Karen Winfield, Global Operations Director, PD Training
Karen Winfield has created a corporate training company to partner with on a global scale. PD Training (pdtrainingglobal.com) has delivered business skills training in more than 13 countries, 394 cities and over 100,000 people. The core business skills she focuses on is Leadership and Communication and has built in psychometric profiling to start the training off with self awareness so growth can happen.
With a focus on People Development Karen and Co-founder of PD Training (Paul Findlay) created the OrgDevInstitute (www.orgdevinstitute.co) a body with a HR focus of creating a world with happier, more productive people. The institute provides ongoing industry research and development and supports the REACH Ecosystem (reachquotient.com) globally – a subscription based model with access to a world class set of psychometric tools and resources.
Karen is always looking at ways to best partner with global clients and how their people can be the best they can be.
AUTOMATED EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Scaling Up Services where we speak with entrepreneurs authors business experts and thought leaders to give you the knowledge and insights you need to scale your service based business faster and easier. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
[00:00:22] Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier. Checkout Thrive Roundtable thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community created by Inc award winning CEO and certified scaling up business coach Bruce Eckfeldt. Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For details on the program visit eckfeldt.com/thrive. That's E C K F E L D T.com slash thrive. .
[00:00:58] Welcome, everyone. This is Scaling Up Services. I’m Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. And our guest today is Karen Winfield and she is global operations director. Or as I've learned, her company calls her God of Rich Ecosystem, which is a subscription model for providing psychometric tools and resources for companies to help them with management and performance. So we're gonna have an interesting conversation around this. This is a big topic for me, and I think it's a big topic for all of us in the service space. Understanding how to best recruit, manage, get performance out of people. Key aspect of service based companies. So with that. Karen, welcome to the program.
[00:01:35] Thank you. Good to be here.
[00:01:37] So why don't we start with a little bit of your background and then we can talk about reach and how you got into the second metric space and talk about some of the tools and the work that you do.
[00:01:47] Thanks, Lynn. I'll try and keep this quite briefly first. I started off as a corporate facilitator where I was delivering a lot of the professional development training so it could be anywhere from leadership training to communication skills to time management.
[00:02:00] And because I was a full time facilitator, I found that have very much become a jack of all trades. I did a very good job at delivering and got great outcomes for the client. But because I was being stretched across so many topics that I could never really focus on being the best one. So when I decided that it was time to move on from that company and start my own organization called PD Training, it was based around a contract training model. So it was to bring on the people that were specifically experts or specifically trained or specifically knowledgeable and had a passion for a topic. So now we have over a thousand contractors globally where they're delivering what they're passionate about. So they're always going to bring more to the table than a manual. So we did that for quite a few years. We were doing well as a company and then we found, well, we're delivering content to clients, but we're not finding out much about the client or the participants in the room beforehand and how we can best deliver that message to them. And this is when we started to bring in our profiling tool, which is now called Reach. So we have built in a profiling tool to identify whether our participants are advisors, counselors, drivers or coaches. So the trainers know how to adapt their training style for that person to best learn. So that's when we started to move into learning more about psychometric profiling and what they can do for our clients.
[00:03:17] Got it. So let's just talk a little bit about what psychometric profiling is so people understand what the psychometric profiling is and maybe what it's not like. What are you trying to do or what is a psychometric profile? Describe for folks.
[00:03:29] Yeah, good question. We all have a born tendency to interact a certain way. So for me, I could be considered a how could driver a pretty light to get to the facts rather quickly. I make decisions quickly, but my way is my way and it's not necessarily someone else's way. So another person's natural tendency might be I need to do all the research first before I can make a decision. Now I have the best harmony in the workplace. We need to identify. My way is right for me, but it's not right for somebody else. So how can I interact or adapt so I can have a bit of interaction with others that I work with so I can get the best out of them. So the psychometric profiling is a set of questions to identify your preferred communication style.
[00:04:12] Yeah. And I guess is there are there better or worse profiles? I mean, are there ideal profiles and ones that are not as good? Like how how do you kind of classify the profiles or the results that you get out of psychometric profiles? Yeah.
