ASSESSMENT

• “Peter has guided our choice of outside executives for the last 17 years. In every instance, his guidance has proven out even when we went against his advice, to our regret. Our investment in his counsel nets significant positive returns every day in our outstanding executive team and its consistently excellent results.” Human resources director, Fortune 100 company
• “Hiring people is expensive. On-boarding an executive is extremely expensive. Replacing that person is painful and financially astronomical.” CEO, Global service company
• “People who are consciously competent know how to win consistently. They know how to play from their strengths, guard against their own weaknesses, and continually give openings to people who will inform them. This is where the value of assessment lies.” Sales director, Regional software company
• “The biggest hurdle in transitioning from manager to leader is in understanding your impact on others and learning how to optimize your own presence. People who do this well know how their activity, receptivity, energy and words affect everyone around them, and they know how to manage these things in balance to bring out the best in everyone else. This is why we insist on an assessment for all of our leaders.” Human resources executive, Regional health care company
• “If you’re serious about hiring great people, you need to be serious about the hiring process. Peter can help.” Marketing director, Government agency
• “The strategy consultants came in and told us we need to start selling everything differently. That meant the sales force was a mismatch for our future. Once Peter helped us to carefully construct a sales competency profile, we were able to identify places to source the right sales talent, and with the support of assessment tools we were able to quickly hire the new generation which helped us launch our new strategy.” Sales executive, National retail company
• “Peter’s analysis of the first-line sales position and the test he developed to screen for it resulted in a far superior force, a jump in results across the field and a measurably stronger brand image to attract both customers and good talent to our company.” CEO, fortune 100 financial services firm

COACHING LEADERS AND TEAMS

• “This investment has a return of 10 to 40 times the cost. It’s not just the people’s careers here, it’s figuring out how to accelerate business outcomes. Whatever the outcome is, Peter’s work accelerates improved performance across the business.” Sales executive, National retail company
• “Executives must consciously manage their energy and their rest. Wise leaders know this and learn to recognize signs of stress, pace themselves and the workload, stay in touch with their strongest performers to help them do the same, and insulate the team whenever they need to be heads down to do the real work.” CEO, Global service company
• “It requires effort and energy to build strength. To grow and get stronger, the players have to continually change and challenge themselves. Business stardom requires real life interval training. The best leaders (and athletes) continually push themselves out of their comfort zones so they don’t plateau and rest in place. Peter teaches this.” Human resources executive, Regional health care company

GROWING PROFITABLE ORGANIZATIONS

• “Are you prepared for the call that your CEO or key leader has taken a job with another firm? We weren’t, but Peter helped us create a reasonable plan.”
• “You lose future leaders when they’re stuck behind mediocre lifers. Companies that don’t plan for succession pay an inordinate cost in lost opportunity.”

1. Michael had been through the executive assessment process twice before with other firms and noted that this time it was completely different. Instead of a team of interns and one professional trying to tie the pieces of paper together in a meaningful way, this time Michael worked directly with Peter who helped him understand not just whether he was right or not for the job, but how to make the evaluation of this and future career moves based on an in-depth understanding of himself.
2. Ray’s charismatic energy had everyone thinking he was a sure fit for the top job. While the executive assessment proved out his smart, strategic, persuasive style, it also supported a few people’s experience with his tense, over-reactive and defensive demeanor under stress. This combination would have made developing trust highly problematic.
3. During the course of an internal feedback gathering exercise, Jon’s manager expressed doubts about Charles’ ability to be a strategic leader. His HR leader requested an executive assessment to prove this out. Results showed that in fact, Charles had extremely strong conceptual and strategic capabilities and it became clear that his current work assignments prevented his opportunities to demonstrate these capabilities. Following this assessment, his career path was shifted and the opportunities provided for his demonstrating strategic capability have borne out his attention.
4. Diane noted that in past comprehensive assessments, the testing was used just to rule candidates out. Under Dr. Marston’s process, they focused on her short and long term potential which taught her how to make better independent judgments.
5. Karen was referred to Peter after repeatedly receiving feedback that sending work to her office was like sending it into a black hole. A comprehensive ssessment uncovered that while her IQ was unquestionably high, her working memory was low. Both the company and Karen are thrilled to have retained her in a highly profitable client consulting role, hiring someone else for her executive position.
6. Mark made an impressive presentation, exhibited good interpersonal skills, and had a solid track record for the New Account Director at a creative agency. A professional contributor assessment including an hour interview with Peter showed a lack of horsepower for the more strategic level work required for the position. Peter notes that sales executive candidates in particular show strong verbal fluency and persuasive skills that may obscure their more limited strategic thinking capabilities. This is a particularly risky combination when attempting to screen in executive level sales management candidates who are being positioned for general management roles.
7. Patrick dreaded the professional contributor assessment. He reported that he’d never tested well in school and expected this to be a waste of his time with results that he’d never see anyway. He was completely surprised and said “Peter explained to me that I was an action learner and I had strong common sense and even strategic level thinking skills. I never was good at trivia tests and I wasn’t any good at his either, that I never was interested in those topics at school. But in my profession had a wealth of knowledge.”
8. A retail sales applicant with great energy and a pleasing style completed the customized profile assessment where it was determined that she would be inconsistent in her timeliness and attendance, and would not be a team player. This would have been extremely difficult to learn that in a typical interview, and the company was relieved to have saved tremendous cost in training, wardrobe, and turnover.
9. Fred was referred to Peter after he went into a tirade during an executive meeting and verbally browbeat a female executive over her business practices. This was highly uncharacteristic behavior for him, and when a similar event occurred soon after, his boss referred him for coaching. Fred shared that his son had recently been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. Fred was furious about it and unable to work through his grief. We helped him recognize that his work behavior and actions were being directly influenced by his son’s illness. Once he saw this connection, he was able to work on his acceptance of his son’s illness, learn about it, and develop plans to build his relationship with his son in a new way. We helped him construct the words for an apology to his alienated colleagues and turn those relationships around.
10. When Gianni, the sole owner and sales leader of a family printing business, learned his health was failing he finally got serious about identifying talent and growing successors. While five of his children were employed in various roles, just two of them were interested in leadership positions. Gianni wanted to ensure the company’s future for all of his children and the staff, so Marco asked Peter to help. Once we assessed and conducted 360 feedback collection on the two brothers and other top executives of the company, we were able to construct a plan for developing several high-potential staff-members. Only then did Marco realize he needed to go outside the organization to replace his own position. After careful recruiting, interviewing, and assessment, his backup was selected and with some work, his sales executives accepted the new leader who brought new dimensions to the company.