a holistic approach to coaching aims to develop the whole person.
It was once conventional wisdom that great leaders were born, not made. To succeed at work, one must have certain qualities that help achieve and inspire greatness in others. Over time, through advances in behavioral science and organizational psychology, weve actually learned that successful leaders can come from anywhere in an organization. With the right help, we can all cultivate ways of thinking and acting that help us lead. Show
Thats good news for your organization, because in the modern workforce its not only formal management who need to engage in leadership behaviors effective leadership is becoming essential for all members of a team. Due to the new hybrid work environment, the way we work and live has changed, and so have the drivers behind employee productivity, job satisfaction, and well-being. With the lines between home-self and work-self blurred, a more holistic approach is needed to thrive in this next normal. Research shows that when we bring our whole selves to work, were more creative and perform better. Thats why BetterUp created the Whole Person Model (WPM) to measure the mindsets and behaviors that research shows lead to peak performance, enhanced well-being, and strong company culture. The WPM helps track employee growth over time and better understand ways to drive lasting change for your entire organization. Re-envisioning leadership developmentWhile many traditional leadership approaches typically focus on one aspect of an employees day-to-day work life, the Whole Person Model takes a more comprehensive approach. When we show up at work, we bring our complete selves, so its important to make investments in thriving behaviors like rest and emotional regulation that are proven to impact how we lead and interact with others, along with the quality of our work. Take rest, for example its not typically measured on traditional leadership assessments but it plays an important role in our success. Studies show that 40% of people in corporate jobs get less than 6 hours of sleep a night, and that even missing one night of sleep leads to decreased innovation2. Rest is just one of many examples that highlight the need for organizations to do more than simply call for their leaders to be innovative and influential. Without strengthening the underlying behaviors that promote that kind of success, organizations miss the first step of what influences how an employee can show up at work. BetterUp has gathered billions of employee data points that help us understand the behaviors that lead to thriving as a person and inspiring as a leader.To re-envision leadership development and assessment, our Whole Person Model was developed by a team of 8 PhDs and 3 MAs with expertise in psychology and leadership, drawing from literature in management science, organizational psychology, and positive psychology. In addition, the WPM was reviewed by members of BetterUps Science Board including the father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, PhD. Our Whole Person Model was specifically designed to reflect behaviors that:
BetterUps Whole Person Model accounts for mindsets, behaviors, and outcomes that drive employee success.The Whole Person Model has three core components:
When employees complete their initial Whole Person Assessment, their results will help them and their BetterUp Coach identify areas of focus for their ongoing work together. Rather than uncovering static, fixed qualities, the WPM allows both the employee and the organization to receive and act upon regular pulse insights of behavior change. Drive greater and sustained organizational impactBetterUp Labs research has found that several of the top predictors of employee productivity and performance the thriving and inspiring behaviors above tend to be underemphasized by organizations. Traditional assessments and leadership approaches fail to account for these predictors, and accompanying training seldom drives long-term and sustained impact. Heres how the Whole Person Model helps change that: Understand where employees are strongest and where they can develop furtherThe Whole Person Model helps organizations and their employees better understand the attitudes, beliefs, and skills associated with thriving and optimal performance, like growth mindset, optimism, and resilience. This insight paints a more accurate and complete picture of a persons strengths and areas for development. Paired with BetterUp coaching and BetterUps behavioral insights, the WPM offers a more effective method for developing a persons abilities to succeed. BetterUp coaching improves leadership skills by 29% for those who start low. Those employees with higher inspiring leadership skills are 1.5x more likely to lead agile teams, 1.4x more likely to have high team engagement, and 1.6x more likely to have high team innovation.
