent method for achieving high performance.

viaPeople has recently worked with a large sales and customer service organization to help define a Talent Success Profile – that is, a model of the specific leadership behaviors and principles that define successful leaders within the organization. In this particular organization, leaders have several years of overall average performance ratings, quantitative sales and service metrics, as well as manager ratings on organizational competencies.

viaPeople consultants linked this performance data with 360 degree feedback data and examined the distribution of overall performance over a three year period. The data resulted in a clear picture of the top and bottom performers, as well as the competencies that defined their relative success or difficulties. The organization now has a formal success profile describing what it takes to achieve strong leadership performance, as well as a guide to developing behaviors in the most critical leadership areas.

For more on this, download our free white paper The Leadership Mystery: Defining Leadership Success through Competency Modeling and Workforce Analytics.

Click to learn more about the viaPeople 360-degree feedback solution.