The Chief Psychology Officer

Ep76 Strengths versus Personality with Dr Stewart Desson

• Dr Amanda Potter CPsychol • Season 4 • Episode 76

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Dr. Amanda Potter and guest Dr. Stuart Desson, CEO of Lumina Learning, explore the complex relationship between personality testing, neurodiversity, ethical assessment practices, and strengths-based approaches in the workplace.

• The Big Five personality model (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism) remains the most empirically validated framework for understanding personality
• Both experts challenge traditional views of personality as static, suggesting a more dynamic understanding that incorporates conscious choice
• Evaluative bias in psychometrics can lead to one end of personality spectrums being seen as "good" while the other end is viewed negatively
• Profile matching in recruitment creates dangerous homogeneity in organizations, reducing diversity of thought and stifling innovation
• The "shadow" concept from Jungian psychology represents disowned aspects of ourselves that we project onto others
• Personality labeling (like being called "the creative type") can limit career opportunities and development
• Ethical psychometric practice must acknowledge human complexity and avoid oversimplified categorization
• The best assessments expand possibilities rather than constraining them, recognizing we can demonstrate seemingly opposite traits depending on context

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the Chief Psychology Officer podcast, where we dive into the fascinating world of business, psychology, neuroscience and the science of people at work. I am your host, kishaya Stewart, and today we will be unpacking some big, often misunderstood topics neurodiversity, hiring, bias and the ongoing debate between personality and strengths. Whether you're hiring, leading or just trying to understand yourself and others better, these topics affect us all. To explore this, I'm joined by two incredible minds in this space our very own, dr Amanda Potter, ceo of Zircon, and our special guest, dr Stuart Desson, ceo of Lumina Learning.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, kashaya. How amazing we have a new hostess. And Stuart, thank you so much for being our guest.

Speaker 3:

Totally delighted to be here.

Speaker 1:

Stuart, rather than me introducing you, why don't you tell us who you are and some of the amazing work you do?

Speaker 3:

So I'm Stuart Dessen. I'm the CEO and the founder of Lumina Learning and I'm the author of the Lumina Spark model, which is the basis of our suite of psychometrics and L&D and offerings that we've kind of digitized. So that's what I've been doing the last 15 years is bringing that to the world to help people learn and grow and hopefully make the world a better place. I've done stuff before that as well, so business psychology is something like my third career because I like to keep changing. So I have done other stuff around operational research in the dim and distant past and mathematical modeling. So I have done other stuff around operational research in the dim and distant past and mathematical modelling. So I started out a bit techie and nerdy, moved more into general management, had a corporate career, moved into coaching, l&d, before eventually attempting to integrate that in the form of business psychology and what I do with Lumina Learning. So it makes sense to me anyway.

Speaker 2:

How interesting that you and I have got a very similar life these days. We both are founders of psychology and tech businesses and psychometric businesses. So in some ways we're very similar, Stuart, but in other ways we're very different, because I went straight from school and in fact I even did psychology A-level straight through psychology. That's been my whole life, my whole career, so I don't have that breadth and diversity that you've had.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, there's curious pros and cons to both of those, aren't there? Yeah, so sometimes I'm secretly jealous of people that have been steeped in psychology like all their lives, and then other times I'm grateful for the fact that I've had some interestingly different experiences that kind of inform me, certainly from a business perspective and a technology perspective, give me a different angle and maybe interestingly make me I like to think appropriately slightly less respectful of some of the sort of orthodoxy in psychology and the views around. So I kind of learned to be more challenging and disruptive.

Speaker 2:

Do you know what somebody listening to this might be thinking? Why? Why, amanda, have you invited Stuart? He's a competitor. Why are you inviting an author of a personality questionnaire on your podcast when you're so vocal about the role of personality versus strengths? Well, I thought let's be brave. Actually, if we're going to do it, we may as well bring in somebody I respect and admire and we can have a proper debate around personality and strengths and psychometrics and really kind of bring that conversation to the fore. So I'm delighted you said yes, so thank you.

Speaker 3:

Well, thank you for being brave to do that, and the feelings are mutual. By the way. I've seen your sort of meteoric rise and I've seen the awards that you've received for your work around space psychology you know from the ABP and elsewhere, so I'm really intrigued to have a fun and robust debate.

Speaker 2:

So, kishaya, I know you haven't yet introduced yourself why don't you introduce yourself for our audience, so everybody gets to know who you are and where you're from?

