Subjective risk is often overlooked by risk managers as being too difficult to deal with. Yet having a diversity of risk dispositions on a team can be a great strength.

Financial professionals know a great deal about risk. The risk they know about is numerical, statistical, probabilistic and based on precedent and economic history. This is the world of economists, actuaries, underwriters, financial intermediaries and many risk managers. This analytic view of risk is designed to improve financial prediction and decision-making. It might be referred to as objective risk – although, at every point, professional judgment is a necessary component. Subjective risk, on the other hand, is something that financial professionals do not specialise in and often know very little about. Rather than focusing on the dangers and uncertainties that may upset our plans in the outside world, subjective risk focuses on individuals and how they are wired. It is about individual risk dispositions: the personal and intimate experience of risk; the way that an individual reacts; their feelings and emotions; and their resilience, expectations and the way personal perceptions of risk are calibrated. How do these dispositions influence interpretations of events? How do they impact on the thousands of decisions a person makes every day at different levels of consciousness? From a risk manager’s viewpoint, subjective risk is often discounted as a source of error, irrationality, misunderstanding or bias. The distinction between subjective and objective risk is illustrated when someone discounts a debilitating fear of flying (subjective risk) because the chances of being killed are a mere 10,000,000:1 (objective risk). But subjective risk is of considerable material importance. It is what drives all the decisions and often erratic behaviours that create the events and statistics from which objective risk is retrospectively calculated. Risk managers could learn important lessons by focusing on this often-neglected perspective.

Regulation vs organisational development

The two main options on the table to address the failure of financial institutions focus on regulation and organisational development. In a short history of financial euphoria, the late, renowned economist Ken Galbraith argued that “mass insanity” has repeatedly gripped the financial world over the centuries. As waves of euphoria surge through the sector, sober judgment and restraint are swept away, all contrarian views are derided and groupthink rules. Galbraith’s view of the cyclical pattern of failure in the world of finance is mirrored in alternating demands for heavy-touch regulation (to get things back on the rails) and light-touch regulation (to free up entrepreneurial spirit). Whether financial regulation has or has not ever been a success is still argued by economists of different persuasions. The framework for regulation and constraint may have provided a basis for periods of relative calm, but the financial world is in continuous flux, and the results seem never to have provided sufficient defences to stave off the next crisis. The alternative to externally imposed constraint is some form of internal development designed to improve the performance of the industry’s professionals. The array of such corrective offerings made available by major consultancies have not escaped criticism. “It is clear that banks are wasting their money on ‘solutioneering’ or expensive unproven programmes peddled by consultants to address risk culture,” Associate Professor Alessandra Capezio of the Australian National University has recently written. Culture change has been reified within the financial sector as the essential focus for change. But culture is an elusive and intangible concept. Unless it can be defined operationally, this is just kicking the issue into the long grass. Culture is a consequence of the traditions, processes and behaviours of those employed and, as an end product of a process, it cannot tangibly be altered except through the people of which it is composed. Organisational customs and practices are influenced by the attraction and selection of the people it requires to do the job. Successive waves of people passing through leave their mark in terms of their dispositions, habits and mores. In Benjamin Schneider’s influential and pragmatic view on organisational culture, it is the people that make the place. On this basis, if you want to influence organisational culture, then the current employees are the obvious levers of change. The practical reality is that the kinds of change envisaged as a response to financial sector problems need to dig deep. This is not a matter of tinkering at the edges. Broad generalisations about culture have to be realised through changes at the granular level – the level of the individual. To achieve this, it is essential to appreciate the realities of human nature and deal with them. The concept of “depth of intervention”, outlined by TG Cummings and CG Worley in 2009, recognises that management of change requires a consideration of the psychological makeup and personality of employees and the challenges that the proposed change would involve for them. This is the territory of subjective risk – the kind of risk less familiar to financial professionals.

