Use Psychometrics to Significantly Improve Organisational Performance
I find psychometric tools are underrated and under-utilised, possibly because they are poorly understood or rarely, if ever, linked to individual and business objectives. A known significant contributory factor is that almost all corporate Learning & Development globally has no ROI, a staggering 93% to be precise. Training is typically cobbled together as little more than a nice idea as opposed to a serious strategic component of business development and growth. If interested, you can read about the facts and figures in another case study: Learning & Development: Whats your ROI?
Every psychometric system, with the exception of The Big Five a.k.a. O.C.E.A.N, is considered controversial in scientific circles, as they don’t stand up to scrutiny due to their deficiencies inherent with self-reported assessments. With that in mind I still consider these systems to have value as the goal is not to precision pigeonhole individuals, but to understand how best to leverage an individuals perceived strengths and weaknesses in a team context to achieve any given outcome. Through discussion and mutual understanding of their psychological operating preferences they become greater than the sum of their parts.
Let’s explore this now.
Psychometric Tools
There are many tools available, however for the purpose of this article we will focus on Myers-Briggs purely because it happens to be the one I am most familiar with. Myers-Briggs was developed in the early 1920’s and paralleled the work of famous Psychologist Carl Jung, though in a far less formal way as the creators had no background or formal education in Psychology.
The matrix below displays all 16 Myers-Briggs Type Indicators (MBTI) all arranged relative to human characteristics and peer types. On the completion of the questionnaire you receive the results of your preferences, which correlate with one of the 16 types, each with it’s own spectrum of traits. For novelty I have added the distribution of each MBTI across the UK population.
I’m not going into detail on specific traits in this article as the purpose of this example is to provide a simple demonstration of the impact different personalities can have on each other and the role psychometrics can play in terms of successful outcomes. In the spirit of brevity we will make do with a vastly over simplified summary of groupings:
NF’s: Value orientated, tend to make emotional decisions based on future possibilities in pursuit of enlightenment.
SF’s: Relationship orientated, tend to make emotional decisions based on present reality in pursuit of harmony.
ST’s: Process orientated, tend to make logical decisions based on present reality in pursuit of order.
NT’s: Outcome orientated, tend to make logical decisions based on future possibilities in pursuit of change.
You can see within the spectrum of each group there are four very different ends in mind combined with four very different paths to attaining them. Now let me give you an example of how they can clash when they don’t take the time to understand each other:
Several years ago while supporting senior leaders in a large enterprise, one of the heads of service was having significant difficulty understanding why their business partners were struggling to access their key stakeholders, other heads of service. So, as part of the investigative process I took it upon myself to carry out a little experiment. I was fortunate that some of the work I had been doing meant capturing some of the psychometric profiles of those involved, so I dropped them all into the above matrix.
Influencing
We have already discovered the main drivers behind each group, so what comes next will highlight a pattern as to why significant friction can present between stakeholders and how psychometrics can be used to defuse it, see below:
Based on what we have already learned we can see the contrast between Business Partners and Heads of Service was considerable in terms of approach and objectives, a complete mismatch. A population of predominantly relationship orientated Business Partners attempting to have nice chats with Heads of Service only interested in what outcomes will be improved and/or accelerated as a result of their Business Partners input. In the absence of a demonstration of competence the Heads of Service deemed the Business Partners irrelevant and were actively ignored.
It’s not a surprise that outcome orientated people tend occupy senior roles and it’s not a surprise that relationship orientated people would sign up for a relationship oriented role, however the Business Partners had failed to step into the shoes of their stakeholders and understand their world. They also failed to recognise they are a guest at the table, which is earned and not a right as some thought. Rightly or wrongly the Heads of Service didn’t consider it their responsibility to teach the Business Partners how to influence, a skill they should already possess as it’s fundamental to their role. Any professional development is the responsibility of the Business Partner and their line manager.
We could debate the merits of who should have done what to improve the situation, but thats for another day. What I will say is this had been a long standing issue, several years in fact. With that in mind, once all my findings were out in the open it was an easy fix.
Performance
Below is a representation of an ideal development scenario using a simplified version of Prof. Mihály Csikszentmihályi Flow model, which he originally discovered in 1975 after identifying the components of high performance. I have updated this to demonstrate the relationship between Strategy, Operations and High Performance, which can be applied to any individual, team or organisation. By looking at the relationship between Challenge, defined as: Degree of difficulty to be overcome, and Support, defined as: Available resources. Four states emerge:
These four states correlate with specific behaviours that can be measured in any individual, team or organisation.
Anxiety: Missed deadlines, avoidance of interaction, likely negatively impacting employee sickness absence.
Apathy: Absence of enthusiasm or presence of indifference, likely negatively impacting employee retention.
Comfort: Lack of activity and accountability, likely negatively impacting employee productivity.
Flow: Pro-active, self-directed, emphasis on personal responsibility, likely positively impacting all above.
I think it’s fair to say the Business Partners were very much in the Anxiety box, in some cases very possibly Apathy due to the long standing nature of their situation. With some simple tweaks it was possible to move them slowly in to Flow by drawing a line in the sand with their stakeholders, redefining the role of a Business Partner and learning to have a different kind of conversation.
Conclusion
Psychometrics can be used to measurably solve significant business problems and improve performance, individually and collectively. And this is only one example of many. Not only do they provide valuable evidence for solving problems, they provide insight on how to solve them and where to start. In the context of the above example it highlighted the gaps in skill and style, which were closed in a short period of time.
The more tools we can leverage, the more variables and/or distractions we can identify and mitigate, the more likely we are to achieve the state of Flow and deliver agreed outcomes. Keep in mind it’s only successful in the longterm if embedded in your culture with accountability. Without ongoing reinforcement people will default to the comfort zone of their preferred way of operating and problems, like the above, will re-emerge.
If you recognise you are caught up in a similar scenario, then what can you do to make a difference?
Ask your stakeholder’s for feedback that will improve your level of support.
Take note of what you are doing well.
Take note of what needs work.
Set some next steps to up your game accordingly.
If you would benefit from support to develop your business partnering community to become strategic thinking influencers then please do schedule a call with me by putting a 60mins in my diary at a time that suits you. We can discuss your situation and options over an eCoffee.
Best Wishes
Kenny
