Without doubt, thinking styles influence employee performance. In this series of blog posts about the strengths and weaknesses of Intrinsic Thinkers and Extrinsic Thinkers, I have explained how studies of performance appraisal data collected through Talent Chaser have shown that Intrinsic Thinkers are innovative people, but frequently poor listeners and that, as a consequence, they have to be managed carefully if their talents are to be properly utilized.
The link between an employee’s style of thinking and their motivational priorities is that Intrinsic Thinkerslike to innovate, while Extrinsic Thinkers like to listen.
Extrinsic Thinkers typically bring strong collaborative skills that can help an organization tap into the talents of innovative employees and build capacity through improvements to both the bottom line and best practices. By building effective task action planning into regular appraisals, employees can be trained to develop effective interdependent relationships in which problems and opportunities are thoroughly evaluated and handled. Doing this can significantly improve employee turnover rates.
For the most part, unlike Intrinsic Thinkers, Extrinsic Thinkers talk to other people about problems they are trying to solve under circumstances where they have usually yet to decide what to do. While not necessarily obvious to colleagues and associates, they listen effectively to what other people are saying, as they look to others for ideas in problem-solving situations.
This trait is common to most Extrinsic Thinkers and enables them to build effective interdependent relationships with colleagues provided they have access to other more innovative colleagues(Intrinsic Thinkers).
Data generated through the use of Talent Chaser’s Job Analysis Module reveals that in general, jobs can be broken down into two types:
- Jobs where consistency is uppermost
- Jobs where innovation is uppermost
For example, in some customer service roles, the employee is required to follow specific rules that are in place to determine how they handle a limited series of customer service issues. Such will often be the case where the user of a product is likely to need support setting up/using a retail product. Alternatively, other customer service roles will call for the capacity to innovate. This might be the case where the product concerned is more complex and where some degree of trial and error may be part of the problem resolution process.
In a job where consistency is uppermost, Extrinsic Thinkers typically achieve higher performance ratings and also remain longer in the role provided they have been thoroughly trained and have direct access to an innovatorto cover unusual customer service situations should they arise. (Intrinsic Thinkers typically achieve lower performance ratings in such roles. A lack of consistency is frequently cited by their managers as the reason for this.)
On the other hand, in roles where performance review goals require innovation, Extrinsic Thinkers typically achieve lower ratings unless they are in a managerial role and have the support of innovators in their team.
I discovered these links through the deployment of the performance profile questionnaire, an evidence-based alternative to the personality test, which includes measurements of motivational factors. Are you interested to try this for yourself? Click on the link below to test the Talent Chaser Performance Profile and receive FREE Feedback from our certified consultants.
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