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By Patty Crabtree, CEO Lighthouse Consulting Partners LLC

As the year comes to a close, many of us find ourselves reflecting on the lessons learned in 2024. Recruiting the right talent has always been both an art and a science and this past year has brought new challenges and opportunities for those of us focused on talent management and development. The evolving job market, shifting candidate expectations and the need for more nuanced evaluation techniques have reinforced one truth: finding the best candidates requires a structured, thoughtful recruiting process.

As we step into 2025, it is worth examining the practices that have proven effective and how we can refine them to meet the demands of an increasingly dynamic workforce.

The Growing Complexity of Recruiting

The hiring landscape has become more competitive than ever. Lower unemployment rates are creating a challenging landscape. Quality candidates are more discerning, seeking roles that align with their values, career aspirations and work-life balance preferences. Organizations, on the other hand, are under pressure to make hires that not only meet the technical demands of a position but also fit seamlessly into their culture. This complexity has highlighted the importance of moving away from instinct-based hiring (I really like this person) and toward a structured, multi-step recruiting process (I have tangible information that supports my positive feelings).

The Foundation of a Structured Recruiting Process

A structured process ensures consistency, fairness and thoroughness. It minimizes the risks of unconscious bias and allows for a comprehensive evaluation of candidates. At its core, a well-structured process should include:

• Clearly Defined Roles and Expectations: Begin with a detailed job description that outlines the skills, experiences, and attributes needed for success. Ambiguity leads to misaligned expectations and wasted time on both sides.
• Effective Marketing of Open Positions: To attract the best candidates, job listings should convey your culture in addition to the specific skills required for the role.
• Multiple Interview Stages: Incorporate different types of interviews—technical, behavioral, and cultural—to evaluate candidates from various angles.

The Role of Assessments

Assessments provide objective data about a candidate’s work style, personality traits and problem-solving abilities. They help hiring managers go beyond resumes and interviews to understand how candidates are likely to perform in the role and interact with the team.

Assessments are particularly valuable because they reveal insights that traditional interviews often miss. For instance, an individual might excel at answering interview questions but struggle in environments requiring high adaptability or collaboration. An assessment can help identify these potential challenges before a hiring decision is made. Assessments go beyond surface-level traits to explore how candidates think, interact, and adapt under stress. This data becomes a roadmap for identifying not just who can do the job but who will thrive in the role and the company culture.

Mastering the Art of Questioning

Interviews remain a cornerstone of the hiring process but not all interviews are created equal. Effective questioning techniques can elevate an interview from a basic conversation to a powerful diagnostic tool. The goal is to move beyond rehearsed answers. Use open-ended, situational, and behavior-based questions to understand how candidates approach challenges, resolve conflicts, and interact with others. Some examples include:

• “Tell me about a time when you had to navigate a conflict with a colleague. How did you approach the situation?”
• “Describe a project where you had to adapt to significant changes midway. How did you handle it?”

Listen carefully—not just to the words but to the underlying thought process.

Paying Attention to What’s Beyond Words

Effective communication isn’t just verbal. Body language, tone of voice, and even cadence can offer important clues about a candidate’s confidence, authenticity and engagement.

• Body Language: Are they leaning in, maintaining eye contact, or showing open gestures? Did they tense up, shift in their seat to certain questions?
• Tone of Voice: Does their tone convey enthusiasm and sincerity, or does it seem rehearsed or flat?
• Cadence: Are they rushing to answer questions, or do they take a moment to reflect before responding?

These subtleties provide additional layers of understanding, helping you assess the candidate holistically.

Navigating Common Pitfalls

Despite best intentions, there are common pitfalls in the recruiting process. As we look to 2025, avoiding these missteps will be critical:

• Overvaluing Credentials: While impressive resumes and degrees catch the eye, they don’t always predict success. Focus on transferable skills, problem-solving abilities, and adaptability.
• Rushing the Process: Pressures to fill roles quickly often lead to shortcuts in vetting candidates. Resist the urge to bypass important steps; the cost of a bad hire far outweighs a slight delay.
• Underestimating the Candidate Experience: Today’s candidates value transparency and respect throughout the hiring process. Clear communication, timely follow-ups, and a positive experience leave a lasting impression, even on those who aren’t selected.

