SCANNER FREEMONT / Data Analyst
Freemont is responsible for the digital conversion of survey responses while adhering to strict quality standards set forth by its managers. Freemont began its career at TruScore in 1996 as a Data Analyst and quickly became pivotal to TruScore's success. As the years passed, Freemont has slowly matured into part-time Data Analyst while also holding many positions in the work environment including On The Floor, On The Empty Desk, and Hold The Door (AKA Hodor).
RON SACCHI / Master Coach
A former Operations Manager in the High Tech Industry, Ron Sacchi brings decades of leadership and management experience to the organizational development and the executive coaching arena. An energetic thought-leader with a track record of success in all areas of Human Capital development, he has consulted and coached managers in start-ups, joint-ventures, high tech, pharmaceuticals, and media. Because of his business acumen and creative approaches to behavioral change, he is respected in the HR community specifically for the ability to direct, motivate, influence and inspire leaders to improve performance.
Holding an MBA from Saint Mary’s College, Mr. Sacchi is also licensed in various management, leadership and psychological profiling tools.
CARLANN FERGUSSON / Master Coach
Carlann inspires leaders to reconnect to their individual purpose and lead with contagious energy. She ensures leaders gain deep self-awareness and eliminate self-sabotaging behaviors. Her guidance is based on coaching, training and selecting hundreds of executives across diverse companies as well as her own journey into the executive ranks.
Carlann is the author of the highly acclaimed book The Insightful Leader: Find Your Superpowers, Crush Limiting Beliefs and Abolish Self-Sabotaging Behaviors (Praeger, June 2018). She holds a master’s degree in Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Her thirty years of experience include leadership roles in Fortune 500s, the private sector, and the U.S. Government. Carlann has been a featured guest on ABC News Radio, Wharton Business Radio and has been cited in CBS MoneyWatch, International Business Times, Newsday and Workday.
DR CHUCH MELTZER / Master Coach
Dr. Chuck Meltzer is a Master Coach and President of the SynTECGroup, an organizational development consulting firm. As an executive coach, he draws on his training at a doctoral level in psychology, direct senior management experience and management consulting with a wide cross section of industries. He has developed an extensive series of strategies to assist leaders in creating organizational wide and personal change. Dr. Meltzer has a decade of direct senior management experience and 20 years’ experience functioning within his consulting and coaching practice. His coaching approach is solution focused and time framed. Based on determined goals, a personally customized approach to the process has enabled his clients to realize sustainable change in a manner that allows them to enhance their effectiveness and success as leaders within their organization.
Dr. Meltzer is certified and a master trainer in several coaching assessment tools that he employs within his practice.
ERIN HIRSCHLAND / Master Coach
Erin is an organization development expert with nearly two decades experience serving organizations of all sizes across industries on a broad range of issues. Working with leadership teams, she helps articulate an actionable vision and corresponding values, connecting these to organizational strategy, execution and results. Her tools of choice include senior team retreats, one-on-one executive coaching and proven survey and related instruments.
Erin’s additional expertise includes designing employee selection systems, developing performance management tools that increase performance across the organization over time and employee and customer experience metrics. An effective facilitator and coach, Erin works with leaders and their teams to build trust, commitment and results.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Master of Arts degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Colorado.
SONYA D HAMILTON / Senior Assessment Consultant
Sonya is a Senior Assessment Consultant at TruScore with over 24 years of experience designing and delivering 360 feedback solutions and providing 360-based coaching, training and interpretation.
Sonya has extensive experience working with Managers and Leaders, guiding them through the feedback and development journey and providing insights and direction to help maximize their impact within the organization. Sonya’s areas of expertise include 360-based coaching, 360 data analysis and interpretation, Train-the-Trainer certifications, facilitation, survey & questionnaire design, and the design and delivery of assessment programs.
Sonya has a Bachelor’s degree in psychology and a Master’s of Science degree in Industrial & Organization Psychology from Springfield College with a specialty in Counseling and Psychological Services. She is a Master Trainer for TruScore and the Clark Wilson Task Cycle surveys receiving a Certificate of Achievement in “How to Train a Trainer”. In addition, Sonya is certified to administer a variety of other psychometric instruments including employee engagement and organizational instruments as well as the line of Hogan Personality Assessments.
