Category Archives: Psychometrics

Psychometrics, Risk, Uncategorized

Mindfulness and Risk

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In an era of great change, how might organisations make the most of a rare opportunity to enhance human capital?

With the easing of restrictions and the transition from the emergency phase of the pandemic, organisations are beginning to settle into their ‘new normal’. Following over two years of disruption, many organisations will look different – whether because footprints have grown or contracted, business models have changed, IT capabilities have improved, or staff roles expanded. In this context, Geoff Trickey, consultant psychologist at the Psychological Consultancy, believes that organisations have a golden opportunity to enhance human capital by better understanding attitudes towards risk. This is supported by the worrying economic and geopolitical backdrop, where human resilience continues to be tested – making the case for the importance of risk-aware teams.

Deborah Ritchie speaks to Geoff Trickey about the increasing value of risk awareness.
You can read the full interview here.

Psychometrics, Risk, Uncategorized

Recruiting into Senior Leadership Teams: Why Should We Consider Cognitive Diversity?

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The decision-making styles of senior leadership shape the culture and preferred business models of any organisation.
Take Rohan and Susan for example, who both hold a senior role within a construction firm.
Rohan has a wary approach to risk and decision making whereas Susan has an adventurous approach.

Explore what this means for them in their role in the below article:

Recruiting into Senior Leadership Teams: Why Should We Consider Cognitive Diversity?

Psychometrics, Risk, Uncategorized

An Innovative Approach to Risk Mangement : Hearts & Minds

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Risk management has traditionally tended to focus almost entirely on the risk per se – its probability, management and prevention. This may sound eminently sensible, but in fact the risk, hazard or anticipated threat is really only one half of the equation. Risk-aware decision-making also involves considering the perpetrators, the vulnerable, the operatives, the victims and, of course, the risk managers themselves. It is, in other words, primarily a ‘people’ thing.

An innovative approach to risk management that takes personality traits into account has recently emerged, and Geoff took a deeper look in the below IOSH Magazine article…

https://www.ioshmagazine.com/2022/03/02/risk-management-winning-hearts-and-minds

Psychometrics

Personality & Risk Podcast

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In 2019, Geoff Trickey sat down with Richard Chataway from the Association of Business Psychology to discuss the benefits of identifying and categorising people into Risk Types.

Could uncovering your staff’s risk type could help you to understand how each individual employee perceives, reacts and manages themselves in risky situations? And could this knowledge help employers predict how their staff make decisions? What does that mean for teams? Geoff Trickey, CEO of Psychological Consultancy Ltd, talks about the ‘risk-type compass’ that he developed.

First published on the ABP website.

Psychometrics, Risk

The Nature of Performance Prediction

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The rhetoric surrounding psychometric personality assessment in a work context often suggests unlikely levels of predictive certainty about job performance.  Somehow, personality assessment has come to be regarded as almost mechanistically predictive of behaviour. It isn’t, it never was, and it never will be. Yet we seem wedded to the idea that a person’s personality choreographs their every move.

The reality is that behaviour is influenced by innumerable external and internal events: from hormones to caffeine intake; from genes to international politics; from brain cells to personal relationships, the seasons or the economy. The range of possible influences on behaviour is virtually infinite, so it’s quite amazing that personality profiles manage to raise any kind of discernible signal above all this noise.

The big difference between the noise and the signal is the solid continuity of personality compared to the random, incidental or situational one-off variables that bombard us from all directions. Stable over an adult working life and capable of highly reliable measurement, personality dispositions have an influence that is very consistent and very pervasive. They trace a firm line through the chaotic hubbub of daily experience. They may sometimes be overwhelmed or blown off course but they are sure to re-emerge once the whirlwind specifics of the moment have passed on by.

We take our personality with us wherever we go; into every meeting, every conversation and every decision. It operates as a persistent force; a bias pulling us towards some options and away from others. The term personality ‘disposition’ captures this perfectly. We are more disposed to do A and less disposed to do B, but we have free will and, taking other things into account, we make our decisions. Patterns in the consistency of those decisions and behaviours may not be immediately discernible to others but, over time, people get familiar with them, recognise them and are able to anticipate choices and preferences. Personality assessment offers a structure for this understanding of a person’s dispositions, as well as providing  a shortcut to it. In telling us what to expect, it predicts what would otherwise take long acquaintance to fully appreciate.  This is the nature of the prediction inherent in personality assessment. It describes a person’s dispositions and, based on that, we make inferences about their behaviour and their potential performance. That works because we generally do best the things that come naturally to us; fighting against our natural dispositions is much harder going.