Looking Ahead to 2025

The opportunities in 2025 are immense. As the recruiting processes is refined,  it also strengthens the foundations of organizations. A commitment to structured hiring, thoughtful assessments, and meaningful communication not only improves hiring outcomes but also sets the tone for a thriving workplace. The human element remains irreplaceable. Empathy, intuition, and connection are what transform a good recruiting process into an exceptional one.

Final Thoughts

Recruiting is one of the most impactful activities an organization undertakes. Each new hire represents an opportunity to elevate the team, strengthen the culture, and drive the organization forward. By creating structured processes, leveraging assessments, and honing our ability to read the subtle cues of communication, we position ourselves to make better, more informed hiring decisions.

As we close 2024 and step into 2025, let’s embrace the chance to refine and evolve our approaches, ensuring that our hiring practices are not just effective but transformative. After all, the future of our organizations depends on the people we bring into them. Let’s elevate that decision process and create a thriving team.

Lighthouse Consulting Partners, LLC

Testing Division provides a variety of services, including in-depth work style & personality assessments for new hires, staff development and team building. LCP can provide these assessments  in 19 different languages along with offering skills testing, leadership and management coaching and offer a variety of workshops – team building, communication.

Business Consulting for Higher Productivity Division provides stress & time management workshops, sales & customer service training and negotiation skills, leadership training, staff planning, operations, refining a remote work force and much more.

For more information on our services, please go to www.lighthouseconsulting.com or contact us at [email protected].

Permission is needed from Lighthouse Consulting Partners, LLC to reproduce any portion provided in this article. © 2024

Conflicts are inevitable in any setting. We each bring unique backgrounds, experiences, and personality traits to the table and these differences can often lead to misunderstandings. Interestingly, many conflicts in the workplace don’t stem from disagreements over tasks but rather from miscommunications rooted in varying work styles. Understanding these work styles is a powerful tool for resolving these miscommunications and fostering a collaborative environment. By recognizing and respecting individual differences, leaders and team members can avoid common pitfalls that lead to workplace discord and slow down progress. This knowledge serves as a foundation for developing empathy across teams.

The Role of Work Styles in Conflict

Work styles can be categorized into several types, such as task-oriented versus relationship-oriented, structured versus flexible, detail-focused versus big-picture-focused, and proactive versus reactive. These differences are not inherently problematic; in fact, they can bring a richness of perspective to a team. However, when these styles clash, they can lead to misunderstandings, frustration, and ultimately, conflict.

I once worked with a colleague, Joe, who would often say in frustration, “I wish everyone would just think like me.” In this case, his frustration stemmed from a lack of understanding of another colleague, Joan’s, perspective. They were using similar words, appeared to have similar ideas but the execution was not on the same page.

Joe’s approach was straightforward—he wanted everyone to get on board with his vision and move forward quickly. He believed that once everyone saw things from his perspective, the best path would be clear. On the other hand, Joan preferred to gather all the data, ensuring that every detail was considered before making a decision. She wanted to discuss what was needed, test for gaps in information, and ensure nothing was overlooked.

This mismatch created tension. Joe was ready to move forward, while Joan was still in the information-gathering phase. Although they were discussing the same project, they were in completely different mindsets.

Had they understood each other’s thinking processes, they could have avoided frustration. Joan could acknowledge Joe’s message, and Joe could give Joan the space to gather the necessary data. Instead, they were stuck in a cycle of misunderstanding, wishing the other person would just “think like me.”

Variety in thought processes creates a balanced team. It mitigates blind spots and encourages healthy conflict. This dynamic keeps things moving forward and prevents teams from getting caught in a never-ending loop of inaction.

Developing a deeper understanding of each team member’s thinking style and learning how to leverage these styles for the best results can create an unstoppable team dynamic. It empowers individuals to better articulate their needs while recognizing others’ perspectives. When conflicts arise, they can transform into healthy exchanges rather than battles over who is right. This insight equips teams to bridge differences before they escalate into significant issues.