Speaker 1:

Sure thing. Hi, I'm Kishaya Stewart. I'm a business psychologist at Zircon, so my background is in psychology business psychology and also neuroscience. So I do a lot of research. That kind of goes into these podcast episodes. I do research into product design, but also some project management as well. So I do a vast amount of things within Zircon. So that's always very fun and exciting, and it's always exciting to meet new people like Dr Stuart Dessen, it's amazing to even be, you know, within the same space.

Speaker 3:

I mean, it sounds like you've got an incredibly varied role and you're in the right place, making your research have a real impact. Kudos to you and thank you for leading it today.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, dr Stuart Dessen, and I guess one question I would have for you is what is your passion, kind of, in this world of business psychology?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, my passion. Well, there's a few answers to that. So at one level, it's always been in me throughout my career to somehow want to bring science to bear in the world of business. What do I mean by that? I like the idea of referring to the evidence, getting the facts, putting some rational thinking on it, engaging in critical thinking. I see that, as you know, in my career I've seen it, generally speaking, somewhat lacking in many organizations. There's lots of consultants selling their snake oil. I'd like us to be the antidote to that with a dose of critical thinking. But that's not to say that I don't want to be massively creative, intuitive and innovative at the same time. So I like to integrate those worlds. So sometimes you need to let go of your rational thinking if you are going to create, but I kind of like to integrate things that you might call opposites. So that's one answer to it At a totally personal level.

Speaker 3:

Like I don't know, know, probably 30 years ago, I went on a course on purpose, life, purpose and so on, and came to the conclusion that I wanted to help other people learn and grow. And about five years after that I realized that I needed to modify it to help myself and other people learn and grow, so I'm in that as well and that actually still is my purpose in various guises. So I want to be helpful to people at work to help them have a more collaborative experience of work if they're a leader, to be somewhat more democratic and not inflict authoritarian stuff on people and through that, you know, make work a better place, and for me that's helping people develop. So you could say that's my personal mission.

Speaker 2:

What a fantastic personal mission, rather than I'd like to make lots of money or become famous or what very many of the younger generation think about, which is those extrinsic factors. It's very intrinsic, isn't it to motivated to help.

Speaker 3:

It is. I'm not saying money is not important because it gives you influence and so on, but it's not my primary motivator. And the thing about you know you. Initially, when I did this, I actually was quite happy to be almost invisible in the business, but I eventually concluded if we want to have more impact, it is good for me to come on podcasts like this and put my voice in the world in a stronger way.

Speaker 2:

I do think that's important and the team have been encouraging me as hence this podcast to do the same actually, because, as the business leaders, our ideas are important actually, and sharing those ideas are also important. So, Stuart, you and I have got something similar because both of us have done a lot of research around the big five. So that's one of your passions, is it not? And I remember us talking about bias as well. So could you talk about a little bit about your psychology based passions?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I kind of reversed into the big five in truth. So I started out interested in humanistic psychology and that was partly through coaching and L&D experiences in some corporates. So I like the idea of attempting to discover a bit more who we are being positive about, how we learn and grow, and being more authentic. Those are the idea of attempting to discover a bit more who we are being positive about, how we learn and grow, and being more authentic. Those are the sorts of things that have been appealing to me for a good 30 years. So the psychology that influenced me most probably is Viktor Frankl and his idea of finding a purpose and meaning, and I like the Carl Rogers approach to dialogue and coaching. And Jung had a big influence on me with a sort of a deeper depth psychology perspective and that kind of came first. And then, as I became interested in bringing to that more of the analytical side of my background because I said I started out in this thing called operational research and was quite a stats kind of nerd for at least a decade and even did AI stuff before. It was cool, you know, like in the 90s when people laughed at you if you said you did decade I mean even did AI stuff before. It was cool, like in the 90s when people laughed at you if you said you did AI. I kind of wanted to integrate that world with the world of psychology and it partly came in true.

Speaker 3:

Through experiencing some not very good, valid models, I have an instinctive sense something was wrong. So I set about doing a PhD in business psychology and it of course didn't take long to figure out that the big five is the most empirically well-researched, grounded in a model of personality, and so I guess that's how it came about, really partly from good experiences, partly not so good ones. So I have over my career, you know, experienced some dodgy psychometrics, but I like to think now I've come home to research what is in fact quality. So I think the big five, in my opinion you may well disagree, amanda, but from my perspective the big five is the best, most researched model of personality you know from the last 30, 35 years, and that's what inspired me to work with it. That doesn't mean it's perfect at all. I can be really critical of it if I wish, but there's a tremendous evidence base there to build on before I respond, a very quick and small question.

Speaker 2:

Is your spark model based on big five asking a stupid question, stuart?

