![\"Assessment](\"https:\/\/accruemarketing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/assessment_inventories.jpg\")
<\/div>\nFor Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners<\/h2>\n
When you don\u2019t have a business coach guiding your development, consider using assessment inventories until you do. Use inventories to highlight your strengths and create awareness of potential blind spots.<\/p>\n If your definition of marketing is completing a bunch of random promotional tactics, then nothing at all. However, if you define marketing as a leadership role tasked with directing business development efforts, then these skills are essential.<\/p>\n Marketing is, first and foremost, a leadership opportunity to step into and take on. Why? Because the first thing that marketing asks of you are strategic questions about your purpose. Then it asks you to live into your purpose and to get your team to do so as well.<\/p>\n Marketing is centered around leadership. It\u2019s damn near impossible to market effectively without knowing where you\u2019re going.<\/p>\n As a business owner, you need to become the visionary leader who attracts, enrolls, and engages people. You need to develop your people and processes, to create a brand experience for clients. You also need to communicate effectively to partners, investors, and clients to get them to buy into your mission.<\/p>\n This work is rooted in leadership development.<\/p>\n How many business owners have all their business leadership stuff figured out, before they engage a marketing company? I can tell you from experience, not many.<\/p>\n How do you market a company when almost none of the core leadership work is understood or written down? Without leadership, where does your marketing messaging and compelling story come from?<\/p>\n In the absence of leadership, there is no messaging. You end up spewing a bunch of lame information about who you are and what you do and more blah blah noise that no one cares about. Your marketing will suck, and that is a failure of leadership.<\/p>\n The solution depends on your budget. If you\u2019re well-financed, you engage a coach, consultant and marketing team to work with you.\u00a0Often, budgets dictate that you must define your mission on your own, while you build up your cash reserves.<\/p>\n One of the primary jobs of any coach is to offer meaningful feedback and direction. Coaches point out what you can\u2019t see for yourself. This feedback helps guide and direct your efforts and expedites your progress.<\/p>\n But what if you can\u2019t afford a coach? You must look for other ways to help you see the unseen. Personality Inventory Assessment tools are an effective way to discover your blind spots and point out opportunities for growth and leadership development.<\/p>\n They are instruments designed to profile you and illuminate different things about you. They help you define your values and traits. They highlight how you think, behave, make decisions, and communicate.<\/p>\n They are tools to help you see what everyone else sees but do not share with you. These tremendously useful assessment tools are time, energy, money and relationship savers for entrepreneurs and executives. However, you need to know they exist before you can use and benefit from them.\u00a0Usually, your coach points them out, but if you don\u2019t have a coach, you\u2019ll need to discover the tools on your own.<\/p>\n They\u2019re meant to help you and your team better understand yourselves, each other, and your clients. They provide the insight you would otherwise not see. Why? Because you\u2019re too close to the subject matter to be objective.<\/p>\n There is an old saying that \u201cyou can\u2019t see the outside of the box, from inside the box\u201d.<\/p>\n Assessment inventories are like a big convex mirror mounted on a pole to help you see yourself from another perspective. Like a big leadership selfie stick.<\/p>\n You can use them for your own personal and leadership development. You can use them to help you with job definition, screening employees or developing people to succeed in their roles. You can use them to structure teams or help people understand each other and communicate with greater empathy for how clients think.<\/p>\n My awareness and appreciation for inventory assessments came from a combination of many university Psychology classes, my interest in psychometrics, my experience with business coaches, and through my personal development efforts over the last 30+ years.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, these tools are scattered far and wide making it unlikely you will discover them on your own. Even if you work with several different coaches, you may still not learn about many of them.<\/p>\n If you complete these assessments on your own, you\u2019ll start to realize why you and your team are struggling unnecessarily. You\u2019ll appreciate where you\u2019re putting your business at risk and where to focus your efforts.<\/p>\n One of the most important things to note about assessment tools is that they are not tests. They don\u2019t measure right or wrong. They seek to place you on different scales or continuums to help you understand your tendencies, blind spots and where to focus your efforts.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve found the following assessment categories to be the most useful in my growth and development.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, I\u2019m not aware of an online inventory for discovering your core values. There are many different approaches but defining your core values boils down to understanding your \u201cWhy?