Bringing the Concept of Thinking Styles into a Team Dynamic

I worked with one team that struggled to meet its goals on time. While they agreed on the overall objectives, they couldn’t seem to piece everything together to achieve them. We conducted a team-building exercise focused on reviewing each person’s decision-making and communication style. This process identified each person’s unique work style and the support needed for each approach.

The results were enlightening. This newfound understanding sparked something new in their team dynamics, energizing the group. They began to acknowledge each other’s styles, integrate different approaches into their thinking, and as a result, the team’s communication and collaboration reached new heights.

By fostering empathy and understanding, teams can achieve extraordinary results.

Enhancing Communication Between Introverts and Extroverts

Introversion and extroversion are prime examples of how differing work styles can lead to conflict. Introverts often prefer to think deeply before speaking, working alone or in small groups. Extroverts, by contrast, are energized by social interactions and may speak their thoughts as they arise. These differing communication styles can cause friction in team settings, especially when collaboration is required.

Paul, an extroverted team leader, was frustrated with Olivia, one of his direct reports, who was an introvert. Paul frequently asked for input during team meetings, expecting immediate feedback. Olivia, however, preferred to process information before responding, which Paul misinterpreted as disengagement. Their conflicting communication styles began to erode trust between them.

Recognizing the strain this was causing, their manager encouraged the entire team to complete work style personality assessments. The results revealed that Olivia’s introversion led her to prefer thoughtful, reflective responses, while Paul’s extroversion made him more comfortable with spontaneous, real-time discussions.

Once Paul understood that Olivia’s need for reflection wasn’t disengagement but simply her way of processing information, he knew to give her the space she needed. Similarly, Olivia understood that Paul’s eagerness for immediate feedback wasn’t pushy but a reflection of his collaborative nature.

By adjusting his approach—such as sending meeting agendas and information in advance—Paul allowed Olivia the time she needed to prepare thoughtful contributions. Olivia, in turn, became more comfortable engaging in discussions, knowing she had time to reflect beforehand. Through the lens of their work styles, both gained empathy for each other’s approaches, improving their communication and enhancing team collaboration.

Practical Steps for Using Work Styles to Resolve Conflict

These stories illustrate how identifying work styles can be a powerful tool for conflict resolution. Here are some practical steps to leverage these assessments for resolving workplace conflicts:

1. Encourage Self-Awareness: Personality assessments allow individuals to develop a deeper understanding of their work styles. This self-awareness is the first step in recognizing how one’s behaviors might be perceived by others.
2. Foster Empathy: When team members understand the work styles of their colleagues, they are more likely to approach conflicts with empathy. Personality assessments help teams move beyond surface-level assumptions and appreciate the different strengths each individual brings to the table.
3. Facilitate Open Communication: Use work style assessments as a starting point for conversations about communication preferences, decision-making processes, and potential friction points. This can help prevent misunderstandings before they escalate into conflicts.
4. Adapt Expectations and Processes: By identifying individual work styles, teams can adjust workflows and expectations to empower different approaches. This flexibility helps resolve conflicts and leads to a more collaborative work environment.
5. Focus on Team Dynamics: Assessments not only help individuals but also offer insights into overall team dynamics. Leaders can use this information to create balanced teams, ensuring a mix of complementary work styles that enhance collaboration.

Conflict in the workplace is often rooted in clashing work styles rather than fundamental differences in values or goals. An in-depth work style personality assessment can provide critical insights into these differences, offering a path to greater empathy, understanding, and ultimately, resolution. By using these assessments, teams can bridge communication gaps, resolve conflicts more effectively, and enhance their overall performance. Embracing these differences, rather than trying to eliminate them, can lead to stronger, more cohesive teams that are better equipped to handle challenges and achieve their shared goals.

By David Shaffer MBA , Sr. Consultant, Practice Head for M&A and ERP/MRP

Finding and keeping great employees is getting increasingly hard. Your company’s ability to fight and win the ongoing talent wars hinges on your most important asset: your leaders.