Read case study Drive ongoing and sustained resultsA key strength of the Whole Person Model is the personalized development plan it provides. Every employee receives the clarity needed to create an impactful coaching relationship. Unlike traditional assessments, the WPM helps employees sustain progress over time, because learning is tailored to their needs and goals. This personalization helps make coaching engagements just as scalable but also more effective than company-wide training. Employees lose up to 75% of the information they receive through traditional approaches to learning and development (including learning management systems, episodic trainings, and workshops) an effect known as the training transfer problem. Because of the steep forgetting curve, short and spaced learning episodes result in more knowledge retention and greater results. Many of todays leadership approaches also miss a key factor for developing leaders who can sustain high performance year after year, especially in the face of uncertainty: the psychological resources needed to continuously learn, stay socially receptive, and sustain high levels of performance. Our Whole Person Model is designed so that employees start by building the right mindsets that will drive ongoing growth in crucial leadership behaviors. The personalized context of BetterUps coaching is what makes this successful. We see around a 2x increase in self-efficacy in the employees who started out with initially low levels. Track employee outcomes in real time. Ninety-six percent of employees say BetterUp is a valuable use of time, which leads to ongoing engagement with their coach and the repetitive spacing in learning that results in lasting behavior change for them and ROI for your organization.
Read case study Get insights you need to measure effectiveness and ROIEach employee starts their BetterUp journey with a confidential Whole Person Assessment to get a baseline of their development. The results of your employee assessments feed into an aggregated and anonymized dashboard that visualizes the real-time effectiveness of BetterUp and its impact on your people. Youll also get access to BetterUp behavioral insights to help you understand performance with each group's baseline results, benchmarked against your industry and their leadership level. These benchmarks help you to track trends and progress related to how far your team has come and understand how to invest in further learning and development initiatives at an organizational level. Get access to trends and data your organization needs.
Read case study Provide a transformative and engaging experience for employeesBy highlighting key growth opportunities for each individual, the WPM helps inform a tailored developmental journey that employees engage with through coaching, content, and resources. Here's how it works for your people: Assessments backed by scienceFor employees, getting started with BetterUp means taking the Whole Person Assessment. This 15-20 minute exercise is an engaging way to help measure key mindsets, behaviors, and outcomes while boosting awareness of strengths and opportunities for further development. From the information that employees share in their Whole Person Assessment, BetterUp personalizes their experience with unique Coach match suggestions (with 97% accuracy), content aligned to their needs and goals, and various coaching engagements to meet them where they're at. A development journey tailored for every employees needs. We collect over 150 additional unique data points, compared to traditional coaching arrangements, from your employees, Coaches, their teams and managers, and from our platform itself. We then stack up reports against industry benchmarks for leader behavioral skills most critical for the workforce today.
Seamless onramp to coachingThe Whole Person Assessment provides a jumping off point for the coaching relationship. The personalized results help each employee and their Coach customize learning and set focused goals with a plan for growth and development whether it's to increase focus, strengthen communication skills, learn to manage stress, and more. The WPM allows employees to hone in on how they can best show up in their personal and work lives and develop mindsets most vital to them. By unlocking the best version of themselves, your organization is helping to empower employees to reach their fullest potential.
Ongoing check-ins and accountabilityTo provide sustained impact and accountability, leadership training and learning needs to be ongoing. Unlike other assessments, the WPM is continuous and evolving, which provides employees with opportunities to check in and adapt with their goals along the coaching journey. Employees can track progress on their goals and even loop in their managers. Periodic assessments occur every four months to help track progress over time, and 360° feedback allows employees to collect necessary input from colleagues on key leadership behaviors that provide accountability to their teams and help further inform the coaching process.
Bring the Whole Person Model to your organizationWhether your organization aims to increase productivity and resilience, boost diversity, belonging, and inclusion efforts, or drive peak performance, how every individual shows up in all aspects of their life plays a significant role in achieving those goals. Through personalized, ongoing coaching, organizational leaders finally have the tools, techniques, and data at their disposal to create lasting change and leadership development at scale. 1 Debebe & Reinert, 2014; Wright & Cropanzano, 2000 2 Barnes, Christopher M. (2018). Sleep well, lead better. Harvard Business Review 3 BetterUp Labs member data, 2021 4 Murre, J. M., & Dros, J. (2015). Replication and analysis of Ebbinghaus forgetting curve. PloS one, 10(7), e0120644 5 Baldwin, T. T., & Ford, J. K. (1988). Transfer of training: A review and directions for future research. Personnel psychology, 41(1) |