Recruitment

Psychometric tests are most commonly used by organisations in a recruitment context. By now it should be clear, that because they assess capability, and because capability is the most fundamental driver of individual and organisational performance, that they should form a standard part of any organisation’s recruitment and selection procedure. It makes good business sense to include an assessment of both cognitive and emotional capabilities in your assessment battery.

However, psychometric tests are also underutilised in organisations as they have a number of other valuable uses which are discussed in this module.

Talent Identification

Most organisations use employee performance as the main criteria for promotion. However, according to research by executive advisory team CEB, companies are seriously hurting themselves by failing to differentiate between performance and potential. CEB's report says that just one in six high-performance employees also display the attributes that indicate potential. CEB says that 46 percent of employees brought into leadership development programs ultimately fail to meet their business objectives once they assume managerial roles and that more than 50 percent of misidentified employees - employees who display high performance but not high potential - ultimately drop out of leadership development programs before completion.

https://www.inc.com/adam-vaccaro/high-performance-vs-high-potential.html

Why is this?

Remember performance is measured against a current, not a future role. This is problematic, because Sally’s performance on say a middle management position only tells us about her performance against this role but tell us nothing about how she will perform against the requirements of say a senior management role. Her performance against this senior role is untested. Performance therefore does not tell us anything about a person’s future behavior in a role with new, more advanced and more complex challenges. It only tells us about performance in a current role and therefore is not a predictive yardstick.

⦁ Capability/Talent however tells us about a person’s potential to perform against any role including one with a future requirement. An organization's pool of high performers (Performance Pool) therefore does not necessarily equate to its Capability/Talent Pool. What organizations should be doing is looking for is Capability/Talent within their Performance Pool.
⦁ Psychometrics are a critical and valuable tool for doing this. At the end of the day it is the only way in which an organisation can identify it’s high potential employees or job applicants.
⦁ When past performance is used as the key indicator of a person’s potential for a job at the next level there is a very real danger of running into the Peter Principle.

The Peter Principle

The Peter Principle states that a person will be promoted to his highest level of incompetence. To illustrate, Henry is the best operator on a line. A vacancy for a team leader position opens up and being the best operator, Henry is promoted into the team leader role, where he excels. Some years later, a production manager position opens up and being the best team leader, Henry is promoted into this role. However, it soon becomes apparent that Henry is struggling. He is provided with training, coaching, development, further education to no avail. He just cannot meet the performance requirements of the job.

What happened here? Henry was promoted on the basis of his performance in a job which was at a lower level than the one he was promoted into AND NOT on the basis of his capability. The first time around it worked, because Henry had the capability (EQ and IQ) to function beyond operator level and at team leader level. The second time it did not work, because while Henry had the capability to function as a team leader, he did not have the capability to go to the next level of production manager where he proved to be incompetent. As a result he had been promoted to his highest level of incompetence and not to his level of capability.

Understanding a person’s capability, prevents the Peter Principle from kicking in, and clearly when this principle is in operation it is both to the detriment of the employee (who has been set up for failure) and the organisation which now has an underperforming employee.

Capability – EQ and IQ – assessed by means of psychometric tests, provide an objective picture of a person’s capability and potential to perform. For example, if Henry in the example above had been psychometrically assessed, and that assessment showed that his cognitive capability compared favourably with people in first line management positions, but compared UNFAVOURABLY to people in middle management positions, it would weaken the case for promoting him into a middle management position.

Similarly, if Nolu was employed as an engineering technician with specialist job demands, and was now being considered for a management role that would place leadership demands on her, a psychometric assessment would be able to indicate how well suited her personality is to a leadership role.
At EQ – IQ we use our battery of psychometric tests to place people into a talent matrix. This is very useful for understanding where talent resides within your organisation and is illustrated in the comprehensive version of this training program.

Capability Assessments

Very closely linked to Talent Identification are assessments for capability purposes. We often have clients who find that a whole group of individuals, typically in first line management positions, are not performing, but don’t know why. Invariably, we have found, that this is due to problems with capability. Individuals may have been supervising for years and have ample experience, but are just not performing. With projects like this we will assess the entire group, and be able to identify which individuals have the capability, do not have the capability or have excess capability for the role that they are in. This is extremely helpful to organisations to make decisions around:

⦁ who has the capability to be trained to close gaps
⦁ who should be redeployed into more suitable roles due to a lack of capability
⦁ who can be fast tracked into more senior roles due to excess capability
⦁ what can be expected of the team performance – wise based on the collective capability of the team
⦁ what the implications are for recruitment going forward.

Synergy

What is Synergy?

Working relationships between two people or within teams can make or break an organisation. Psychometric tests can play a significant role in promoting positive synergy and also in preventing and reducing negative synergy in an organisation.

The concept of synergy was first proposed by chemists. They found that whenever they separated elements from a complex compound, the individual elements could not explain the properties of the elements bonded together. For example, as we all know water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen.

Looking separately at hydrogen and oxygen does not give any clue as to what will transpire when 2 hydrogen atoms combine with 1 oxygen atom. Neither of these elements individually posses any of the properties of water, but when combined they transform into something unrelated to and much greater than what they are individually.

This, in essence, is synergy and it similarly applies to people working together. A team's collective performance cannot be predicted based solely on its members’ individual performances. Therefore, a team’s collective performance can be either better (positive synergy) or worse (negative synergy) than the sum of its members’ individual performances.