According to research in the Harvard Business Review, “Leaders who prioritize relationships with their employees and lead from a place of positivity and kindness simply do better, and company culture has a bigger influence on employee well-being than salary and benefits (“The Power of Healthy Relationships at Work,” June 21, 2022).

When it comes to attracting and retaining better employees, it comes down to leaders fostering positive relationships at work. But positive leader-employee relationships do not happen by chance.

Most managers weren’t born knowing how to create those positive relationships. But your organization should not suffer while your leaders learn by trial and error. In an age when there is an ever-escalating war for the better employees, it has never been more important for a business to invest in developing leaders.

This is why CEOs of privately owned companies in the $5 million to $100 million in revenue range and division heads of global organizations need to make sure to invest in training managers.

In other words, so one day they can confidently turn over the day-to-day management of the company to the next group of leaders. Here is a comeback story of a business owner who did just that.

How Fred Developed New Leaders

This is the tale of a 48-year-old business owner named Fred (not his real name), who created a small manufacturing company with annual revenues north of $5 million. On a personal note, Fred was a spiritual man who enjoyed being an active volunteer at his church.

On the job Fred had faith in his people and believed in them to work issues out. Unfortunately, that led to him being a victim of undeserved misfortune, His people loved working for Fred and knocked themselves out for him; however, as the adage states, haste makes waste.

Fred’s business problem was wasteful rework costs in excess of 35%, which meant that millions of dollars of the products required rework. That’s a tremendous amount of dollars that had to be absorbed by the business on a regular basis.

When Fred invited me in, I did an assessment to determine the root causes of the troubles. On the basis of that review as well as doing the LCS in-depth work style and personality assessment, we identified two solutions that needed to be implemented.

“On top of the rework nightmare, sales are dropping like a stone because all of the sales are being funneled through me, and I am totally consumed by the rework issue,” said Fred. “My sales team has been reduced to being order takers, not order generators. These are good people, and I do not know what to do.”

“We can fix this, Fred,” I told him. “It’s not going to be easy because you have some blind spots. You need to make some changes, but we can tackle the two needed solutions together.”

The first solution was a lean manufacturing process, which included quality control checks throughout the manufacturing process. That way, they could identify potential defects right at the point of the defect rather than at the end when it’s delivered to the customer.

That may sound like a very simplistic thing to do. However, understand that within the operation, there was a need to develop leaders who understood how to schedule the projects, communicate the goals to their team, and resolve issues with the people.

We conducted workshops for each of the shop supervisors, plus the shop foreman. We also brought in the sales team to talk about effective communication between sales and operations so that we could identify where time was being spent.

The second solution was to turn over the reins to the next generation. Eventually, we removed Fred as the owner from the day-to-day operations and put in place an executive team that included sales management, supervisors, shop foremen, as well as accounting to meet on a daily on what are the issues.  We also did our LCS team building program, which includes using our LCS in-depth work style and personality assessment for the staff members.  This provided me with insights into how to get the most from the team members as well as with helping them to bond and communicate with each other at a whole new level.

The net result was that the rework was reduced to 5% from 35%, and sales rose by 15% because now sales were not having to deal with the quality issues that were affecting sales. And here’s the kicker, Fred was a happier owner because it allowed him more volunteer time to lead bible study sessions at the church.

Seven Steps To Develop The Next Generation

With Fred, we followed these seven steps:

Step One. Maintain the mission, vision, and values that are a part of the company. The journey begins with an assessment of the DNA of the business.

Step Two. Recognize the strengths that each person brings to the company. Leadership is not a birthright; it is about potential. So, test your people to assess leadership potential. Conducting in-depth work style and personality assessments can be extremely useful.

Step Three. Understand that leadership is something that is developed. Know this: leaders are not born; leaders are trained.  Never has a baby been born, and the doctor slapped his or her bottom and declared, “Now here is a future company president.” Certain positive traits develop during a person’s life, which is a gift. But just relying on gifts and not training future leaders is a bad option for small-to-midsized companies.