Emotion and cognition

Trends in current neuroscience recognise that two separate neurological systems are involved in any decision-making process – one is concerned with emotion and the other with cognition. For example, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio says that interactions between these systems create the structures for a wide spectrum of individual differences that are expressed in personality and in risk-related behaviour. Decision-making at a deep level is, therefore, tied to emotional, subjective influences. Cognition concerns our ‘need to know’, to make sense of events and of life. This is a rigid priority for some, but the loosest of frameworks for others. The former are troubled by uncertainty and welcome rules and structure. The latter are curious and embrace new opportunities and new ways of doing things. Emotion is about strength of feelings. Some are anxious and easily unnerved. Their hair-triggered vigilance makes them the natural alarm raisers of our species. Those at the other extreme remain calm and composed in situations that would terrify others; they are the last to run for cover. The majority of people fall somewhere between these four extremes, which also provide the basis for a compass-style model of risk dispositions. Interaction between emotion and cognition creates a rich variety of dispositions that are mapped throughout the 360º spectrum of a Risk Type Compass® – shown here, for example, on a spectrum segmented into eight distinctive Risk Types. Risk Types provide a systematic taxonomy supporting the quantification of human factor risk and differentiating individuals according to the ways that they deal with risk and are disposed to make decisions.

Challenges

More than a million people are employed within the UK financial sector, and every one of them brings their risk dispositions into work with them every day. Teams and working groups will vary considerably because in the population as a whole the eight Risk Types are evenly distributed. These core personality dispositions change very little over a working lifetime, and they have a persistent influence on decision-making. There are no right or wrong Risk Types, but to harness these diverse talents, they need to be recognised and addressed. The changes required in the financial sector are not going to be dealt with by exhortation to do better, by running courses or by campaigns, slogans or optimistic annual report statements. The known challenges to stability and clear thinking are herd behaviour, groupthink, risk-polarisation and cognitive dissonance, factors on which Risk Type can wield significant influence.

The approach

Ensuring that there is diversity in risk dispositions around the table acts as an antidote to groupthink. It allows issues to be considered from several perspectives and encourages the expression of contrarian viewpoints. This may sound adversarial, but in team sports there are defenders and attackers on the same team chasing the same goals. The defenders are alert to danger, the strikers alert to opportunity – so as long as the aims and allegiances are aligned, diversity of risk dispositions makes the team stronger and more effective. This may be less comfortable than a cosy consensus among like-minded colleagues, but it is likely to be a safer bet. Every Risk Type has its contribution to make. The ability to utilise these insights and to bring them to fruition benefits everybody. Individuals then have a well-defined foundation on which to develop risk-awareness and personal responsibility. At the group level, appreciation of the balance or distinctiveness of the group and its dynamics highlight potential blind spots and biases and increases team effectiveness. At an organisational level, the risk landscape highlights the relative risk dispositions of teams, divisions and departments and allows cross-department comparisons, strategic planning, decisions based on team audits, staff redeployment and rebalancing. The aim of organisational change cannot be to alter people’s deeper nature. A better and more realisable objective is to recognise this reality, to address it and to turn it to advantage. Each Risk Type makes its own distinctive contribution to survival. The aim now is no different than it has always been – to maintain that crucial balance between risk and opportunity, to succeed and to survive. As this article has argued, within the totality of risk there is a crucial distinction to be made between objective and subjective risk. The financial world is well-versed in the former, but not in the latter. Banking crises arise, firstly, because financial markets are inherently volatile and unpredictable (matters of objective risk), and secondly because judgment and decision-making are susceptible to the risk dispositions of individuals throughout the organisation (matters of subjective risk). The possibility of identifying and reliably measuring the distinctive risk dispositions of any individual contributes to a potent conceptual framework within which to manage human factor risk. This is a vehicle of proven effectiveness in the development of individuals, the audit and development of teams and a reliable, pragmatic and objective basis for risk culture analysis. The Risk Type Compass® provides a taxonomy and a working vocabulary. Diversity of risk dispositions within any team or organisation is a potential problem if not recognised, and a potent survival factor when it is. Appreciation of the complementary nature of the different Risk Types and their even distribution are levelling factors that make the objective of mutual respect for different risk dispositions eminently realisable. The legacy of the financial crisis has been toxic in its focus on deficiencies, blame, uncertain boundaries of acceptability and preoccupation with integrity. Maybe what is needed is a fresh start and the openness, optimism and inclusiveness implied above. Combined with a purposeful culture of coaching and development, this might be a good place to begin.

 

First published in Enterprise Risk.