[00:04:26] So there is quite a few profiles out in the market and I'm not going to compare with the others. But what I can identify with ours that we've worked really hard to make sure that we did was to keep it simple. So what I found is a lot of companies would go into an organization and they would deliver one profile. So there might have been doing a selling profile. Let's all profile our sales team, right? Yeah, I would do that. I would use one sort of terminology. Then one company says, you know what? We've got a problem with our culture. And they'd go to another organization to go, can you come in and do some cultural surveys in our workplace, which that extra company would go in and then they'd be educating that company? On another level of terminology. So what we did with ours is make sure that across all of our profiling tools, which we have a wide reach on, is to ensure that we keep all the terminology simple and the same. So for an organization, they could use a selling profile. Which is different to a recruitment profile, which is different to a cultural survey profile. However, the understanding or the basis is the same or the terminology is the same. So there's no further education required within that company to understand those profiles.
[00:05:35] And so Reach has multiple profiling kind of applications or profiling tools within it or how? Or is it one tool which you can apply to sort of different situations? Yeah.
[00:05:45] So we do have a couple of tools. However, what's good about it is we have one set of questions that will determine the interest rate profile outcomes. So you're not always you know, you've heard ahead of profile fatigue. We don't send out lots of profiles because a lot of the information can be repurposed in the other profile outcomes. So, for instance, if I was to do the standard communication profile, I'm probably going to get the same response. Or I could use that profile to get a coach's PAC to work with that person to improve them with their communication within their team.
[00:06:17] So we're repurposing that one set of questions so you can sort of sort of test once and then assess multiple times based on that one answer said that you've connected or that you've collected from the from the individual.
[00:06:30] Yeah, that's exactly right. Oh, interesting.
[00:06:32] And I guess, are there any particular successful, particularly successful areas where this gets applied and areas that it's not so effective? I mean, give me give me a sense of where where this becomes helpful in terms of looking at organizational performance or management strategy, where where are the kind of the pros and cons or where are the particularly beneficial areas and the areas that it's not so applicable or not so helpful? Yeah.
[00:06:56] I can see a lot of companies like to use it at the recruitment stage. So you're getting an understanding right at the very beginning. What I would say is you never use this as an a tool on its own. You always use it as a part of the recruitment process. The ideal when you do use it at the very beginning, you're sitting that person out with a path as to how you can educate them from the very first day that they walk in the door. So if they've completed the profile as part of their recruitment, you can automatically receive a coach's package. That coach's package would be tailored to that individual. So you know how to educate them over the coming year to use Accenture. And then you can always continually redo the profile so you can see if they have grown in that role, grown in that role in terms of how they interacting with others.
[00:07:43] So you actually need to create kind of a management tool or a management template or a management path to help help figure out how to best kind of coach and train the individual once they come on board.
[00:07:54] Yeah, well, what's good about the rich ecosystem is because it's a subscription model that you have access to all the tools. So it's no longer just for the manager, it's no longer just for recruitment. Everyone can have access to these tools. So even if it was someone coming in as customer service and they're at the very beginning of their career, they do the profile once and it automatically creates a coaches pack for that individual.
[00:08:20] Got it. And how do you need to retest this? I mean, what's your what's your experience or what do you. What do you notice the like as an employee develops or grows and evolves over time? How often are you retesting to kind of get a fresh profile? Yeah, it really depends on the company and it depends on the job title that they're reading potentially.
[00:08:39] You know, you could do it every month. The idea is you want to see a growth in their reach. So the rich ecosystem that the psychometric profile tool that's within that identifies your current reach on a ratio out of five. So, for instance, if I went to a driver, I might think I'm very good at adapting to do the other profile, too. I might think I'm quite good as a coach. However, when I do the profile it identifies, I'm not very good head reacting to interacting with the coach. So if I did that at the beginning of the month, if I did it and then I received some coaching, it would be really good to go back at the end of that month to see if my reach to that coach profile has grown.
[00:09:21] So how much as the profile kind of role based and how much of it is just general general framework? Yeah, we do have some profiles that are particularly role based around silos and leadership.
[00:09:33] Majority of it is back to the individual. So a lot of it's based around communication and your preferred style of interacting. And that's junior. That's a set up. There's a makeup for everyone.
[00:09:45] Got it. Got it. And in terms of, you know, once you have the profile, how do you envision or how do you, you know, help cable companies or managers use use the profile when it comes to actually coaching? Like what's the what's the translation from? All right. Here's the profile of a person that I'm managing, the person that I'm coaching to. Here are the discussions I should have. Here are the suggestions I should make. Like, what's that process look like in terms of helping? Use it as a development tool? Yeah.