Performance then, reflects a dynamic relationship between our natural dispositions and our aims and intensions. A personality profile is the best available guide to the particular personal resources we have at our disposal. However, with self-awareness, planning and effort we can manage our limitations as well as our assets, taking us beyond our comfort zone and into wider spheres of capability, effectiveness and influence. This combination of dispositions and self-awareness charts our success and writes our autobiographies.

 

November 2018

Psychometrics

How much ‘psycho’ is there in psychometrics?

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INTRODUCTION

The use of personality questionnaires has increased quite dramatically over recent years. Test development, publication and usage have benefitted considerably from the opportunities provided by the internet: once a process that relied very much on the professional expertise of the psychologists, personality went online in 1999 and the genie was out of the bottle. Now readily accessible on both the test development side and the test user side, a highly competitive marketplace has developed, bristling with a bewildering array of products used by people with very varied levels of psychological insight.

There are positive benefits from this process of commoditization, but there are also concerns. The relationship between personality theory, personality research, test development, test publishing, sales and test usage is now weighted heavily towards the commercial end of that pipeline. The question is: have the links with psychology, the ‘psycho’ element in ‘psychometrics’, been strained almost to breaking point?

 

BACKGROUND

The study of personality has a very long pedigree that is easily traced back to the ancient philosophers. Its mission is close to the most fundamental questions about our existence and about human nature. These are not merely interesting esoteric issues; differing views on personality have considerable consequences. They have a moral dimension too because they influence our understanding of personal responsibility, our beliefs and principles and, by that route, they impact on fundamental ideas about what is right and what is wrong. They also influence public policy. For example, different assumptions about the influence of Nature and Nurture account for fault lines in political and public policy debate about key issues; everything from education to justice, retribution, correction and rehabilitation.

 

HISTORY

The evolution of personality assessment reflects many different schools of thought. Each approach was predicated against the insights of their creators, their understanding of human nature and their definition of personality. Theory preceded measurement. From Galen to Jung, Rorschach to Murray, Cattell to Hogan, personality theory and personality research came first. It provided the platform of distinctive beliefs upon which these thought leaders based their various methods of assessment. These were typically people, prominent in their field, making a major contribution to psychological theory and debate. Their approach to personality assessment was the legacy of a lifetime of enquiry and theoretical development. Their rationale was explicit, reflected in an extensive body of research, in their publications and, of course, in their assessments.

The contribution of psychology towered in its significance over the practicalities of assessment. But there was never consensus. Different theorists argued their case, set out their stall, won adherents to their cause and challenged the status quo – that is how advancement in science works. At the point of delivery, the test user knew and understood what the author was attempting to do. Familiarity with the theory provided the contextual framework for the interpretation of results and the generation of appropriate inferences and predictions.

 

TODAY

When he asserts that “personality theory and personality assessment were separated at birth”, Bob Hogan is alluding to the loss of this connection. All too often the crucial question of ‘what exactly is this personality test measuring’ seems to be taken as a given. Unexplained reference to ‘personality’ just doesn’t cut it.

The nature of personality, its structure, its content and its significance can be conceptualized in so many different ways; are we referring to traits, dispositions, instincts, values, temperament, preferences, attitudes? How influential is it? Can it be changed? Can it be managed? Is it genetic? Is it shaped by learning, by religious belief, by culture by experience? How does it relate to performance in sports or at work? How does it influence a biographical trajectory? What part does it play in personal relationships? Does it shape behaviour? Does it merely reflect the behavioural consistencies of individuals? Is it deterministic or do we have free will?

Even the current ‘gold standard’ of robust Five Factor Model credentials leaves all these questions unanswered. Without an explicit theoretical framework, simply claiming to measure ‘personality’ doesn’t give any clue about what the results actually mean; nor what implications, recommendations or decisions can reasonably be drawn from a test result. Measurement, stripped of theory is ‘dust bowl empiricism’. Its interpretation relies on whatever assumptions the user brings with them.

Somehow, our obsession with statistical analysis threatens to eclipse the primary purpose; that of understanding human nature. Cattell makes an important point:

 

“…..lest there may seem to have been overemphasis on statistics – let it be said that ideal prediction and treatment practice requires both psychological understanding … and statistical understanding”.

 

Current trends in personality assessment seem to paper over the question of psychological insight. Big data is the extension of this mind set.  Assigning numbers to everyday behaviours, utterances or decisions may tell us something about the people they are attributed to, as do any of our observations of others, but any inferential interpretation beyond the blatantly obvious relies on assumptions about human nature – the issue that it singularly fails to address. Psychometrics without the psychology is just playing with numbers; and numbers without any clear rationale wield a very dubious authority.

 

WHAT SHOULD PSYCHOMETRICS LOOK LIKE?