 

 

There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance – John Kenneth Galbraith ‘A Short History Of Financial Euphoria’

Numbers sometimes seem emphatic and inflexible, especially when used to convey complex issues of general interest. They can give a spurious impression of certainty even when they reflect subjective judgements or approximations. Risk estimations are a case in point. Risk ratings may be based on anything from a totally subjective view expressed through a simple risk matrix, through to the complexity of Neural Network methodologies. To make effective use of this variably reliable information, recipients need to be aware of its quality.

Misunderstanding about risk isn’t helped by the fact that there is no transcending standard unit of measurement for it. The cover design on books about risk, which draw heavily on tumbling dice, spinning roulette wheels and chess pieces, give an impression of clear reasoning, simple probabilities and reliably scalable prediction. In fact, risk measurement in the financial world and in Health and Safety has none of those qualities.

There are no agreed standard units of risk; no measurement that can be applied equally to the risk of dangerous roads, the risk in different diets, the risk of air travel, the risk of an investment or epidemic. Risk across its wide spectrum is chaotically quantified in pragmatic and idiosyncratic ways; in terms that reflect the situation and context:

This illustrates the reality that the concept of RISK lacks overall coherence; rather there are many distinct ‘pockets’ of coherence, each with its own focus, methods, measurement and terminology. Insurance, book-making, road safety, health, investment, diet, aeronautics or seismology, for example.

Risk predictions are typically expressed as probabilities, but these are never akin to the ‘classic’ or ‘a priori’ probability, as in the throw of a dice (so ignore the book covers). A priori predictions are true and certain because all the possible outcomes are known and each is equally likely. Their distinctive feature, as every maths pupil knows, is that no matter how many times the penny comes up ‘heads’ the probability of getting the same result yet again is still 50:50. Counting incidents, i.e. what has happened in the past, has no bearing at all on an a priori probability. Yet counting incidents and events from the past is exactly the basis for the probabilities used in predicting all real world risk. This kind of probability is not the same thing at all. For obvious reasons, this can only ever provide an approximate and relatively unreliable estimate. Statistical models and Neural Network methodologies are tools that support the most sophisticated predictions available. Their creators will be highly skilled, very intelligent and able to incorporate wisdom, experience and expert judgement into the writing of their algorithms. Nevertheless, the raw material is always and of necessity, historic data. This situation has been characterised as attempting to drive a car while looking only in the rear view mirror. It’s possible, so long as the road ahead looks like the road you’ve passed, and so long as you draw the right inferences about what is likely to happen. But you’re not going to see what’s coming if it’s something entirely different.

Risk professionals in the driving seat hopefully understand these limitations of risk estimates and remain alert to the completely unexpected. The problem for the rest of us is that numbers carry a lot of weight and authority. Since we deal with such critical matters relatively rarely, and tend to rely on the advice of others, it is our own decisions about finance and safety that are vulnerable to the apparently emphatic risk statements of experts and statisticians.

All of the above focuses on the nature of risk; but what about the nature of those creating the risk or being exposed to the risk? This has increasingly been recognised as a very significant issue, not least by the financial regulators. In addition to the requirement to make the risk involved in any investment or financial product clear to their clients, intermediaries are now also required to take the client’s risk appetite into account. There is an important role here for Risk Type, both to clarify what investments would be appropriate, but also to help the client to better appreciate the implications of their own risk dispositions; how much risk would they be comfortable with?… how would they react if returns fall short of expectation?… how resilient would they be to the ups and downs of the market?… will their highly optimistic outlook get them into trouble?… will their haste and impatience with detail prevent proper scrutiny?… will their anxieties interfere with good decision making? How do they compare to others in these respects? These are all personality issues and these things are all knowable.

Perhaps surprisingly, the human side of the risk equation turns out to be very coherent; significantly more so than the tangled conglomerate that is RISK per se. After many thousands of years of success and survival, homo sapiens has ironed out these fundamentally crucial aspects of human nature. Nature’s answer has been to provide our species with a rich variety of risk dispositions that are complementary to one another, building the formidable ‘Team Homo-Sapiens’. Our species is equipped, in equal measure, with people that are adventurous, carefree, excitable, intense, wary, prudent, deliberate and composed. Every one of them has an important contribution to make. These are the characteristics that shape the driving, investing, road crossing, sporting, purchasing, entrepreneurial, voting behaviour that accounts for the statistics, that feed the algorithms on which risk model building relies.