KAYLEY MOTZ / Assessment Advisor
Kayley draws on her extensive customer service background to provide clients with prompt, quality support. In her role as Assessment Advisor, Kayley works to ensure clients’ needs are being met. She assists in project set up and management, as well as processing and quality checking feedback reports. Kayley also aids in the execution of the day-to-day responsibilities of the production team, such as coaching session scheduling and tech support.
CRYSTAL HUGHES / Assessment Advisor
Crystal leverages her extensive background in Industrial-Organizational (I-O) psychology as she manages the day-to-day operational and tactical aspects of multiple and large scale projects for TruScore.
Crystal assists clients with setting up and managing feedback projects, and serves as the point of contact throughout the entire process. She quality checks feedback reports, and provides tech support when needed.
ELLIE SOLOMON / Assessment Advisor
Ellie manages project implementation for the entire 360 assessment feedback process and ensures that each client’s unique needs are met on time and in an efficient manner. Ellie consults with clients who use TruScore’s off-the-shelf Task Cycle® instruments as well as providing hosting solutions for clients using their own survey content, including custom processes and reports. She helps clients navigate through the TruScore® survey hosting software, having literally written the handbook that several clients are using.
She coordinates and implements all translation efforts, including soliciting bids, managing timelines, providing files to the translation companies, implementing translations for the web pages, and testing.
ULLA WESTERMANN / Software Engineer
Ulla uses her years of experience as a software engineer to maintain and add new features to TruScore's applications. She also helps with customizing feedback reports based on client needs.
HANK CURTIS / Business Development Manager
Hank manages and assists in the analyzing, planning, research, and development of TruScore’s objectives and strategic plans in order to achieve business opportunities, growth, and financial profitability.
Hank drives the expansion of TruScore’s direct sales, establishes relationships with TruScore’s clients, identifies clients, and keeps up-to-date on industry trends and client developments.
TAYLOR BRANTON / Bookkeeper
Taylor is responsible for managing payroll and employee fringe benefits programs, in addition to organizing company gatherings and outings. Taylor oversees day to day accounting needs as it relates to client invoicing, accounts payable, and general compliance requirements. She also has a hand in month, quarter, and year end reports and works closely with the CEO and CTO to furnish details necessary to make accurate business projections and decisions.
KURT BLAZEK / Design Director
Kurt uses a unique blend of strategic thinking with dynamic executions to create TruScore’s visual and interactive design. He is responsible for creating, evolving, and sustaining the company’s brand to internal and external stakeholders through multiple mediums. He oversees all of TruScore’s digital strategies, along with the implementation of social media tools and techniques.
Kurt leverages TruScore’s marketing and messaging information to identify, evaluate, and apply methods to maximize the effectiveness of the search campaigns across all of the major search engines. He tracks and measures the ROI of search engine rankings, direct print, and marketing websites.
JOSH SHEETS / Chief Operations Officer
Josh is responsible for all day-to-day aspects of managing the operations and various functional areas including business development, sales and marketing, client delivery, vendor relations, human resources, and IT.
Josh helps to ensure outstanding customer service, and the administration of long-term and day-to-day business processes that complement the delivery of high quality, innovative customer-focused survey tools, assessments and hosted survey offerings.
TOM KUHNE / Managing Partner and CTO
Tom joined TruScore in 1995 and has served in a number of roles, including Data Analyst, IS Manager, and VP & CIO. In his current role as Managing Partner and CTO, Tom is the driving force behind TruScore's technology vision for the present and the future. He manages all aspects of TruScore’s information systems, ensuring all systems meet the highest functionality and security standards.
Tom enjoys working hand in hand with clients and partners to make sure TruScore® delivers the technology and advancement that has become expected of it as a leader in the online assessment marketplace.
DEREK MURPHY / Chief Executive Officer
Derek joined TruScore in 1996 and has served in a number of roles, including Data Analyst, Operations Manager, and President & COO. In his current role as CEO, he is responsible for planning and implementing the strategic direction of the company. In addition, Derek is involved in product development and overseeing the day-to-day business operations for TruScore.