It’s perfectly acceptable to define personality in different ways and to operationalise those views through questionnaires, gaming methods or big data. What is highly questionable, though, is to purport to measure something for which there is no clear rationale and therefore no clear meaning and no clear implications for decision making. Any survey, word check list, group of statements or questions can be metricated statistically using item analysis, scale development techniques and norm tables. But, for them to have any depth of meaning, they need to have been shaped, from conception through to delivery of results, by the insights of the creator and developed with the specific intention of operationalizing those insights into real world outcomes.

 

GEOFF TRICKEY, January 2018

Psychometrics

The Fluid Reality of Staff Deployment

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There’s something important about the selection of new staff that those on both sides of that transaction ought to know. No matter who is appointed, they will not do that job in the way that was originally intended, or in the way that it was described, or in the way that a previous person in that post did. Subtly or abruptly, the role will inevitably be refashioned by the new recruit in a way that reflects their talents and their personality dispositions.

Personality dispositions have a persistent influence on the way that we see things and the way that we do things. Homo sapiens are capable of an extraordinary range of behaviours and individually we all have distinctive patterns of drives, preferences and dispositions that constantly push us in particular directions.

In effect, these are personal biases that make some opportunities more attractive than others: the extremely conscientious will tend to work to routine, to be very organised but have difficulty with flexibility and change; at the other extreme, those with a carefree disposition will have difficulty in motivating themselves with routine or repetitive tasks and will want to try different ways of doing things. In these examples, the execution of the role will be pushed in opposite directions; maybe gradually and subtly but sometimes more noticeably and disruptively. Personality dispositions don’t dictate our every move but they do have a very pervasive influence, perhaps best described as broadly predictive rather than specifically predictive.

Of course, the examples above are of extreme dispositions, used because they provide the best illustrations, but in reality these are caricatures. Most people are somewhere between the extremes of personality and the impact of their dispositions on behavior will be less immediately obvious. Nevertheless, they too will make a job their own. This ‘looseness of fit’ inherent in our individual differences creates a chemistry and fluidity that makes the workforce more dynamic. It allows people to complement each other and to fill the gaps between prescribed roles. That’s how it works in an effective team.

This model would predict dysfunctional consequences when the personal demands of a role put too much of a strain on the dispositions of the incumbent – just too much for them to manage. Free will gives us choices but it doesn’t allow us to reshape our individuality. Eventually the cracks in performance will begin to show. Endless training will not solve the problem when the deviation required from an employee’s natural disposition is extreme. Trying to compress any individual rigidly into a tightly defined role and preventing them from expressing their natural talents is likely to be counterproductive, neither enhancing performance nor capitalising on potential.

The influence of personality dispositions has significance for personal development, advancement and redeployment within the organisation. Someone who proves a poor fit for an intended role may become a star performer in another. It is important not to let talent walk out of the door when that person has the potential to fill another space very effectively. This is an argument for personal development policies that can embrace sideways moves, diagonal promotions, job swapping and creative staff redeployment in place of a series of disconnected, narrowly conceived appointments. Surely this is strategy for human capital investment that has to be a winner?

Psychometrics, Risk

Personal Responsibility and Accountability in Heavy Industry

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“We have good processes… If we could just get people to follow them we would be fine”

Common rhetoric heard from risk and H&S managers. So why is it that many companies find their accident rates remain stubbornly resilient? You can increase risk awareness programmes, make them multi-media and add all the bells and whistles you want, but your H&S strategy will never be robust if you don’t address the people element.

Personal Responsibility is more than Blind Obedience

There is frequently tension between those who regulate and those who deliver, and even a whiff of hostility. At the core of these strained relationships is a moral conviction about what ought to happen and what people should do. But blind obedience is not the same as personal responsibility. Control and command approaches and disciplinary enforcements will only get you so far. Improved compliance depends on recognising and addressing the important personality differences identified in Risk Type.

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Introducing the Risk Type Compass®

The Risk Type Compass® provides personality based assessment of the way individuals perceive and handle risk and make decisions. Based on a robust core of global psychological research, it places individuals into one of eight easy to understand Risk Types.

This graphic plots the Risk Type position of team members.

THE SOLUTION

Ultimately ‘..safety is a choice. At some point, you have to make a decision how you’re going to do a particular job.” Tom Harvey (Certified Safety Professional).

Risk Type insights enable employees to understand their risk personality and its implications. Appreciation of specific strengths and blind spots in their natural disposition towards safety enables them to take ownership of their behaviour; to take personal responsibility for their actions. The aim is to facilitate a pro-active safety culture based on mutual respect and co-operation.