Maybe it’s a good idea to give greater priority to self-knowledge and insight into the diverse risk disposition of others before trying to master all the problematic complexities and uncertainties of the risk itself?

I have just been watching a toddler holding onto the side of her sibling‘s buggy as it is pushed through a busy shopping mall. By appearances, I would say she was maybe 14 months old; certainly a novice walker. Her Mum seems to be preoccupied and in a hurry and the toddler is stumbling but just about keeping her balance as she struggles to keep up. What surprises me is that the child displays zero anxiety. She is almost perpetually on the verge of a tumble, but seems more excited about her achievement than about the risk of a fall. Thinking about it, I can recall my own children at that stage and I’m sure they were similar. Fast forward about six years of child development; picture youngsters scrambling over rocks at low tide while on holiday. While, as an adult, I am ultra cautious as I navigate the slippery rocks and the seaweed, seven and eight year olds seem to skip nimbly from point to point.

I have been the child in both these scenarios. Today, at the other end of the maturity scale, I have become considerably more apprehensive. So here is the question: To what extent is behaviour influenced by our capacity to conceive what the consequences might be; to imagine and anticipate the impact and the pain? Is this a memory bank of personal experiences that we build up, or is it the cumulative result of the dire warnings and frightening cautionary tales that we have been told? Possibly, the toddler has not yet developed an observer perspective or capacity to envision a disastrous consequence, or certainly not to the extent that it would interfere with the immediate thrill and pride of her new accomplishment.

Recently I took a head long dive down a long flight of stairs, scalped myself on the metal edging of the stairs and knocked myself out. I spent the rest of the day in A & E. I have no recollection of it, other than that I was very preoccupied by other things as I entered the stairs. In all of this, like the toddler, there was no apprehension and I experienced no fear, no anxiety, no distress. It just happened. If I think about it now it seems a dramatic and appalling incident, but isn’t this precisely because I am capable of adopting an observer perspective; a capacity to envision or ‘live through’ any disastrous consequence in my imagination?

Drivers, involved in spectacular car crashes report that, in the moments before a now unavoidable impact, there is no fear or apprehension. Even the pain of injury is muted. The difference between watching the YouTube video of Guy Martin’s Isle of Mann TT crash and being Guy in that situation, is clearly an entirely different experience. Participant and viewer perspectives have almost nothing in common. Take away any fear or apprehension and anesthetise the pain and you are closer to understanding how Guy’s greatest concern is whether he can get out of hospital quick enough to get to the starting line for the next race. These two perspectives are really dramatic in their divergence. Our capacity to contemplate, to mentally simulate and to anticipate an experience charges it with very powerful emotions that are completely absent in the
experience itself.

In today’s ‘information society’ we are, as observers or bystanders, schooled in anxiety by an endless stream of scary accident and medical statistics and world wide disaster beamed into our homes through the internet and the media. Like rabbits in the headlight, we don’t know which way to jump next. We live in a society that seems to be more risk averse every day.

This perception is reinforced by the almost exponentially increasing prevalence of the word ‘RISK’ which, according to this Google Books Ngram, is now more than four times as frequent in print as it was at the beginning of the last century and until 1970’s.

It seems that the innate story building capacity that is uniquely human and that is such an important influence in mediating our ideas, aspirations and our greatest achievements may also leave us exposed to anxiety overload in an era of a rampant communication bombardment; feeding us endless danger signals about matters over which we often have absolutely no control. In effect, the media world has established a huge market in anxiety. Anxiety sells newspapers and news footage and drives “which party can make you most anxious” political campaigns. Then there are all the horror films and those suspense raising, tension building “24” derivative boxed sets of on demand TV. We, the consumers, are the anxiety junkies that are hooked on it all. These are serious issues that pose an existential threat to our well being and to our quality of life.

If we cannot address the anxiety provoking issues endlessly paraded past us, we can at least try to reduce our exposure and our dependence. Our only recourse is to chill out and turn off, or to get out there and become a doer rather than a spectator. As a doer, we tap into the positive vibe of achievement experienced by the toddler in the shopping centre. Doing makes us feel more grown up and in command of our situation.