[00:10:11] So this is a good one because the coaches package could be done internally within the company. Or you may use an external facilitator or coach. Externally, uncertainty coaches can provide them with activities to use. Now it also sits not that it's a 13 week or 26 week coach's package. However, you can define it and make it similar if you wish and go directly to a specific activity that you know that individual lacks. So, for instance, if we found that the person identified wasn't very good at goal setting and there would be an activity around focusing on, let's help you improve on goal setting. So in terms of who uses it and what's the timing and the ratio, it's all company and individual dependent. But we try and set it up as from day one when people are recruited. So let's let's put them on a on a training camp.
[00:11:03] The very first step in that, do you know and how much? I'm always kind of curious people in this kind of space of coaching and organizational development.
[00:11:11] Like how how much do you see people being able to change or what parts of the profile do you see are more kind of malleable or people can actually impact? And in which areas do you find, you know, people are kind of you know, once they're kind of wired a certain way, they are just not it's difficult or extremely kind of costly for them to really make changes on.
[00:11:33] Do you see any patterns or areas that people are more successful in changing than others? Curious what you noticed.
[00:11:39] Yeah, that's a really good question. We are born the way that we are and we do find it sometimes difficult to change ourselves. It's not necessary that changing ourselves because we always still have that natural ingrained way that we prefer to communicate and interact with others. But it's becoming more self-aware, knowing, right? It's time for me to adapt now. Professor Doug Walder, who has created the reach profiling based on many studies around this. And we always do have an element where we'll never change from the profile that we were going to base. For instance, I am a driver.
[00:12:15] Whether that's a good or a bad thing, I know it is. It's both, I'm sure.
[00:12:21] And I know I'll never be a counselor by default. That's not my style. That's not who I am.
[00:12:26] But I have become more aware when it's time for me to become into that course. Put that counselor hat on. So Professor Doug Loder has done many studies around this and people do grow their reach to step into the other profiles, but they never move from their original profile.
[00:12:42] Yeah, I think that's an important point, because I think a lot of people approach these kind of these profiles and the assessments and the coaching processes that I've got to figure out how to change people. And the fact is you're not going to change people. You can help them develop strategies and capabilities and tools to be able to perform or to adapt into different situations based on the needs and the outcomes. But the fundamentals are very difficult. I mean, I find that there are sometimes there are big life events that will kind of rock people's worlds a little bit and they will have big shifts in their profiles. But, you know, they're not because of coaching, because if you know something, something's changed in their core that that ends up changing the profile.
[00:13:23] The other one I find is that, you know, all of these profiles, there's kind of a dark side and a light side. Right. That that that, you know, every profile can excel very, very well in some context and then will, you know, struggle in other contexts. How much do you map or how much do you see this is or kind of provide the kind of tools around helping people understand based on how they're testing or tip based on their second match, your profile, how contexts are going to potentially, you know, help them or they're going to be sexual in and not successful in and be aware of when they're in those situations. I guess how much of this is context specific? The question bears.
[00:14:02] So there's never a good and a bad side of the profile is just a what really works for you and you may not work for somebody else. So and I'm not sure I'm going to answer this correctly for you, though. So in regards to we always like to highlight the strengths and we know that's what works really well for us. We just need to know when I'm speaking with somebody else who is of a different profile, that I recognize their strengths as well. Yes. And that's kind of where I'm leading towards for that into their brains. I'm not sure that helps you.
[00:14:32] That's kind of what I'm getting at, which is that if I'm if I'm speaking to someone who is of a similar profile, you know, I'm gonna have there's going to be a certain synergy or there's gonna be a certain feeling of compatibility or natural ness around it versus vice. If I'm working with somebody who has a very different profile than I do, I'm gonna feel a lot more kind of disjointed ness. And so, you know, understanding that, recognizing that that is what's happening and then figuring out how can I adjust my strategy or my behavior or my communication style around us to better suit who they are.
[00:15:07] I would say that I guess the the phrase of communication, the communication strategy is one in which you are heard, not one in which you say things like how do you how do you adjust what you're going to do based on their style so that they can. They can actually hear what you're trying to say rather than you just, you know, speaking louder or speaking more quickly.