TruScore founder Dr. Daniel Booth, a pioneer in the field of assessment of leadership and management skills, served as a mentor to Derek for more than a decade. During this time, Derek became certified on TruScore’s full line of management and leadership assessments. He currently uses these skills to lead content debriefings with customers and partners on a regular basis.
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Some view New Year’s resolutions with a healthy amount of skepticism. Probably because some of these resolutions can be pretty unrealistic – lose 50 pounds by February or strive to create the next Facebook. We’re not saying those goals can’t happen, but it might be better to start off a little small and take baby steps, if you will.
If you’re a leader and uninterested in making New Year’s resolutions, you should hear us out. Yes, in theory, you are the exact same person when the clock strikes midnight on Jan. 1, as you were at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 31. But, let’s face it; whether it’s a New Year or simply another day in March, there are always skills you can improve upon as a leader. So what’s wrong with starting the year working on improving those skills? It just makes it that much easier to evaluate your progress at the end of the year.
Here at Booth Co., we want you to start the New Year right. So here are three key skills that are leaders should exhibit, and since this is New Year’s theme post, we’ll call them “resolutions.”
3. Establish your performance expectations
While we would all like to believe our workers perform the best at all times, that is not always the case. The standard of performance is a measure of how others view your expectations of excellence. Effective leaders expect top performance and do not tolerate mediocrity. They have high expectations of the people around them, and have confidence that they will achieve the goals set forth.
Throughout the year, do you hold your workers accountable or let things slide a little too often? When you don’t set a standard, you probably are not getting the best out of your employees, and you may not know how to inspire them to perform at higher levels.
It’s important for you to be more clear and consistent about your performance expectations and track performance in a more systematic way. Involve employees in setting the team’s goals and objectives, and then track results.
Use your organization’s appraisal system more effectively to enforce the clear and specific goals you have established, but not just annually. Make sure you review progress on a monthly basis.
2. Communication
As the leader, you probably feel like you’re always talking and for good reason, leaders spend most of every day communicating with people – about goals, problems, strategies, and ideas. Once those ideas are clear, the leader needs to communicate how to make them a reality.
The ability to speak and write clearly is a crucial skill here and while most people probably believe they are fine in this area, this isn’t a skill that comes easily to everyone. Some leaders’ lack of communication skills may confuse and frustrate others because their expectations, requests and directions are unclear.
Maybe they ramble in their written or verbal communications, or they’re not articulate in expressing their point of view.
If you believe your communication skills could use some fine-tuning, start first by planning out your communications. Whether written or verbal communications, first write down the points you want to make. Do not bury your main points in the middle of a paragraph.
Another exercise is after you’ve made a speech or held a meeting, confirm that your message was clearly stated so ask your listeners to summarize what you have just said. Take this opportunity to clear up any misunderstandings; make note of what they were and how you can prevent similar misunderstandings in the future.
1. Leadership vision
There are many pieces of jargon thrown around the leadership world, but one word that is truly full of meaning is “vision,” which is really the cornerstone of leadership. Leaders must stimulate others to think in innovative ways. Try not to get stuck in traditional thinking because you’ll lose focus on the issues and ideas that will move the organization into the future.
And as a leader, it’s your job to consider the future. You should be open to change and flow easily with circumstances, and use your creative thinking to be on top of ambiguous situations.
Look at your organization’s environment. Are imagination and creativity encouraged? To encourage others toward creativity, listen to their ideas and allow differing ideas, discussion and reasonable conflict. Here’s a great point to keep in mind – creativity is the ability to generate fresh ideas, and it is a skill that can be learned.
At the same time, you don’t have to do this alone. One requirement of a good leader is to select good people who can work together to envision the future and generate enthusiasm for meeting goals.
Make it a point to create an “elevator message” as part of your plan to communicate your vision. This is a colorful story, metaphor, or saying that captures the essence of your vision and can be conveyed in less than 30 seconds (aka the length of a typical ride in an elevator).
There you have it, three skills for you to fine-tune going into 2013. Now when we get ready for 2014, be sure to look back at the year and see how much you’ve accomplished and improved upon.