Geoff Trickey
September 2016

Do regulators and risk managers focus too much on the metrics of risk at the expense of focusing on the people they need to influence? Troublesome staff may seem blind to risk and compliance issues but are risk managers similarly myopic? Are they failing to recognise important individual differences in Risk Type that will impact on risk perception, risk behaviour and on the effectiveness of compliance frameworks?

The representations of ‘people’ as chess-set pawns or as matchstick figures in presentation slides and compliance literature gives the unfortunate impression that ‘people’ are an undifferentiated herd to be funnelled through the innumerable organisational flow-charts. The reality is that risk disposition is a defining aspect of personality. It is every bit as variable as the risks people have to cope with. This is true of the population as a whole and of any work force.

The Objective
Our proposed approach to Risk Management has the following aims:

1. To align compliance agendas of the board, risk management and employees
2. To foster pro-active personal responsibility
3. To energise communication and co-operation as drivers of Risk Culture
4. To highlight measurable personality differences that impact on compliance
5. To open up the personal development route to improved compliance
6. To identify and address person specific compliance challenges
7. To respect the diversity of Risk Type contributions and harness commitment
8. To broaden risk awareness through a shared new ‘person centric’ vocabulary

The Challenge
In spite of many decades of regulation of the financial sector and of workplace safety, we are still struggling for solutions. It seems that in many sectors, from banking and finance to heavy industry, there is frequently a tension between those who regulate and those who deliver, and even a whiff of hostility. On the risk management side of the fence, there is despair at the inability of staff to adhere to the regime demanded by regulators and legislators. From the other side of the fence there is cynicism about the inflexibility of the compliance brigade, their rigid intolerance of even minor discretionary acts, and their apparent inability to take personal responsibility in sanctioning procedural variations that appear perfectly sensible to everyone else; an issue of systemic defensive decision making.

At the core of this cameo of strained working relationships is a moral conviction about what ought to happen; what people should do. The view is that, ‘We have a code of behaviour designed to prevent accidents and staff have a responsibility to comply with it’. Compliance and risk awareness training is designed to support this directive. Since the policy is there to protect people, the virtuous position is that of the risk managers and regulators. Ipso facto, anyone wilful enough to break the rules is an opponent of virtue – ‘one of the bad guys’. It’s a simple black and white issue.

Micro-managed in this way, the deliverers may feel frustrated by rules that make tasks more difficult and procedures that interfere with productivity and profitability. No matter how experienced or how skilled an individual may be, no personal discretion is permitted; everyone is choreographed to perform in the same way. To those who share the compliance mind set, this is all just as it ought to be, to others it feels like a particularly uncomfortable straight jacket. No need for common sense, no place for ingenuity; a world in which blind obedience replaces personal responsibility and where there is no recognised personal development other than even more obedience. There is no real dialogue because, in this ‘mother knows best’ approach, nothing is really negotiable.

The consequence of all this is that relationships are strained and trust and co-operation go out of the window. Whether in terms of FCA transgressions or industrial accident rates, risk management problems prove to be stubbornly resilient. For all the gains achieved by the regulatory approach, there is still a residual rump that just doesn’t respond.

A Different Agenda
The dialogue about ‘risk’ has to change. The debate has been unbalanced, largely because no coherent contribution to that discussion has been made from the Human Factor perspective. Globally consensual personality research changes all that. The identification of distinctly different risk personalities, or Risk Types, gives an important new shape to the debate. Removing the stigma of the ‘all risk is bad’ mantra will also contribute to a more constructive and optimistic risk management agenda. We have to recognise that all enterprise, and indeed all survival, depends on taking enough risk.

THE NEW RISK AGENDA

Of course, in reality, this was always the agenda, but the activity has been almost entirely in the shaded lower left quadrant.

A New Approach
Not many applicants for a job at the drill head on a North Sea oil platform will be of a prudent and cautious disposition. The reality is that the individuals willing to take on the most extreme, physically demanding and risky operational roles are, in personality terms, likely to be from a different planet than the typical risk manager. Of course, this is a huge generalisation, but we have enough data on Risk Type from many different roles and professions to be confident that it is also a realistic and important perspective. Whether it is because they are too creative, spontaneous, fearless or imperturbable, those operating on the frontiers of risk are unlikely to be the most placid, conservative, vigilent or routine loving individuals.