[00:15:25] Yeah. And that's the golden question, right? That's when we nailed being a leader and now being an awesome employee and now being successful when we can truly identify how we need to adapt to get the best outcome from the other person. It's not about me getting the best communication across. It's about me then getting the best understanding of what I need them to do or where we need to go to, etc.. And that's the hardest thing. The hardest thing is knowing I'm very comfortable with how I talk. But I may not be very comfortable as to how they learn or understand. And that's the time we've got to take to slow it down and make sure we're communicating for the other person to understand and not for us to get the information across.
[00:16:06] Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about leadership. I mean, I know you work with kind of various stages or various levels of of people when you start to move into the higher levels.
[00:16:17] Know senior vice presidents, the vice presidents, the C suite CEOs.
[00:16:21] What is how does this kind of change or how does the application of this change in terms of how the assessment works, how the second metric kind of process works, and how it gets applied from a coaching point of view? Is there any differences to this or is it pretty much the same regardless of the level of person? Yeah.
[00:16:36] The leadership questionnaire is different because we're aiming at leadership competencies. So that is different in regards to the coaches pack that is determined or tailored for that person who's just done the leadership profile.
[00:16:49] It is still round the basics of communication. So if we found that leader was not good at goal setting, it wouldn't matter whether they're a leader or a supervisor or a team mate. The activity around goal setting is still the same. However, the communication of that goal setting to his team may be different whether their leader, a supervisor or a teammate.
[00:17:12] So let's talk a little bit about Rich. So you've developed or you use the technology or the profiling science, the tool around it put together the rich quotient and the ecosystem. How. Who are you targeting for this platform? How are you currently selling like water? What have you ever you built a business around the science and the profiling tools that you have in the reach ecosystem is for any size company and or an individual who is a consultant or a coach.
[00:17:40] And that's the beauty of the tools.
[00:17:42] It's a subscription model. So it's based on company size. And we're finding at the moment it's the mid, mid level companies around the thousand staff Mark. Yes. Picking it up the easiest one because they don't necessarily have to go and certify their trainers to pick it up and understand it because they probably already have a profile accreditation for another brand. And because of our terminology and we've kept it simple across each of the profiles, it's made it easy for them to pick up and run. So that that's been a good thing for them. In regards to that, our our feedback, our 360 tool. We we've met we've kept it so simple that it's three minutes to take. It's no more laborious and costing thousands of dollars for one manager to do a profile and having, you know, five colleagues or peers having to spend an hour completing the 360. We've made it a three minute process. And so we're finding that mid company level, the thousand people, Mark, is picking it up because they find it easy to use and they don't have to have a massive internal conflict and discussion around. Are we going to switch from the five current providers we have? No. We're going to try this one out, which we don't need to necessarily go and get further study for. And we're having one tool or one access to many tools and it's using all the same terminology. So we're finding that's our current sweet spot when we go to a big company, which is where we would love to tackle their very used to using many different providers so they wouldn't use one company for their 360 feedback and probably spend a fortune each year and they keep it for their managers only. So they're keeping at the top end. Then they're producing another company to provide their cultural survey and then another company for their recruitment psychometric profiling. So for them to make that change, that's a longer term commitment. And and we're just not there with them yet, you know, in a sense.
[00:19:34] And now I'm curious. So how did you get this down to three minutes? Like, what was the or the strategies you used or prior positions you made to get the 360? Because I've certainly been part of 360 processes. I've been part of implementations of 360 processes that are quite laborious and time consuming.
[00:19:53] And the idea of a three minute 360 is extremely appealing to do this.
[00:19:58] I'd probably need to send you to Professor Doug Waldo to get the science behind it. But in simple terms, he just took back. What was the core questions. You really need to identify an answer as to whether this manager is doing a good job and he's just brought it back to the key competencies with an individual. There's still questions or opportunities to write comments based on per question. The manager gets that feedback. It is all anonymous, like all three 60s. But yet we've just brought it back to what were the key things we really need to know. And then if they do find there is a big issue, then it becomes, you know, it could be a further coaching or a further to do a deeper dive, a deeper dive.
[00:20:37] And any particular industries that you've found have been particularly, you know, that I found this process particularly useful or constructive in terms of helping them develop their people.
[00:20:47] Nowhere across a wide range of industries and companies. So countries, I should say.
[00:20:52] So, for instance, where in South Africa at the moment with the mining company and then in Australia where working with a lot in health. So it's a tool that can be used across any industry. And what's awesome about it across every country.
