By Lorie Hunchak, CHRP

The Association for Psychological Type International (APTi) recently awarded honours to Elaine Jones, executive director, Strategic Human Resources Branch (SHRB), BC Ministry of Finance.  Jones and her SHR team received the Otto Kroeger Organizational Excellence Award, which honours an organization outside the field of psychological type for ethically using type to improve its business practices and the work lives of its employees.

Jones has more than 20 years of professional human resource and organization development experience, both as an internal and external consultant, working for major organizations in Canada and the United States. She has dedicated her career to helping executives, leaders and organizations achieve business results and strives to provide service and quality excellence to her clients.

“It has been quite a journey,” said Jones. “A wonderful, rewarding journey – for me, for the SHRB team, and for its ministry clients, many of whom experienced the opportunity for self-awareness and growth for the very first time in their careers, and for the organization which has built a culture of trust and high performance, with succession plans to ensure leadership continuity that will deliver the future vision.”

In 2006, when Jones joined the BC Public Service, she had a vision of developing an organization with a positive and supportive culture that values diversity and inclusiveness, provides continuous learning and personal growth for employees and leaders, and creates a work environment to attract, engage and retain talent to deliver business results.  Jones wanted to spread the word about using the MBTI instrument as one of several organization development tools and interventions to deliver this vision.  Over time, nine SHRB team members became certified in MBTI and other assessment tools to support this vision.

With the support of the ministry’s executive team, the SHRB undertook a leadership development program to address succession and leadership needs at the director and executive director levels.  The MBTI instrument was a cornerstone of the assessment process, along with the FIRO-B (Fundamental Interpersonal Relations-Behaviours) and the CPI 260 Leadership Characteristics instruments, and 360 degree feedback.  Seventy high-potential employees each received up to seven hours of debriefing and individual leadership development planning. Every high-potential employee has had the opportunity to reflect on their current and future role as leaders in a holistic manner, their impact on interpersonal and team dynamics, and contribute to building a culture of diversity and results.

The SHRB has utilized the MBTI tool to strengthen leadership teams within several branches, providing each senior manager and their teams with individual debriefings followed by team sessions focused on communication, stress, conflict, and change management.  The result has been an increased understanding of personal responses to team pressures and improved communication and collaboration within management teams.  Annual supervisory and executive level management engagement scores have continued to increase year after year, with direct links to improved business results in participating branches.

Adapted from an article printed on the BC Public Service @Work intranet

Lorie Hunchak, CHRP, is the president of IH and Associates Consulting Ltd. As a human resources consultant, Lorie focuses on delivering high quality results and solutions to complex organizational issues and facilitates a range of leadership, personal accountability, change management and employee retention and development programs.