In business, it may be the little things that drain the bottom line or what I call the dripping faucet. This is why so many small business owners to professional salespersons to C-Suite executives understand the importance of crossing those Ts and dotting those Is.
Attention to detail is a talent and can be measured as part of someone's overall talent intelligence. This measurement should not be confused with emotional or intellectual intelligence.
So how would someone define this talent or attribute of attention to detail? There are a few instruments available for human resource or sales department and each one has a different definition.
Attention comes from the word attend that is from the Latin verb of attendere which means to give heed to. Detail in its earliest origins means to cut from. When combining these words, a person needs to give heed to by knowing what to cut from.
Of course this suggests the individual can recognize the specific parts from the entire assembly that need to be cut away or separated. Also the person needs to be able to verify that he or she has indeed cut the right parts.
When people demonstrate high talent intelligence for this attribute of attention to detail, they will be quite thorough when executing any specific responsibility. By breaking the task at hand into specific basic elementary steps, they will be able to confirm that the task is properly completed. Completion of the task is not considered a bad thing with negative feelings, but one that is embraced with more positive ones.
For people who lack this specific talent intelligence, they will potentially ignore the individual pieces of the puzzle while focusing instead on the completed puzzle so to speak. These individuals would rather delegate the responsibility of attention to details to someone else.
As in any talent there are specific behaviors that reside behind the performance expectations. Those behaviors might include:
- Having less than a 5% error rate for any task
- Creating a detailed outline to explain a process
- Editing written communication prior to sending by using tools such as spell check, grammar check, etc.
- Reviewing instructions or directions and then asking questions for clarification
Within the performance appraisal these or other behaviors could receive measurements based upon a predetermined rating scale. Then the combined totals of the performance appraisal along with the scores for the other talent intelligence tool would provide a fairly accurate measurement for the human resource, sales or any other departments.