[00:21:06] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:07] Do you find any either cultural or kind of country, region based? You know, differences or issues? Or do you have you had to address anything that's work? And that's a good question, I should stipulate.
[00:21:19] We have not modified it to be different languages at this point in time. Yeah, you're English. I was working with a client in Malaysia recently. She aren't exactly the same question and she was pitching to a company for the rich ecosystem. She asked the same thing. How have you want to fund it for the Malaysian culture? And Professor Doug Wilder, his terms, he says, we have said if I'd done case studies around ten thousand plus individuals across different cultures, et cetera, and we've never once come across that there is a difference.
[00:21:50] I mean, from a firm in terms of how the results that you're getting independent of language are something that someone can read the question that the results that they're getting are consistent across cultures. Okay. So it's really just a translation translation process. Interesting.
[00:22:04] And in terms of the growth of the business, how how many countries are you in or where like whereas your current client base located, where have you been focusing on expanding just from getting this out into the world point of view? Where are you? Yeah, it's APD training, which works alongside Rich Ecosystem is currently in eight countries and we've delivered.
[00:22:25] That's means we're officially set up as a local entity and we've delivered to over 13 countries. We have some rich ecosystem partners and we have one in America that has clients, one in South Africa, some in Europe. So to be honest, I wouldn't know if we're in every country of the world at this point in time, but that is the ideal goal. We in a lot of countries. So and that's the beauty of the rich ecosystem, that it's not specific for one particular culture in one particular area.
[00:22:54] And I mean, it sounds like this is fairly technically enabled. What however you approach the whole kind of technical development process and what have been some of the wins and challenges of creating kind of the technology to really drive all this? Yeah.
[00:23:08] Technology is the key. To be honest, and we've all experienced how much technology can help and hinder a business. So we're still in creation mode to ensure that we can cover every currency, which is one of our key things. And I don't think it's a technology or the platform of the dashboard for the Ricoh ecosystem where our concern is. Our concern is ensuring that we have the currency set up for whenever we go to a new country and to make sure that the taxes paid locally. That would be our biggest our our trickiest thing to make sure that we manage. We have a great team that's been with us for 10 years that has been building our platform for PDA training to make it global. And we've really just flipped it on its head to ensure that the rich ecosystem works the same way.
[00:23:52] You know, I spend a lot of years in technology and hunches that go up. And so tell us a little bit about you're role as good as God.
[00:24:01] As global operations director, what what is your primary focus and what is your day to day like in terms of helping the business grow and expand and be successful? Yeah.
[00:24:10] And what my role does change every day, as I'm sure in the technical terms of gods and their role does change. So my mind, my passion, my ideals that I would like to be doing every day is looking into new countries where professional development is required and seeing what we can do. So I would go into a new country. I do all the do all the background checks, et cetera, making sure that it's a viable business. And then I would go in and set up the local entity and bring all our trainers on board or all our specialists that would be doing on delivery. Well, what what's pretty awesome about the way we have set up and used our technology, our head office is in Brisbane, Australia, and we're managing the eight countries locally here in Brisbane, Australia. So the technology has been key from that perspective. And I definitely couldn't do what I want to do, go into a new country and have it set up within 24 hours. If the technology wasn't set up for me.
[00:25:04] Excellent. Yeah, it's exciting. I mean, I think that this the profiling, you know, really understanding psychometric, how people communicate, how people are wired is key for any service based organisation just because you are fundamentally dealing with people and sort of the beauty and the challenge with people is they're all different.
[00:25:21] You know, there is a lot of diversity in many, many facets or many ways inside businesses that deal with people and dealing with clients and the whole kind of dynamic that comes with that.
[00:25:31] So this isn't really helpful. If people want to find out more about reach about PD, about you, what's the best way to get that information? Yeah.
[00:25:38] So for the rich ecosystem, you could go to www.reachquotient.com for PD training, which is our corporate training organization. That would be www.pdtrainingglobal.com. So you can see all the countries that we're positioned in. And if it's for me personally, I'd love for you to connect with me on LinkedIn, which is Karen Winfield.
[00:26:00] And I'll make sure that those links are in the show notes so people can click through and get those. Karen, thank you so much for taking the time. It's been a real pleasure. I love I love of the science of people. So this is a great topic and I'm thankful that you took the time to speak with us.
[00:26:15] That's OK. Thank you very much, Bruce.
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