\u201d.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not about selecting a bunch of feel-good words. The exercise is about defining what\u2019s non-negotiable for you. Where are the lines in the sand, you will not cross?<\/p>\n In defining your core values, you generally start by creating a list of words from a brainstorming session. The terms are characteristics you admire in others, like integrity or creativity.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve developed your list, you refine the list down to a shortlist of keepers. The goal is to eliminate words with an overlapping meaning until you refuse to eliminate further. Try to get your list down to four powerful terms of significance to you and your team.<\/p>\n If you refuse to let a word go, you\u2019ll want to explore why it\u2019s so important to you. Once you have your core values identified, you\u2019ve created a cultural foundation to build upon.<\/p>\n I know I\u2019m grossly oversimplifying the process, but you don\u2019t need to overcomplicate this either. When I lead people through this process, it rarely takes more than an hour or two.<\/p>\n I know when my coach helped me define my core values in 2002, it sparked a renaissance of learning for me. It helped me focus my efforts on what I valued most and how I wanted to create value in my life and career.<\/p>\n I built Accrue on those core values, and they\u2019ve served as my personal and business compass ever since. Give it a try on your own as a starting point.<\/p>\n There is a little one-chapter book called Clifton StrengthsFinder 2.0.<\/a> The book comes with an access code, that allows you to take the Clifton StrengthsFinder Assessment. The simplified results highlight your top strengths out of 34. Then you can pay a bit more, to access the rest of your strengths profile.<\/p>\n The premise is, we often place more value on the things that do not come naturally to us. Rather than identifying our strengths and building on them, we do the opposite. We work like crazy to turn our weaknesses into strengths. The book recommends building upon your inherent strengths.<\/p>\n This idea hit me like a ton of bricks. I could see I was working hard to become someone I was not.<\/p>\n Once I recognized my strengths and what I was doing, I aligned my career and my education to build upon my strengths. You might call it maximizing the potential of your inherent gift. I\u2019ve encouraged my children to do the same, and it\u2019s been gratifying to watch them grow into themselves.<\/p>\n To get started, read Clifton StrengthsFinder 2.0 and visit their website to learn more. The whole exercise will cost you about $100.<\/p>\n Another inventory that adds to your understanding of who you are and what you are meant to do is the SparkType<\/a>, which you can try for free.<\/p>\n I think the first assessment I ever completed was the Myers Briggs inventory in the late 1980s. It is an extremely common instrument. There is a website called 16Personalities.com<\/a> that offers a derivative assessment for free.<\/p>\n It takes 20 \u2013 30 minutes to complete. It includes a summary report with several pages of insight, with an option to purchase a comprehensive 80 \u2013 90+ page report. The full report goes into great detail on your personality type, and how it shows up in different facets of your life and career.<\/p>\n The reports are excellent. I\u2019ve purchased the full set of reports for my team to use. The reaction most people have when they read their report is \u201cWow! They nailed me.\u201d People generally nod their heads in agreement when they read their colleagues\u2019 summaries as well. It\u2019s enlightening.<\/p>\n What I get, is clarity on why I think and act the way I do. It points out areas where I\u2019m likely to run into trouble and where I need to build up my self-awareness and skills to compensate. It also helps other people in my life understand why I am the way I am. I\u2019m not this way just to be difficult and annoy them (well, sometimes I am).<\/p>\n Bottom line, you get amazing insights on who you are and why, all from a 30-minute assessment and a couple of hours of reading and reflection.<\/p>\n Other well-known and widely used personality assessments include:<\/p>\n These assessments are all useful in their own ways. However, the point is not to become a student of inventory assessments; the point is to get actionable feedback.<\/p>\n Distinct from your personality assessment is what\u2019s called a conative strengths assessment. This translates roughly into your modus operandi, or how you get things done. In a work context, this is extremely useful.<\/p>\n The inventory I\u2019ve used is called the Kolbe Assessment.<\/a> There are several variants, but you start with the Kolbe A Index to gain personal insights.<\/p>\n You are ranked from 1 to 10 on four dimensions. The dimensions are Fact Finder, Follow Through, Quick Start and Implementor. In my experience, the scales are non-linear. I\u2019m not sure if it is logarithmic either, but the degree of difference between any two scores on the same scale are significant.\u00a0From what I\u2019ve seen, you need to be within 3 points on any scale from a direct report or partner to prevent you from wanting to kill each other. If you have exceptional communication skills, you can expand the workability gap past three points.<\/p>\n Once you understand your score and those of your team, you can seek out people to fill in the gaps and compensate for inherent challenges or misalignments in job roles.