This article will provide a step-by-step guide on how to identify the winning behavioral traits and working styles of your highest performers using the Team Analytics feature.
Step 1: Focus your insights to a specific group
Goal: Narrow down your analysis for more precise results.
Apply Filters on either Department, Group, Org Leaders, Job Levels, Job Families, and/or Career Tracks. These fields will be in sync with what you have uploaded or connected via HRIS.
You can apply as many filters as you would like; however, we recommend limiting filters such that your end population has at least 25 employees within it for the most statistically meaningful results.
If you would like to see broad Winning Traits and Working Styles across your entire organization, ignore these filters altogether.
Step 2: Choose the Right Outcome Metric
Goal: Define the appropriate outcome metric to drive your insights.
Before diving into data, clarify your analysis goals. Are you looking for current trends or historical performance? Are you looking to optimize on performance review data or operational metrics like quota attainment?
Based on your objective, make a choice between "Searchlight Formula" or any custom metric you have uploaded e.g., "2023 Performance Review" or "Q4 2022 Quota Attainment" you can upload.
We enabled you to have this flexibility so you are equipped to have data-driven conversations for functional leaders across the company. Often times, we have found Revenue leaders respond more favorably to operational metrics like Quota Attainment over standard metrics like performance ratings.
Step 3: Compare Groups by Performance Percentiles
Goal: Understand how behaviors vary by defining your high performance group.
Choose to analyze either the "Top 20th", "Top 50th", or any other 10th percentile of performers. This comparison provides context to performance distribution.
If in Step 2, you selected an outcome metric like "Quota Attainment" what this will do is separate your data between the Top 20th percentile Quota Attainment earners and the remaining 80th percentile.
Step 4: Identifying Winning Behavioral Traits for Performance
Goal: Spot behavioral traits that drive success.
Proceed to the "Winning Traits" section within the analytics interface.
Here, focus on identifying traits that have a high frequency of occurrence among top performers and are correlated with strong overall performance.
By default, we will select the highest Importance behavioral traits. However, you can deep-dive by selecting the "Details" button for an expanded view.
Advanced Deep Dive on Winning Traits
We conduct this analysis by looking at four primary metrics: (i) Importance, (ii) Density Ratio, (iii) Top percentile density, and (iv) Total density:
Importance is Searchlight's interpretation of how these traits influence your team.
Superpowers are traits that majority of your top performers possess.
Differentiators are traits that set your top performers apart from the rest.
Baseline traits are traits that both top and average performers possess.
Non-determinate traits are not linked to success, or aren't detected, in your team.
The density ratio is the ratio of top-performing group’s trait density to that of the lower-performing group. The large the ratio, the bigger the gap, the greater the opportunity for performance lift. This is the trait density for the top performance cohort you selected.
Top percentile density and Total density
Top percentile density measures how intensely certain traits are unique to your top performers.
Trait density is how commonly a trait is observed within one of your performance cohorts. Total trait density refers to how strongly this trait is observed among the entire team, on a scale of 0-100% The higher the value, the more common it is.
Step 5: Understanding Distinct Working Styles
Goal: Complement behavioral traits with the winning working styles among high performers.
Transition to the "Working Styles" insights to explore high performers' working styles.
Across each of the six Working Styles traits, a black-filled circle indicates where Top Performers are relative to a white-filled circle indicating where the Remaining performers are. When a circle is half black and half white, it indicates a Working Style trait in which there is no difference in Working Styles.
Step 6: Applying Insights to Role-Specific Evaluation
Goal: Apply these these insights for your highest priority jobs.
Take the insights you've gathered and apply them to a specific role within your organization, such as a Sales Manager, by first "Capture Behavioral Model Snapshot"
Then, verify whether the identified Winning Traits and Winning Work Styles align with the desired traits and requirements of the role. This profile will have the exact same data insights from the Team Analytics page and retain all metadata (e.g., filters, performance groups, etc.)
When ready, "Apply to a Job"
By methodically following these steps, you're equipping yourself with the tools to uncover the qualities that drive success in your organization. This data-driven approach ensures that your talent acquisition strategy is finely tuned, leading you to candidates who most resemble the Behavioral Traits and Working Styles of your top performers.