Step Four. Dispel the belief that the best performers make the best leaders. Don’t make the classic blunder of just thrusting top performers into leadership roles. That is a 50/50 proposition at best. Once, I was a director of business process improvement and information systems consulting at one of the big accounting firms. The philosophy within the CPA firm was that you took your top-performing senior managers who were outstanding in doing tax returns, and you, therefore, promoted them to partner. Then we came to the realization that they don’t know how to be good at business development, a key requirement of a partner.

Step Five. Allow for creativity yet stay within the values of the company. People are not robots. And nor would you want them to be.

Step Six. Train leaders throughout all levels of management or job responsibilities. If you think training is expensive, then look at the costs of not training. Trained leaders make it easier for the company to fill jobs with the right people, retain top talent, and keep employees fully engaged. Today this is no easy feat, and paying more in wages and benefits is not the answer.

Step Seven. Introduce accountability and taking responsibility. Are you familiar with the “Miracle on Ice” with the US hockey team winning the Olympic gold medal in 1980? The underdog US team beat the Russians and made it to the finals to win it all. But if you really dig into the analysis of what happened, the coaches of that team took a bunch of individuals that were stars at different levels and molded them into a team. They achieved their goal of winning a gold medal by introducing accountability and taking responsibility.

Use A Three-Phase Approach

To optimize success, companies use a three-phase approach:

Phase One. Company Assessment And Understanding. This starts with meetings with executives and ownership to understand the company’s mission, vision, and values. Then comes outlining a key strategy for transition and personnel development. Follow this with preparing an objective assessment of the current environment, including gaps analysis to reach the desired structure. Next, we need to get everyone on board with the changes, so we prepare a presentation for review with key personnel.

Phase Two. Conduct A Workshop On Leadership And Accountability. Begin by reviewing components of leadership. Next, cover how to create an environment of accountability. Then cover the characteristics of effective communication. This is followed by a discussion of setting and achieving goals by leveraging talent and reaching individual potential. Lead the group to understand how to achieve team effectiveness. Nothing is ever smooth, so cover how to handle and resolve conflict. Finally cover the most effective means of coaching.

Phase Three. Continued Follow-up. This is not a case of setting it and forgetting it. Schedule one-on-one coaching sessions. Conduct group meetings to share experiences.  And celebrate milestones that measure achievement.

Summing It Up

In my experience, privately owned companies are looking to put in place the next level of leadership within their company.

The main goal is to allow the existing ownership to be able to have appropriate leaders developed within the organization that allows for the owner/manager to extricate themselves from the day-to-day business and still be in a position to provide high-level feedback on what’s going on within their company,

If you are open to a conversation about how to develop your next generation of leaders, or how our in-depth work style personality assessment could help your team, please contact us at 310-453-6556, extension 410 or email  [email protected] and our website is www.lighthouseconsulting.com.

David Shaffer, MBA , Sr. Consultant, is our practice head for our Business Consulting For Higher Productivity Division and for our ERP and M&A practice. He is recognized for his ability to effectively integrate all aspects of the business, including financial management, information systems, infrastructure, sales management, sales strategies, and operations. David assists companies from planning through operational and business process improvement opportunities to the selection and integration of management information systems solutions. His range of company support includes start-ups through Fortune 500 firms.

Lighthouse Consulting Partners, LLC Divisions

Testing Division provides a variety of services, including in-depth work style & personality assessments for new hires & staff development. LCP can test in 19 different languages, skills testing, domestic and international interpersonal coaching and offer a variety of workshops – team building, interpersonal communication.

Business Consulting for Higher Productivity Division provides stress & time management workshops, sales & customer service training and negotiation skills, leadership training, market research, staff planning, operations, ERP/MRP selection and implementation, refining a remote work force, M&A including due diligence – success planning – value creation and much more.

To order the books, “Cracking the Personality Code”, “Cracking the Business Code” and “Cracking the High-Performance Team Code”, please go to www.lighthouseconsulting.com.

Permission is needed from Lighthouse Consulting Partners, LLC to reproduce any portion provided in this article. © 2024