Finding our Ikigai - A Conversation with Milan Batinich

A Leadership Beyond

With a background in staffing, our guest this week, Milan Batinich developed a passion for helping companies and individuals find the right talent and the right work. He started with a company that utilized Predictive Index (PI) for their hiring. At first, he was not a believer, but came to see how powerful a behavioral assessment is in leveraging behaviors and drives to support creating alignment between the individual, the culture of the organization, and the work to be done.

From the foundation of staffing contact centers, Milan has become a certified PI trainer and is certified through Stanford University on human behaviors and how to coach people for high performance. Recently, Milan has launched a motivational speaking business helping leadership teams learn about finding their Ikigai (Japanese concept that combines the terms iki, meaning “alive” or “life,” and gai, meaning “benefit” or “worth”).

Among the key points emerging from our conversation:

• You can’t manage what you can’t measure. For example, Milan sites a company he worked for with 60 employees experiencing a 90% turnover. Using people data, this company lowered their annual attrition rate from 90% down to 14.9%.
• Knowing what the job entails and the requirements of the work both cognitively and behaviorally makes it possible to do a better job of matching people to work.
• Finding the right fit works as well for existing employees as it does for recruiting. Milan shares an example of two internal employees mismatched and the solution turned out to be switching roles. We tend to throw work at people and people at work. Predictive Index used with the Talent Optimization framework helps us be more intentional.
• Coaching becomes more effective when we understand ourselves, the person we are communicating with, and the shared goals we are striving toward. Without this awareness we tend to coach based on our own style.
• The default of most companies for motivation is extrinsic. We establish rewards and benefits but ignore the intrinsic motivation. Predictive Index helps uncover internal motivations.

Listen as Milan shares his insights and experience of using Predictive Index to optimize talent.

A Leadership Beyond exists to support the alignment between the business strategy and people strategy - to drive results with people not at the expense of people (Talent Optimization).

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