Assessment Tools for Changing Habits | Meredith Bell | 391

05/05/22 • 21 min

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Many organizations deploy assessment tools, only to have the results ignored because of a lack of understanding or motivation. What do we do with them, now? What do the numbers really mean? Our guest today will help us understand not only what it takes to build a valid assessment, but how to use one to drive measurable behavior change. Meredith Bell is the co-founder and president of Grow Strong Leaders, where they help individuals discover key areas for development, and implement strategies for achieving higher levels of performance. She is also the co-author of Connect with Your Team: Mastering the Top 10 Communication Skills and Peer Coaching Made Simple: How to Do the 6 Things That Matter Most When Helping Someone Improve a Skill. Meredith started her journey into the assessment tool space in the 90s, when she became frustrated at the lack of customizable tools at her disposal as a consultant. Before long, she had made the pivot from consulting to software creation. Her original product, 20/20 Insight, is still in use today. In addition to having been a consultant and creating assessment tools, Meredith is also an author, speaker, and thought leader. With so many plates spinning, she knows well how each label factor creates multiple touchpoints for potential clients to utilize her expertise. From those touchpoints, she helps companies and organizations discover which of her offerings will have the most impact for their needs. If you're looking for an in-depth understanding of assessment functionality, and why peer-to-peer coaching can be the most cost and time-effective method for moving the performance needle, you’ll want to listen to this episode. Three Key Takeaways: * When creating assessments, keep your questions indirect. Indirect questions create more connection between behaviors and other elements. * Helping people reach their full potential is all about changing the habits that are standing in their own way. * Effective communication often means having to ask, “Who do I need to be, in this moment, in order to connect with my audience?”

Previous Episode

Ideas, Events, and Behaviors | Ruud Janssen | 390

How can you tell — in an instant — whether an in-person event will be a success or failure? Are there key items that can predict an event's outcome?

In-person events are returning, and with them, questions of their utility and ability to really change the behaviors of those who attend. How can a thought leadership practitioner speak about their insights on stage in a way that brings about lasting and sustainable change?

In order to better understand the challenges and pitfalls of organizing an event, we’ve invited Ruud Janssen, the Managing Director and Co-Founder of The Event Design Collective to join us. The Event Design Collective is a group of event designers who train and consult with event owners to elevate events using the Event Canvas model. As the co-creator of The Design Canvas, Ruud shares how they altered Alexander Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas to suit the event space, creating a model that any event owner could use under the creative commons license.

Taking an idea and making it shine on stage isn’t as simple as it sounds. Ruud helps us grasp the key elements that events need to create value through behavior change. While many concentrate heavily on the look or feel of an event, smart show-runners know that the real selling point is an event's outcome — and how it shapes ideas and habits for those who attend.

The most successful events begin by taking notice of the event stakeholders; who they are, what they want from the event, and how they hope it will unfold. Ruud explains why we need to keep in mind those critical elements, and how to both manage expectations and surpass them. He also shares his thoughts on articulating thought leadership on stage, and what we can do to create behavior change from entry to exit.

In addition, we learn how his business grew from offering a better understanding of The Design Canvas, to the creation of the Event Design Certificate program, and the creation of the Event Design Handbook — all to help empower event organizers to create amazing, impactful gatherings.

If you want to learn more about The Event Canvas, you can get it free along with the first 100 pages of the Event Design Handbook HERE.

Three Key Takeaways:

Thought Leadership isn’t just about insights. It needs to shape those insights and focus them in ways that deliver behavior change.
Thought Leaders should spend at least 1% of their total attendance time thinking about the event they are hosting, and how to best reach attending stakeholders.
You don’t have to have a Hollywood budget for a Thought Leadership event! The production quality simply needs to elevate the conversation taking place.

Next Episode

Convergence of Thought Leadership and CMOs | Drew Neisser | 392

Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) often think in terms of campaigns, responses, and calls to action. Everything is about selling a product or service. So, when it comes to using thought leadership for marketing, how do you thread the needle? How do you show CMOs that thought leadership can develop a brand, bring in new clients, and not look like just another advertisement? To tackle this tough question, we’ve invited Drew Neisser, the Founder of Renegade, a B2B marketing agency that helps their clients do the heavy lifting of brand strategy, market research, content, and social media. Drew is also the author of Renegade Marketing: 12 Steps to Building Unbeatable B2B Brands, helping readers remove the complications of B2B marketing. For thought leadership to be successful, you need to be clear about what you are trying to accomplish. Drew discusses the way CMOs should be focusing their efforts, and ways to express how thought leadership differs from traditional marketing. Once you have a clear purpose, you need a clear vision. Drew explains that thought leadership needs to be developed from the viewpoint of the customers, creating content that encourages them to think more deeply about problems in order to find solutions. Drew's CATS (Courageous, Artful, Thoughtful, and Scientific) method is one such framework. It can be used as a guiding light to ensure your content hits all the right targets. We conclude the conversation by examining Drew's goals Drew in writing his book. He set out to make B2B marketing easier by creating a 12-step program that he used in the field to gain real-life feedback and viscerally improve the book. Drew shares how the pandemic affected the release schedule of the book, and how he stripped it back to a massive blog post — which then exploded in popularity, proving that he was on the right track. B2B marketing has never been more complicated. If you are struggling to find your share of the market, this episode might just have the advice you need to find your audience. Three Key Takeaways: * Thought Leadership content should be created with the focus of helping clients solve problems by looking at challenges from a different perspective. * Low or mid-level marketers should consider creating thought leadership content early in their career, as a means of building a reputation for the long run. * Make sure you've considered the three C’s when creating thought leadership: Content, Connection, and Community!