Dorene Burkhalter is an organizational analyst, coach, trainer, and workplace consultant. She is president of Paramount Potentials, an organizational development and human resource consulting firm. Her strategies. She is an active member of the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce where she serves on the Small Business Committee. She is married to Craig and resides in Pekin with their two children, Abbey and Dillon. They have lived in the Peoria area since 1986.
Tell us about your background.
I moved around quite a bit in my lifetime living in four different states—Illinois, Iowa, Wyoming, and California—but primarily in the two mid-western states. I have lived in Pekin for the past 10 years with my husband and two young-adult children.
I began college after having both of my children and being out of high school for nine years. I received my associate’s degree at Carl Sandberg College in Galesburg and my bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education at Illinois State University.
I was accepted into a very selective program at ISU the following year and completed by master’s degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology in 1996.
Who has had the most influence on your life?
Both of my parents have done more for me than they realize. Because of their continued love for one-another, commitment to their marriage, and their ability to unconditionally love me through all of my youthful blunders, I am able to do the same for not only my family, but for the professionals which I serve through my current practice.
They taught me to care about people, to accept people for whom they are, and to assist others in living a more effective and affective life, which in return makes my life very rich and satisfying.
In addition, there is a high school teacher, Mr. Theis, who saw in me more than I saw in myself and never gave up trying to teach me to lead.
He was a Distributive Education Clubs of America (Coop) instructor who allowed me to disagree with him, and assisted me in finding my own way of leading a group of high school students through our organizational challenges, their own initial careers, and the typical struggles regarding adolescent social-learning.
When did you go into business for yourself and why?
I began Paramount Potentials in November 1993. I was working for a human resource consulting firm and was at a point where I needed to balance my work, advanced studies, and personal life. I also was ready to more fully practice industrial and organizational psychology.
My vision for the company is to be known as a firm that successfully assists people and organizations to be more effective, and thus successful.
Our mission is to provide quality diagnostic, consulting, and educational services to the employer and its employees.
Whether it is through setting up systems which help people to work more effectively, conducting soft-skills training, selling instructional books, or coaching new supervisors, middle managers, and executives, Paramount Potentials is committed to assisting organizations and people to reach their fullest potential.
Who is a typical client, who is on staff, and how has your company grown?
Any organization needing human resource and organizational systems expertise can use our assistance. We work with small social service agencies, government institutes, insurance companies and Fortune 100 companies with staff ranging from as little as 50 employees to thousands of employees across the world.
Our staff is small, and in that way, remains on a personal level with our customers. I currently have on staff one administrative and two organizational psychologists.
Our company has grown in the services which we provide. When I beganin 1993, I mainly provided management, teambuilding, and interpersonal-related skills training.
Since then, we have developed career development and performance management systems for companies, a 13-module management development process, and facilitated organization-wide cultural change initiatives.
In addition, we now sell 14 instructional books. But the fastest growing service for our firm has been our leadership coaching program.
Explain the concept of executive coach. How can a coach be most helpful to an individual?
Providing the service of coaching has sometimes been a difficult concept to sell, and yet those who have purchased such a service have found coaching to be far more effective in being able to actually see an improvement in performance behavior than in any other developmental investment which they have made up to that point.
Our coaching program is a one-on-one developmental program which begins with the participant taking a battery of individual inventories regarding personality, career interests, and ability measures.
In addition, participants invite their supervisors, peers, and subordinates to provide feedback regarding their leadership competencies by distributing what is termed a 360 degree feedback assessment tool.
With these results, I guide the participant through an analysis process which helps them to more objectively identify their strengths and weaknesses.
After the individual has had time to ruminate over the feedback, I periodically meet with the participant to guide them through a goal setting process which lasts a minimum of one-year.
A coach is most helpful to an individual when the coach can get the individual to arrive at a solution to a problem which the participant knows in their heart will work and is the “right” thing to do.
Coaches can help individuals stay focused, in a pro-active mode of operation, and in tune with how their core values compare with the demands of the work environment.
You know how you always seem to not be able to get to the “important things” you need or want to do because of all the urgent demands put on you day-in and day-out?
Coaches help you address some of your important aspirations while still taking care of the demands of the day.
Has your gender helped or hindered your acceptance as a management consultant?
Yes and no. Since most top management positions remain occupied by males, and males communicate and thus network somewhat differently than females, I’m sure some male managers would be more comfortable hiring the same gender for consulting. But, when it comes to teaching and counseling (coaching) people in the work place, I believe either sex prefers the supportive and accepting style of a female.
Your office is located in your home. What are the pros and cons of a home-based business?
I can’t begin to explain how nice it is to work in the comfort of your home. The level of stress is at a minimum when you are successful at getting your family to respect your time and space, and you are in a place which feels like your very own haven.
I am able to accomplish so much more because I have so few interruptions. Creative juices flow so much better because of the above mentioned conditions.
Around customer appointments and commitments, I am able to set my own hours. On a sunny day in the middle of the afternoon if I want to throw in a load of laundry and take the dog for a walk, I can. And I return refreshed and ready to work for many more hours.