“In place of conflict” this approach;

  • Focuses on measurable personality differences that have a direct impact on safety behaviour
  • Identifies the individualistic challenges faced by employees to make H&S personally relevant
  • Gives risk awareness training a personal relevance and a new ‘person centric’ vocabulary
  • Re-energises communication, co-operation and personal responsibility as drivers of Risk Culture change
Psychometrics

Do Personality Psychometrics Cut The Mustard?

Everyone gets involved with personality assessment on a daily basis; ‘I wonder what she is like?’, ‘Would she fit in with us?’, ‘Would she impress our clients?’, ‘I wonder if we could team up effectively?’ These are questions that we struggle with and about which we often make poor decisions. Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that the candidate interview, a ubiquitous element of the financial recruitment process, can be as successful as making employment decisions on the toss of a coin. How is it that we can get it so wrong? The answer lies in the vagaries of the language we rely on.

It’s possible to have a conversation with someone about a third person where you both come away with very different impressions about what was discussed and what was agreed, and that’s the problem. Take the sentence “Henry is prudent, friendly and imaginative” – what could be clearer? But each of those three words will mean different things to different people. My iPad dictionary app gives me 30 synonyms for prudent, 48 for friendly and 30 for imaginative. This suggests that there are literally thousands of different ways (43,200 actually) in which these sentiments may be expressed. Each would have different nuances and different implications. If you think ‘imaginative’ is about being ingenious and I think it’s about being dreamy, then we’re not off to a good start!

The psychometric process simply aims to do what we all try to do intuitively on a day-to-day basis; to find the right words to sum other people up. It faces two challenges; firstly it has to navigate the labyrinthine complexities of the language we use (illustrated by the synonym example above) and secondly, to design assessments that are systematic and fair; capable of being repeated at another time, in another place and with different people in a standardised way.

Research reveals five key reference points that allow us to navigate the semantic confusion, (referred as the Five Factor Model – FFM). This ‘language map’ allows for dramatic improvements in the coherence and consistency of personality assessment. It is the basis for reliable, consistent and replicable procedures that identify the vocabulary that best captures the distinctive personality characteristics of each individual. Using large comparison samples, it can establish how distinctive or otherwise we are in respect of each personality dimension.

Of course, the way we present ourselves when completing a personality questionnaire is subject to the same distortion and manipulations deployed in real life encounters. We all prefer to present ourselves in the best light possible, especially at an interview. Questionnaires usually include ‘impression management scales’ to pick up on this and ‘validity scales’ to identify sabotage or random responding. The best instruments also minimise the transparency of the questions, drawing on the rich pool of psychological research to make inferences from less obvious items. In any case, the expertise required for manipulation – ‘steering’ questionnaire responses to achieve a desired profile – would be considerable and more likely to result in bizarre or undesirable distortions.

The potency, accuracy and comprehensive nature of personality assessment inevitably means that you can get the full picture, warts and all. But, intrinsically, there is no good or bad personality for a career in finance. Certain characteristics are sought after for some roles, of course, but everything you have got in personality terms means that there is something else that you haven’t got. Short people don’t get the benefits of being tall, but they don’t get the disadvantages either. It’s the same with personality.

One area that can cause concern for those responsible for recruiting in financial services organisations is how they explain a profile to the person assessed if it appears unflattering. First you need to consider whether your version of ‘flattering’ is the same as theirs! We are usually quite fond of our own characteristics and also quite forgiving of them, (whether other people are is another matter), and we all tend to project those preferences onto others. Experienced coaches are careful not to make value judgements and avoid the situation where they may seem to be consoling someone about something that that individual sees as their greatest asset.

The value of personality assessment to the person assessed is that it offers a fresh and dispassionate viewpoint; a chance to take stock and re-evaluate. To the coach or interviewer, it suggests issues to be explored. Self-awareness is a very important element because, whether or not our personality gives us an advantage in relation to a particular role, we are all capable of extending our comfort zone and raising our performance. The question is whether the effort this might require is recognised by the candidate and whether, once they appreciate the challenge imposed, they decide they are up for it. On the other side of the interview table, it depends whether the interviewers are convinced about the candidate’s capability and motivation.

Good FFM based personality assessment has an almost uncanny ability to capture the salient characteristics of those assessed. But there is a dynamic aspect to human psychology; a tension between what people are, what they want to be and what they feel is expected of them. All these shape behaviour and performance. It is important, therefore, to also consider past experience, training, qualifications and work history. While personality profiles help to set an agenda for a structured interview, some of the answers will come from this wider pool of information – and from the interview itself. Although, with an agenda and the personality insights now available, this interview will be certainly more effective than tossing a coin!

Geoff Trickey, February 2014

Managing Director
Psychological Consultancy Limited,
www.psychological-consultancy.com