Let’s continue with the water analogy. H2 + O becomes water, but when Sulphur is added it becomes Sulphuric acid. Adding just one element – Sulphur - to water turns it from a life giving substance to a destructive one. The same happens in teams. Adding one poor hire into a team can change the whole mix for the worse and vice versa. So can removing someone from a team. This principle also applies when two people are working together. If they get on, understand each others’ strengths and weaknesses, preferred styles, emotional languages and know how to complement one another, they can achieve a great deal and maximise the relationship. The opposite also holds true.

Negative synergy is always destructive and stressful and the impact of stress on employees and organisations is enormous. The American Psychological Association estimates that the US economy loses $500 million because of stress; that 550 million work days are lost annually due to stress; that stress accounts for 60 – 80% of workplace accidents; and that 80% of doctor’s visits are due to stress. It also leads to a lack of loyalty which in turn results in a 50% increase in voluntary turnover. People make themselves available to the job market, decline promotions, or resign. In Module 2 we looked extensively at the financial and non – financial costs of employee turnover.

Negative synergy also leads to disengagement. When people don’t get on with each other, they eventually withdraw and disengage. Studies by the Queens School of Business and the Gallup organisation show that disengaged workers had 37% higher absenteeism and 60% more work related errors. Low engagement also affected productivity negatively (18%), profitability (down 16%); share price (65% lower over time)

https://hbr.org/2015/12/proof-that-positive-work-cultures-are-more-productive

Psychometric tests such as a personality measure can be an invaluable aid in helping two people to understand each other and how best to work together; and can also help a team to understand its dynamics and strengths and weaknesses. We will illustrate this by explaining some of the synergy reports and interventions we offer.

Remember we explained that personality traits drive the default way in which people respond to situations. When two people are working together this creates potential for both positive and negative synergy. If I understand your default behaviours, and you understand mine, then there is potential for you and I to complement one another, and avoid counterproductive conflict.

Work with Me Report

Our Work with Me Report works like this. You and I would both complete a personality assessment. That assessment will give you and I insights into how we each:

⦁ Engage with people
⦁ Influence others
⦁ Communicate
⦁ Collaborate
⦁ Engage in Teamwork
⦁ Exercise Awareness

Coaching suggestions are made with respect to how we can achieve positive synergy, and there is a workbook section with activities you and I can do to achieve positive synergy.

Team Development

In order to be effective, any team will need access to all 8 roles. By assessing all of the team members, we are able to see what the global composition of the team is, and what this implies for working together.

We utilise the Belbin Team Role method to help teams achieve positive synergy. Our psychometric test will indicate what type of role a person naturally tends to play in a team:

⦁ Consulting Type
⦁ Driving Type
⦁ Critical Judge Type
⦁ Practical Type
⦁ Supportive Type
⦁ Detail Type
⦁ Catalyst Type
⦁ New Ideas Type

One of our client’s senior management team had a problem with follow through. At their annual strategic planning session many great ideas would be generated, but at the end of each year they would find that many of these ideas never saw implementation. Their collective team profile looked as follows:

The team was strong on:

Consulting Types – organising others to get things done with little personal involvement or commitment

Catalyst types – getting people excited and motivated about new ideas but with a tendency to disengage once the initial excitement of a new idea has worn off and to expect others to implement

New Ideas Types – plenty of innovation and creativity in this team

Practical Types – concern with turning ideas and concepts into workable action plans

Detail Types – concern with follow – up and follow – through

With this combination of team roles, it was little wonder that ideas never got off the ground. Raising awareness of their collective team role profile helped the team to eliminate some of the negative synergy. The few detail, practical and driver types were feeling marginalised by and resentful towards the preponderance of “idea and non – doer” types in the team. The latter were now able to see how they were scuppering the team by constantly steering it in the direction of change and began to look at the doers with new appreciation. Non – doers learned to take more of a back seat and make room for the doers. Conflict was reduced and globally the team was able to work more productively by achieving a better balance between ideas and implementation.

Personal Development

Strength or Weakness? It’s all Situational…

We have provided many illustrations of how our personality and emotional capabilities are either going to put “wind in our sails” or cause us to “drag, drain or drift”. In a very real sense these capabilities are neither good or bad but should rather be viewed as being both good and bad or productive and counterproductive to term it more accurately.

Why is this? Quite simply because most jobs, but especially leadership roles place a wide range of and often contradictory demands on us. A manager for instance in some situations needs to be cold, clinical and objective. In other situations he may be required to be empathic and supportive. In one situation a person needs to be assertive, influencing and persistent while in others he needs to be open, receptive and a good listener in order to be effective.

People are very rarely both ends of the same spectrum. They tend to either be more clinical and objective or more empathic and supportive; more assertive and influencing or more open and receptive; more team orientated or more individualistic. Jobs, but more especially leadership roles, call for situational responses. In this situation I need to dig in my heels; in that situation I must be flexible; in this situation I must be cautious but in that situation I must be bold; in this situation I must be trusting but in that situation I need to be vigilant. We therefore all have development needs.

Our development areas are usually in our blind spot and that is what catches us out and as you have seen from some of our case studies can have profound consequences for an organisation.

We have therefore developed a set of COACHING AND DEVELOPMENT reports that help people to address their development areas and develop a wider repertoire of behaviours that will enable them to respond SITUATIONALLY rather than STEREOTYPICALLY to job demands. The reports raise awareness of a person’s development needs and also provide coaching advice on how to grow the development areas.

We also offer a comprehensive online training program called MY EQ. My EQ takes individuals on an intensive journey which facilitates Personal Mastery and the development of Emotional Competencies.