I wish more professionals could have the freedom to work at home. The benefits are priceless. The drawbacks include kids home all day in the summertime.
Somehow that respect for time and space is a little hard to maintain, and I too, prefer to play outside more in the summertime instead of doing work.
In today’s rapidly changing work structures, what common problems surface?
Probably the biggest problem with rapid changes in organizational processes or “the way we do things around here” occurs with ineffective communication. It’s the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing syndrome.
People are left out of the loop of information and planning processes and this causes people to scoff at whatever the latest change happens to be. Leaders don’t seem to be effectively planning on how to keep people on board while attempting to implement change.
What are the common mistakes made by employers:
· Small companies—under 50 employees?
It’s not really a mistake but more of a pity they don’t seem to have enough money or haven’t made it a priority to invest in their employees. And, if someone hasn’t been designated to develop cost-effective ways to recognize employees and keep them working together as a team, these types of firms usually have a higher turnover rate and become more of a training ground for inexperienced individuals. The results of not investing in employees up front causes higher costs in the end.
· Mid-size companies—50 to 500 employees?
Investing in the HR staff and seeing that they need to be an integral part of all strategic and operational planning. Sometimes it seems HR people have the best intentions and know what their people need, and can do, to grow the company, but the higher executives continue to be narrowly focused on the bottom line and oblivious to how their current regard toward the human factor affects it.
· Fortune 500 companies
Because they are usually so large and fragmented—literally into separate businessunits and continents—redundancy abounds.
They aren’t effectively sharing resources or information.
And, it takes too many chiefs in these large organizations at a time when people are able to manage themselves much more at the front-line, customer level.
What is the most important concept to grasp in today’s workplace?
That even though you may be employed by a company, you need to view yourself as self-employed, as if you alone are the company.
What do you have to sell to your employer?
How do you add value?
How will you continue to add value?
You can no longer enter a company, do nothing to develop yourself and keep yourself marketable, and expect to be taken care of until your dying day.
You and you alone are responsible for being a valuable and ever-current productive person.
Explain the value of employment and promotion testing to the employer. To the employee.
With a good job analysis in hand, employment or promotion testing can more objectively select the best candidate for the job, this process can benefit the employer should they ever be accused of an illegal selection procedure.
It benefits the employee because they will be selected on the basis of how their skills match the job instead of their ability to impress someone during an interview.
Both parties end up more satisfied with the selection decision. Of course, additional factors such as culture fit, and providing a realistic preview of the job, helps both parties work more effectively together.
How can an employer deal most effectively with poor performance?
From a preventive standpoint, by more effectively selecting candidates in the first place. Poor performance obviously depicts an inadequate job fit which means someone didn’t do their part in telling and detecting the truth prior to the hiring decision.
After the fact, it helps to have supervisors who have been trained to identify the problem, and try to correct it or move the employee where they can be more effective, which may mean elsewhere in the company or outside of the company.
Are there any unique conflict resolution problems that you can refer to in general?
I don’t think there have been any new revelations regarding how to manage conflict. First, you must have the courage to talk about it as soon as it feels like a conflict has occurred.
Second, you must talk about it when you are emotionally prepared, which means you are in a state to discuss the issues in a calm and non-threatening manner. And third, you must be willing to listen, learn, negotiate, and forgive.
What significant changes have you seen in the past five years and what do you predict will occur in corporate America in the next decade?
Empire building through acquisitions and mergers seems to be at an all-time high. More work is being asked of the American professional.
More and more professionals are working more than 40 hours per week.
It’s not uncommon for professionals to take their work home with them on a frequent basis. Work isn’t ending at 5 p. m.
I’m not sure how the corporate structure itself will look in 10 years, but I do think more individuals will work for themselves in the future and contract their services to employers.
If we’re all working longer hours, taking work home and making it a part of our private lives, we might as well take the next step and work for ourselves.
And a home office space is all that is needed when your product is you and your service.
Are there general premises you use in training, career development, team building, etc. ?Have you patterned your coaching concepts after a particular authority?
I find it to be intellectually lazy to follow just one point of view. Higher education teaches you to investigate much further.
My bachelor’s in education taught me multiple methods in instructional design and teaching.
My master’s program inundated me with a multitude of great authors, experts, and theories in the field of industrial and organizational psychology.
Now, whenever I am given a new assignment by a client or choose one for myself, I investigate the masses of information regarding the topic, derive from it common themes needed for it to work most successfully, consider the environment in which it will be applied, and design what I believe will work the best.
From that point on, the particular service needs to be continually improved as a result of participant and measurement feedback and as new data enters that particular field. So far, this method has served me well, and my customers like what I have been able to do for them and their organizations.
What activities do you enjoy participating in outside of work?
I am a member of the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce where I volunteer on the Small Business Committee and two sub-committees.
Otherwise, I volunteer from time-to-time in assisting children with learning disabilities and visiting the elderly at an area nursing home.
I enjoy reading business-related and spiritual-related books. I frequently travel to new, far, and adventurous locations. And, I enjoy supporting my children in their creative and spending time alone with my husband. TPW