Development Centres

In a story

Ivan is a hard-working specialist, he is respected and people seek his advice. His superior is nearing the retirement age and the Company is considering finding and grooming a replacement in the New Talents Project. The superior recommended Ivan as his potential successor.

Ivan participated at a Development Centre aimed at identifying his strengths and development areas as a future manager. The DC included model situations, e.g.giving task to a subordinate or solving a real problem with a team. After each model situation he was told how others felt about his behaviour, what works and what to avoid. He also made several case studies, psychodiagnostic tests and had to solve a task with his peers.

A week later he received detailed feedback from the psychologist who ran the Development Centre. They covered all the model situations again plus results of the tests and Ivan had a number of questions.

This experience convinced Ivan he can lead people and gave him an idea what he needs to work on. The DC output, individual education plan, will help him improve the skills he needs.

 
  • A Development Centre is a diagnostic and development method focused on so-called soft skills – social and communicative abilities and managerial competences. It identifies strengths and development areas of employees. The DC is an ideal precursor to courses as employees realize why a given course is recommended and better identify with the need to develop these areas.
  • The Development Centre programme is tailor-made, based on the client’s demands.
  • Development Centre is usually led by two experienced psychologists – diagnosticians and one trained consultant.
  • Our Development Centres use methods verified in Czech environment.
  • Should You have unusual demands for a Development Centre, our highly qualified team of methodologists, statisticians and diagnosticians will design and test an entirely new method for You.
  • A Development Centre is solely for employees of the client.
  • Development Centre assessment includes detailed characterisation of a participant, plus a recommendation for further development.
  • Development Centre feedback is provided as intensive coaching interview led by an experienced psychologist – coach. In the interview we try to motivate and inspire the participants to further development. As a side effect, the work attitude and willingness to change of the assessed also often improves.

Previous Experience

  • We have been setting up Development Centres for many years, for financial institutions, media, insurance, engineering, food, pharmaceutical and service companies, non-profit organisations.
  • We have run Development Centres for companies with dozens as well as thousands of employees.
  • We have experience with Development Centres based on various criteria, for specialists, sales personnel, management (lower, middle, upper) and trainee projects.
  • We have learned from mistakes often made by our competition, which lead to wrong conclusions from Development Centres – we work with good, experienced and qualified assessors (often with a Ph.D. and over 15 years of experience); we supplement our methods with projective diagnostics, which is not influenced by the self-stylization of the candidate; and finally – we use methods proven to work in Czech environment.
  • Feedback is partially provided to the participants already during the Development Centre.
  • We have ample experience with complex development projects – from identifying the expectations through communicating the project to employees, running a Development Centre up to setting up both „urgent“ and long-term education targets, including a framework providing running feedback on the success of the project and enabling further adjustments if needed.
  • We pass on our experience to present and future colleagues – we teach Employee Education Methods at the Department of Andragogics of the Philosophical Faculty of the Charles University and Methods of Employee Evaluation, Education and Personal Development at MBA Courses.
  • We have published two books and a number of articles on Development Centres.
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