Speaker 3:

no, it's a great question. It is so Luminous. Spark model, which evolved out of my PhD, is basically based on the Big Five. Having said that, it's Big Five because it's empirical and it's based on correlations, and it builds on that research base around the Big Five. But it does bring in to it some other concepts. There are some Jungian concepts in how the model is applied and interpreted, in terms of looking at opposites, integrating opposites, and in terms of the concept of the shadow and so on. So I would say it's fundamentally big five as a psychometric, but its application has a humanistic feel.

Speaker 2:

Very interesting because my PhD was also based on the big five and the action I was taking. I was looking at type A behaviour and wellbeing, which I've talked about in the podcast, and looking to see whether type A was another Big Five construct, because arguably, all of the personality constructs can be factored down to the Big Five. And yes, indeed, after eight years of research, the answer was yes, type A is another big five model.

Speaker 3:

I did have a sneaky read of your PhD quite a few years ago.

Speaker 2:

Oh my goodness you're the only person other than the two examiners. Oh, and Sarah, actually.

Speaker 3:

I'm still counting on one hand how many people have read mine as well, but that's how it goes.

Speaker 2:

That is absolutely crazy and amazing, Thank you. So in your mind, Stuart, how are personality characteristics and strengths different?

Speaker 3:

So I mean, if you look at how it's defined academically, traditionally, they kind of are quite different. So personality is often defined, sometimes even genetically, depends on your view on, you know, evolutionary psychology and so on. But often a hardcore approach would say personality is kind of genetic, it's very stable throughout evolutionary psychology and so on. But often a hardcore approach would say personality it's kind of genetic, it's very stable throughout your life and so on. And if you view it that way which, I might add, I don't really then it's probably quite different to strengths, and strengths would be, from my perspective, a sort of a more versatile concept, partly because you can develop them more and so on.

Speaker 3:

The depressing view of personality being so static is it's you could take a view that you can't develop it, and then where do you go? So, having said that, that's kind of not my view, so I've chosen to interpret personality much more broadly. So my definition it does include that you could say genetic bit and also the bit that's hard to change from your upbringing and your early experiences. But it also includes your conscious will that you bring to your life your work and how you wish to behave. So that's part of it. So I do see our behavior as a key part of our personality. I wouldn't separate it out in the way that some people do, and I also see the dynamic there.

Speaker 3:

I really love the trait activation theory by Tet, who says that essentially we so for me, overdoing things and being dysfunctional is a legitimate part of our personality and my experience of work is that people often are triggered and do crazy dysfunctional things. So I like to look at like who we are underneath instinctively, but also how we behave, but what might trigger us and when we might overdo it. So you could say I've got a more nuanced view of personality from that perspective. That's kind of how I see it. So in that regard, I see strengths as a really critical part of our personality and if we are going to be purposeful in our lives and make sort of conscious choices, choosing to focus on our strengths is an incredibly sensible thing to do. So that's kind of my take.

Speaker 2:

I don't know what you make of that, amanda?

Speaker 2:

I probably have, because I've wanted to differentiate between strengths and personality to help our customers. I have always referred to a continuum and I always think about it in terms of state and trait, and what I would do is I would put resilience, emotional intelligence, on the state end, because it's rapidly changeable and that triggering can happen, using your language, in a moment, and so my emotions can change rapidly depending on what's happening around me versus personality, which I would argue is the other end, which is trait strengths in the middle, because I would argue that strengths, whilst they're not as rapidly changing, they are more evolving and they are more responsive to other choices we make, the decisions we make in the environment we're in. But, using your definition, actually the personality is more dynamic and it's more evolving than I'm probably giving it credit for. And why I'm saying that is that there's been a bit of a confusion in my mind because Hogan have changed the language of their reports, particularly the HDS. They now refer to personality traits as strengths, and I wondered what you think about that.

Speaker 3:

Well, I actually wasn't aware that they'd started referring to them as strengths. That is quite interesting, I wonder. Is that deeply rooted in Bob Hogan's view of psychology and has changed his mind, or is it more of just a practical application from his team? I'm not sure I understand how you framed it as a continuum and I think we, at one level, we're probably quite aligned on that, because I think the sort of traditional, rigorous view of personality being absolutely static is to me quite unappealing. It's not very humanistic, it's not so practical.

Speaker 3:

So I like your idea that you see strengths being in the middle. I would simply frame it that there are some things that are very hard, if not impossible, to change. There are some things that we can develop and bring our conscious will to, and of course there are, as you say, we can go all the way to states, and I do view personality as something that on the day you can view that your energy for certain traits is increasing or decreasing, based on what you're experiencing in any day. So I think that is a useful framework.

