Sean Davis

A peer recently asked me to sum up how I was able to assess people quickly to know who the top performers were and what challenges I would have with other personalities and levels of performance. There are three core traits that I use to evaluate performance in an organization vs. labeling via A, B, or C player. Labeling people unnecessarily breeds contention. It’s better to analyze core behavior and draw conclusions based on factual data. So here is a short description of how I currently assess behavior and performance.

I start with my three core categories:

IQ – Intelligence Quotient – How capable are they at their job role within the organization?

EQ – Emotional Quotient – How emotionally aware are they and how do they interact with others?

MQ – Motivational Quotient – How do they operate and propagate motivation and vision within the organization?

Next I, assess how strong they are in each of these categories and use the key below to decipher their behaviors, allowing me to understand their performance level, strengths, areas for improvement and draw a baseline in which to start:

High In IQ – Technically proficient in their role but doesn’t work well with others and doesn’t understand how their work contributes to the bigger picture. Generally only motivated by selfish needs. Often considers themselves “the smartest person in the room”.

High In EQ – Intuitive and works well with others but may be tactically deficient in core competencies and unable to understand how to make a meaningful contribution, usually viewed as people-pleaser’s who “don’t do anything”.

High In MQ – Fast talkers, they understand what needs to be done but lack the aptitude and ability to work with others to accomplish a goal due to focus on self promotion of themselves or their personal agenda. They don’t deliver on what they say they will, often promise work on behalf of others.

High In IQ & EQ – Hard workers and empathetic to team members and others they work with directly or indirectly, but have challenges around completing work if it isn’t prescriptive with step by step instructions.

High In IQ & MQ – Heroes and Lone wolves only need apply here, these are highly capable individuals who know how to get the job done and how it may align to the business and its importance but at the expense of stealing the spotlight or credit from others.

High In EQ & MQ – The most typical management persona, they understand the business, their needs and know how to get their team to rally, but lack the capability to actually execute in an effective manner.

High In  IQ, EQ, and MQ – Top performers, these are the individuals that the organization strives to hire and the person everyone wants to be. They understand what the business wants, how to delegate and deliver and most importantly propagate these characteristics to those they come in contact with.

Note: I am unable to display details around the assessments conducted due to internal requests and corporate IP. I know this significantly impacts the viability and availability of concrete data that correlates to the outcomes, so take the information provided with your respective grain of salt.

Parting Advice
I’ll leave you with some advice with a short anecdote. Once upon a time, long, long ago, I took a DISC assessment and like most others I was very focused on trying to understand how others saw me as my “letter(s)” but I learned over time that instead of focusing on trying to get others to understand my “letter(s)”; I focused on if I could train myself in the personalities of all of the other “letter(s)” and I eventually would learn to flex to that communication style making me stronger in others “letter(s)” as my “letter(s)” were already innate. This helped me hone a skill a few years later that would eventually be classified as EQ.