\u00a0The Kolbe Assessment<\/em> is extremely useful and practical. For information, visit Kolbe.com<\/a> and consider taking the Kolbe A Index.<\/p>\n When I read Emotional Intelligence:<\/a> Why it can matter more than IQ by Daniel Goleman, I had an epiphany. The book points out a whole array of different forms of intelligence that our school system ignores.\u00a0It also highlights research showing emotional intelligence (EI) accounts for more of our success than the traditional forms of intelligence schools focus on.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re a small business owner, looking to develop your leadership competencies, an EI Assessment Tool is particularly relevant and useful.\u00a0I suggest reading the Emotional Intelligence book and then completing one of the assessments here to gauge your strengths and gaps.<\/p>\n When I first became a manager, my coach pointed out my communication shortcomings. He suggested I read L.E.T. Leadership Effectiveness Training<\/a> by Thomas Gordon for a glimpse into where I was off-track.\u00a0He did not tell me my communication train was entirely off the rails, but that is how I felt after I read the book.<\/p>\n Once you read L.E.T., you\u2019re likely to have an \u201cAha\u201d or \u201cAh Crap\u201d experience too. Fortunately, the book is excellent, and you\u2019ll see where to focus quickly.\u00a0This is an extremely high-leverage opportunity. Don\u2019t skip this one. You may want to consider taking a course or engaging a coach<\/a> to help you master your active communication skills.\u00a0This book and the subsequent learning helped me more than almost anything else I\u2019ve learned.<\/p>\n Another brilliant assessment tool is the Leadership Circle Profile. It is available as an online assessment as well. It evaluates your leadership practices in 29 dimensions. These dimensions are segmented into 8 groups in 4 broader categories, with each scored on a percentage basis. The assessment generates a report detailing strengths and opportunities for growth. To learn more or take the assessment visit their website here<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n I can\u2019t do justice to the utility of this profile in this article. What I like are the 29 scales. I can see very quickly where I\u2019m struggling and where I need to focus.<\/p>\n Complete these inventory assessments. You can buy all the books, complete the assessments, and get the detailed reports, for about $500. You would be hard-pressed to engage any business coach for that much. There is no value comparison, as long as you do the work.<\/p>\n What you\u2019ll get is invaluable insights and direction on yourself and your leadership.\u00a0You\u2019ll likely feel completely overwhelmed and possibly discouraged. I know I was. It\u2019s not easy to stare at all your opportunities for improvement and not get discouraged.\u00a0However, once you get over the shock, you\u2019ll find the solutions are rooted in a relatively small set of overlapping and complementary skills. Some people like to read; some prefer structured learning, while others prefer a more experiential approach. It does not matter where or how you start learning about personal and leadership development. What matters is that you start.\u00a0If you don\u2019t, you\u2019ll struggle unnecessarily as a business owner.<\/p>\n These skills are essential to so many different aspects of your business, but especially to your management, sales, marketing, customer service practices and your productivity, relationships, and happiness.\u00a0Don\u2019t wait until you can afford a business coach before you dig into and take this work on.\u00a0It\u2019s far more valuable than you may think and if you\u2019re disciplined about it, you can make a lot of progress on your own, before you engage professional help.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll find sales and marketing will be far less confounding once you\u2019ve started down your leadership development path. Both are built on your leadership and communication foundation. Once you\u2019re clear on your direction and comfortable with the skills, you\u2019ll find sales and marketing will make infinitely more sense. Then you\u2019ll be better prepared to direct and leverage your sales and marketing investments.<\/p>\n![\"Print](\"https:\/\/accruemarketing.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-print\/images\/printer_famfamfam.gif\" "\\"Print")
<\/a>\u00a0Print This Post<\/a><\/p>\n<\/header>\nWhat Does This Have to Do with Marketing?<\/h3>\n
How is Marketing a Leadership Role?<\/h3>\n
Strategic Questions Asked by Marketing<\/h3>\n
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Marketing as a Leadership Role<\/h3>\n
Here\u2019s The Problem<\/h3>\n
How To Address The Gap<\/h3>\n
The Inventory Assessment Segue<\/h3>\n
What Are Inventory Assessment Tools?<\/h3>\n
What Are Inventory Assessment Tools For?<\/h3>\n
Why Share This Information?<\/h3>\n
Assessment Categories<\/h3>\n
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Defining Core Values<\/h3>\n
Defining Natural Strengths<\/h3>\n
Categorizing Personality Traits<\/h3>\n
Identifying Your Modus Operandi<\/h3>\n
Gauging Emotional Intelligence<\/h3>\n
Gauging Communication Effectiveness<\/h3>\n
360 Degree Leadership Assessments<\/h3>\n
Where to From Here?<\/h3>\n
Once you\u2019ve gained the insights, you can continue reading and working on the skills development on your own, or you can engage a coach and trainers to help you address your gaps.<\/p>\nEveryone Learns Differently<\/h3>\n
Back to Sales and Marketing<\/h3>\n
Where to Start<\/h3>\n