People are fundamentally different in their disposition towards risk. Yes, we do all have ‘free will’, but we also each have our own distinctive risk bias. This bias is deeply rooted in our emotional and rational nature and it predisposes us to perceive risk, respond to risk and take risks in different ways. The Risk Type Compass® maps these individual variations onto a continuous 360o spectrum within which each of us has our place. That spectrum has been segmented to enable the differentiation of eight distinctive Risk Types.

Risk Type puts a handle on Human Factor risk and brings it into the realm of objective measurement. As Peter Drucker famously pointed out, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. Risk Type adds a crucial new component to the Risk Management tool kit and brings a sensible balance to the ‘command and control’ approach of regulation.

This in no way changes the aim of steering towards responsible financial management and safe working practices. Whether in terms of financial ethics, quality control or making the work environment safer, the objectives remain the same. The changes are in the approach, the relationships, the collaboration, the motivation and the language; the building blocks for a change in culture.

For the past three years I have been trying to grow a lawn under a massive, 80-foot-high Wellingtonia Pine, which completely dominates my garden. With three young children, we need something more useable than the existing area of dirt and tree debris. I have tried everything and put in endless hours of tender loving care, but I still face a barren expanse of brown mud each spring.

The tree surgeon that called about my problem tree advised that, without a major genetic engineering breakthrough, I was flogging a dead horse. Apparently, however much I fertilise, dress, weed or aerate the soil, all my efforts to make the grass grow will be to no avail. It seems that Astro Turf may be the only answer!

I tell this story, firstly, because my failure was certainly not due to any lack of motivation or effort; I was determined to succeed, but my goals and my strategy were seriously flawed. Secondly, my garden saga draws parallels with the development of people in the workplace and the situation faced at all levels by employers, trainers and potential trainees.

The question is: to what extent is one fighting with nature in trying to shape and mould people to fit the demands of a particular role? Is training able to improve the performance of an employee and, alternatively, to what extent can the limited skills of a given individual be compensated for by using alternative strategies? Within the wider context of personal career development, when should the agenda change from helping the individual shape up in his existing role, to looking for an alternative role in which that individual will flourish, become effective and feel fulfilled?

These questions are central to any talent-management programme (for the organisation), and to any personal development programme (for the individual).

Every job makes its own demands and a good ‘fit’ between the job and the temperament of the individual is highly desirable. You can blow the entire training budget on making Sarah a good sales person and never succeed, because she is quiet, likes to keep to herself and finds all but the most familiar social situations difficult. Similarly, John is highly imaginative and gregarious and no amount of training will shoehorn him into a repetitive job in which there are no opportunities for social engagement. Henry is irritable, sensitive to criticism, moody and outspoken.

Because these characteristics are deep rooted, for those born apprehensive, anxious or fearful, any effort to equip them for a successful career in a customer service role will be doomed to the same lack of success as I face in the struggle to nurture a lawn.

It’s not quite as simple as that, of course. There is an important distinction to be made between the development of discreet and specific knowledge or skills, and the development of more basic aspects of a person’s temperament or personality.

For example, you can teach most people keyboard skills but it’s much more difficult to change their concentration span or their accuracy and attention to detail, because these are pretty much hardwired characteristics. Some people will hit their ceiling typing speed earlier than others, and even their appreciation of layout and presentation is influenced by innate aptitudes.

Self-knowledge

The essential elements for any personal development programme are goals – what you intend to improve – and strategies – how you are going to achieve them. The first stage in this planning process is for the individual to be aware of his assets and limitations in the first place.

The answer to the familiar question ‘how many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?’ is ‘one – but the lightbulb has got to want to change.’ Self-knowledge is the essential first step. A realistic, ‘face the facts’ appraisal of talents and limitations is the necessary starting point if a personal development strategy is to be effective.

The difficulty for those wishing to appraise others’ training needs is that we are actually very poor at summing one another up. The success rate of unstructured face-to-face interviews, for example, proves to be little better than chance when it comes to predicting job success. Open any tabloid newspaper any day of the week and you will find stories illustrating how misguided we can be about one another. A tendency to see others as more like us than they really are, and a tendency for others to ‘tune in’ to these expectations and try to match them, further obscures the picture.

