The PEOPLEABLE® raison d’être and research product portfolio

In the previous edition of PEOPLEABLE PANORAMA, we explored the inherent difficulties of understanding motivational states in the “third person”, which results in the intractable nature of people matters. We also reflected on the neglect meted out in the world of human resources to the “affective” and “conative” states of mind and the concept of “collective intentionality”. In addition, we examined the debilitating role of “behaviourism” in business and its now being relegated to an anachronism, and the crying need of the precepts of “humanistic psychology” while managing people matters (https://nirsanconnect.com/09/05/2019/peopleable-panorama/strengthen-people-aspects-of-organisations/). In this edition, we bring people research to life through PEOPLEABLE® – our research category focused on transforming people performance of business organisations. We explore the six research products within the category, and explore the synergistic impact of the PEOPLEABLE® platform that drives benefit which is over and beyond the benefit accrued from individual products.

The PEOPLEABLE® platform houses research products that help businesses examine and unearth insights into people aspects of their organisations including matters related to skills and capabilities, mindsets and behaviours, individual and organisational values, goal setting, team building and teamwork, and emotional and motivational states of employees. BLISSANT® conducts research on organisation values and beliefs; EMOVERE® studies the emotional regulation and capabilities of collectives; ABILEARN® assesses skills and mindsets, and the organisation’s learning propensity and readiness; BROWAIM® explores improvement opportunities in goal setting; STYLNER® profiles leadership styles prevalent in the organisation; SYMBITHRUST® examines the strength of team building and teamwork initiatives.

The ‘values to behaviour’ causal linkage has been well researched in the late 20th century, yet has seen glib references and mechanistic application in the world of enterprise. BLISSANT® provides you with a clear view of values, beliefs and mindsets held within your organisation on the topics of performance, operations, people, the organisation, and the environment. BLISSANT® is designed based on nuanced appreciation and usage of the constructs of “values”, “beliefs”, “mindsets”, “attitudes” and “behaviours”. BLISSANT® helps you establish causal linkages between values and beliefs on one hand, and mindsets, attitudes and behaviours on the other.

Emotional Quotient (EQ) is a construct widely used in the individual context, but inadequately conceived and rarely used in the context of groups. EMOVERE® makes a perceptive assessment of the EQ of groups and of the consequent impact on their performances. EMOVERE® defines ‘Group Emotional Quotient’ as “the ability of a group as a collective to monitor, discriminate between, label appropriately, and use emotional information to guide collective thinking and behaviour”. Inspired in part by the Ability Model, EMOVERE® assesses the EQ of groups through characteristics related to the processing of emotions, including the perception of emotions, emotional trust, analysis of emotions, and emotion orchestration.

Skills are the most substantive differentiators between business organisations. ABILEARN® introduces the concept of Capability Quotient (CQ), bringing into consideration traditionally neglected factors. Going beyond “content” and “training activity”, ABILEARN® assesses the CQ of individuals and organisations based on: first, the mode in which individuals acquire skills; second, the manner in which individuals use the skills; third, the extent to which the individual builds on the skill acquired; fourth, the mechanisms through which individuals transmit skills. ABILEARN® provides a view of the CQ of your organisation and its people, which allows you to assess skill inventory, learning potential and learning mechanisms of your business.

Goal setting is arguably the most meaningful step in performance management. Goal setting in business has mostly been a “cognitive” exercise. While “affective” states are utilised in rare situations with the usage of emotions, “conative” states such as hopes and desires are denied participation entirely. Moreover, business goal setting focuses primarily on the considerations of the collective entity, and pays limited attention to the “state of mind” of individuals. BROWAIM® profiles your goal setting process, and outlines implications for the performance management process. BROWAIM® moves goalsetting away from cognitive jousting and brings into play all three states of mind, fusing their manifestations in individuals with their orchestration across the collective.

Leadership traits and personality profiling is a topic of vigorous deliberation. Business literature is replete with models of leadership and personality traits that either adopt the Jungian approach of archetypes or follow the “personality trait approach”. STYLNER® moves away from such context-free approaches of assessing personality. Instead, inspired in some measure by the “personality-situation debate”, STYLNER® profiles leadership styles in business by blending personality traits with situational factors. STYLNER® believes that “leadership properties” of individuals are a function of “traits” and “situational context”, and defines the latter in terms of “risk – rewards” and “personal values”.

Building high performance teams has received much attention in business, and yet has been relegated to a list of behavioural do’s and don’ts. Prominently ignored has been the construct of “collective intentionality” (CI), i.e., the collective power of multiple minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for things, properties or states of affairs. SYMBITHRUST® provides an insightful view of the strength of your teams by fusing the three elements of CI with the three needs of overachieving individuals. SYMBITHRUST® adopts a non-summative view of CI, thereby recognising the “intentional dissidence” of a single individual, even though she be isolated on attitudes, beliefs and mindsets.

Evidently, each of the six products within PEOPLEABLE® researches for insights while being underpinned by a unique belief or affirmation that serves as its pedagogic backbone. BLISSANT® gives primacy to causal linkages between doxastic attitudes linked to organisational values and beliefs, while EMOVERE® draws inspiration from the Ability Model to develop the construct of Group Emotional Quotient. ABILEARN® introduces the concept of Capability Quotient (CQ), as BROWAIM® emphasises the importance of all three states of mind in the goalsetting process. While STYLNER® conceptualises leadership style through a blend of personality traits and situational factors, SYMBITHRUST® underpins teamwork with the construct of “collective intentionality”.

The synergies provided by the PEOPLEABLE® platform lie squarely in the application of the precepts of humanistic psychology in the research conducted by products on the platform. As outlined earlier, each PEOPLEABLE® product is based on its unique pedagogy and analytical framework. These pedagogies are from a variety of disciplines in the humanities, and draw inspiration from even the natural sciences. The PEOPLEABLE® platform ties these products together with the common thread of humanistic psychology through the application of constructs such as individual free will, collective intentionality, and states of mind. The platform perforce embeds such constructs into the content, methodologies and tools of research.

In the next edition of PEOPLEABLE PANORAMA, we begin our journey to understand individual research products on the platform. We start by exploring the doxastic world of organisational values and beliefs, examining the causal linkages, and comprehending how BLISSANT® brings to bear a rich and nuanced understanding of these concepts.