I am sitting with a client who is discussing one of their best employees: “I’m having problems with Jim. He’s a real star, and definitely one of our best performers, but we just don’t think he’s promotable and we’re not sure why.” Sometimes people want to tell me about someone’s behavior but don’t know where to start. I have the same issue myself. Sometimes I need to describe a behavior for a client so I get across the main points without a lot of other detail and emotion. As a psychologist I was trained in a simple method of describing behavior that works for everyone.
Succinct behavioral descriptions
The essence of good descriptions about behavior is the STAR model. I use it to walk a person around a complete picture of a behavior in an objective way:
o Situation
o Tension between the options they face and what they need to get done
o Actions taken
o Results or changes caused by these actions
I don’t know what someone’s behavior is really like until I know the situation, tension, actions and results. The STAR is a simple way to structure a behavior description or questions about behavior in an impactful way. Whether you are delivering a briefing, an elevator speech or an answer to an interview question the STAR enables you to describe the key points in your own behavior or someone else’s in a clear and simple way.
A couple of quick examples
Interview question: What are your greatest strengths? Answer: Projects like last year’s sales conference,(S) where I was the leader of a broad group of people from different areas, (T). I really got involved in working side by side with the team every day, (A). We delivered on time and under budget, and got an excellent review in the trade journal, (R).
Elevator speech: When executives are looking for credible resources to help them with difficult people issues, (S), I coach and guide them through their options, (T), show them how to treat staff with dignity and respect, (A), and help them avoid litigation and poor performance, (R).
Personal Referral: When there were customer complaints, (S), and Billy worked the phones handling enquiries and requests, (T) he was always able to understand what customers wanted and fix their problems, (A), so they kept doing business with the company, (R).
You get the idea. These are simple examples and you can imagine that if you wanted to know more about any one of the areas you could hone in for more details. If I wanted to tell you Billy was suitable for your vacancy the example above would be much more useful to you than if I said “Billy was good at handling customer complaints”. The STAR would give you a way of structuring what else you might want to know. It might be important to know more about when the complaints happened, (S), or the fact that Billy was responsible for dealing with the customer only on the phone, (T). It could be important to know what Billy did to fix the problems, (A), and how we know that the customers kept doing business the company, (R).
A client wanted to practice an important meeting they had planned with one of their board members. We used the STAR to hone in on what the situation really looked like to them, and what they really wanted to get out of the meeting before we moved on to what she would do and the results to look out for.
Remember the client I started with, the one discussing their high potential employee? I want to help and start by asking questions. “When do they perform highly, (S)? What are they responsible for, (T)? What do they actually do that is so good, (A)? What results are they getting, (R)?”
Because of our conversation and questions we began to see the employee’s performance a little differently. There were some situations when the employee really shined and others where they weren’t so good. When we looked at their responsibilities it turned out the employee was good at some things that weren’t so important, and not so good at other things that were critical. Because some of the results were stellar some people thought the person was a star, while other people were giving more weighting to some of the not so good outcomes. The great results were actually masking significant flaws, and we were able to drill down and design corrective actions that were relevant to specific situations.
Once people learn the STAR approach it changes the way they think about behavior. Describing behavior becomes easier, and communicating the important aspects of behavior becomes simpler.
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