Personality profiling and other formal assessment methods have a critical role to play here. We are all different in our temperament and aptitudes and there are some things that we will never do well, and some roles in which we will either fail or be miserable because of deeply rooted aspects of personality that cannot easily be changed.

Personality assessment can help us understand whether our temperament would be an asset in a role, and to what extent any incompatibility can be compensated for by training or by developing ‘workaround’ strategies.

In terms of my pine tree, is there an Astro Turf alternative? Once we have gained some insight into our assets and limitations, we can decide on some realisable goals. The next step then is to decide on the strategies by which they may be achieved.

Strategy one: exploiting strengths

The easiest way to improve performance is to focus on the further development of existing talents, rather than focusing on areas for which you have little ability and lots of frustration. By working to take high points to an even higher level, we are working ‘with the grain’, with natural dispositions and high potential.

Whatever the details of one’s personality profile, there will always be aspects that will con- tribute to success in one context or another. By identifying the elements in which we are strongest and making the most of these, we have our greatest opportunities for success.

The first point to ask yourself, therefore, is: “What assets do I have in relation to this job?” Although this might seem a very straightforward question, there is a rather surprising difficulty. People will often undervalue their talents and take them for granted. Because they are as familiar as the air they breathe, they may be oblivious to their worth and see nothing exceptional about them.

A talent could be almost any distinctive characteristic. Yes, it could be a great singing voice, artistic talent or spelling or numeracy, but the things we do well will not necessarily fall so neatly into an obvious ‘talent’ category.

For example, one may approach things in a distinctively rational and logical way; or have a fluency with ideas that others would envy; or a talent for engaging others, spotting discrepancies, lifting the mood in a group, or solving practical problems; the list is endless.

Recognising our assets will take us a critical step forward.

Before considering what you should do in areas in which you are relatively weak, take performance associated with your strengths to a new level first and the gaps that are still left to fill will become less significant.

Strategy two: pushing the boundaries

Whatever our ‘hardwired’ characteristics, we are all able to control or manage our behaviour to some extent. We do this when we vary our behaviour to suit the circumstances – being very controlled at a job interview, or being wild at a stag party or hen night. Depending on our motivation (our interest, determination or experience), we can perform above or below our natural or most typical level.

Strategy two is to raise our game, to use feedback or assessment results to build self-awareness and to focus on improved performance. Although you won’t change your basic nature, you may be able to improve within the specific conditions of your work.

Familiarity with the role, its specific focus, knowledge base and routines all help to create a ‘comfort zone’ within which you will look good!

Strategy two should always be an important consideration. Don’t be too ambitious. Try to find a supportive, less demanding situation in which you can begin to build the confidence that will eventually be required.

In your own case, strategy two may be designed to make you calmer and less impulsive, more independent, more tough-minded, more patient, or a change in any other aspect of your temperament. But there will usually be a limit to the extent that you can control or develop your temperament in this way. Beyond that limit, you will need to consider strategy three.

Strategy three: compensating and working around

Strategy three is concerned with developing ‘workarounds’: techniques or arrangements that compensate for the part of your make- up that is difficult or impossible to change significantly, or enough to make a sufficient performance difference.

Again, the first step is self- awareness. You cannot change unless you recognise the need to change, and a personality assessment will help you to appreciate where your talents lie and where your temperament will be at odds with the demands that you face. Strategies will usually involve approaching the job in a different way, or working with colleagues in a different way, or changing the balance within a role so that you are playing to your strengths.

You may do more of this, but less of that, and achieve your targets in that way. Or, you may exploit related aspects of a role to minimise dependency on the characteristics that you are having difficulty developing.

In practice, the three strategies will complement and reinforce each other; as you strive to achieve your goals, you will learn to adopt them to the best effect. You may also realise that sometimes you need to go back to the drawing board and review your goals.

The tree surgeon suggested we seek planning permission to lop the lower branches of our protected Wellingtonia Pine, letting the light and warmth of the sun into the garden. We tried, and we failed again. Transformation only came as we appreciated that we would never beat nature in that particular battle. Abandoning the lawn, we designed a beautiful tree house that would thrill any child, with prospects for sleepovers and adventure games.

The limitations imposed by the tree have been turned around. In the new scheme of things, the tree is no longer the problem – it is the star, centre stage, and the basis for transforming a child-unfriendly area into a wonderful play space. As ever, nature had the final say.