Speaker 2:

I wonder if we should take a step back for the audience, stuart, and just explain what the big five is, because I've realized some people may be listening to this and they're not psychologists, and they're just. They're HR, they're interested in personality, they're interested in strengths, but they're not PhD students or even master's students in psychology. So would you mind just explaining what the big five is, please? We should have done this earlier.

Speaker 3:

That's okay. So for me, the big five, all it is is an empirical approach to measuring your personality, so it's not massively theoretically grounded, it's just. Over decades, thousands of researchers have asked people hundreds of thousands of questions and then correlated the results and, lo and behold, based on analysis, correlations, factor analysis, it seems to be that five factors in personality emerge, and it seems to be consistent across the globe. Now I say that certain academics will disagree and say no, no, no, it's not five, it's six. Someone else will say no, it's three, sometimes it's two, there's even the big one. So it's probably not a completely resolved academic issue, but I'm going to go with what I do in the real world. Let's go with five. That's where the consensus is of five factors in personality. So, additionally, we'd say that we'd use the OCEAN acronym and we'd say openness is part of it.

Speaker 3:

Now, one of the downsides of the big five is that it tends to emphasize openness over the opposite. If you're not open, what do you reckon you'd be? Amanda? Closed, yeah, closed, yeah. Well, we don't want to be closed. So my view, a bit more humanistic, is to try and remove some of what's called an evaluative bias, where we make one end good and the other end not so good. So I say, you know you're open at one end, but you could be carried down to earth and practical at the other end. Both can be helpful. So that's the openness.

Speaker 3:

The c is conscientiousness. So all the correlations that emerged around being on time, having plans, being focused and so on, that's conscientious. If you're not conscientious, amanda, which apparently I'm not, what would you describe me as Lazy? Lazy, I'm wounded. But actually there are some benefits to not being conscientious. We can be inspired, spontaneous, break the rules, and we tend to find entrepreneurs cannot be the opposite. So I prefer it to be called inspiration driven. I'm inspired and that drives me.

Speaker 3:

So conscientious is the second one, extroversion, which actually was coined by Young as a term in 1921, extroversion, introversion, and if you're not extroverted, of course you could be introverted, and I simply take the view actually that you can be a bit of both. So I don't quite go with Jungian original typing theory, although if you read Jung you didn't really completely have people as boxed types, although that is sometimes how it's interpreted. But actually it's probably a continuum and it depends on the context. There's introvert, extrovert, and then the A in ocean stands for agreeableness. If you're not agreeable, amanda, what might you be Reserved? Yeah, so agreeable is one and I call it people-focused. The other end, I tend to call it outcome-focused. You could be disagreeable, you could argue, but that can actually be a good thing as well. And then, finally, the bit of the ocean model that I really don't like to tell you.

Speaker 3:

The truth is the N, which of course stands for neuroticism. So it is true, it's a big factor in personality. Some people get anxious, some people get angry and so on, and some don't, and the opposite is often called emotional stability. I don't like that language. So personally I refer to it as being a risk reactor, like scanning for what could go wrong. You can kind of feel it in your body and you're more comfortable expressing your dissatisfaction with things versus what I call a reward reactor, where we're confident and optimistic. So I hope you get the gist of what I've done there. I've kind of reframed the big five so that we can have a positive take on both ends of it. And those are the five factors, as I say, some people say it's six, seven. It's not completely beyond question, but that's kind of what I go with.

Speaker 4:

Love listening to our podcast. Come hear Amanda talk live. Amanda and Laura McLean, strategic People Solutions Manager from Santander, will be sharing insights about psychological safety and inclusion on the EDI stage at the CIPD Festival of Work on 12th of June at 11 am. Last year, when Amanda spoke, it was a full house, so get there early to secure your seat. Visit us at Stand L69 throughout the two-day festival, where we'll be demonstrating our new my B Talent platform. Come and say hello.

Speaker 1:

Stuart, I've never had someone kind of relay the big five so well. I think. Coming from an academic background, you've like explained it the best, amanda, I know. Before you kind of had some, you showed some bias there and I guess I think we all do that sometimes. So I was wondering about that and kind of looking at your even your PhD, stuart, like how can you reduce that bias sometimes in everyday life Because we do it so unconsciously? How can Amanda myself, anyone out there, reduce that bias?

Speaker 3:

So for me that bias partly comes with the questions that we ask and the labels we put on things. So if I put all my emphasis on being open and how it's good to be open and a big picture thinker and full of ideas and I'm sort of not talking as much about the opposite, then it's our minds often imply the opposite is not as good. Or you could say have a bias, you're closed. So what can we do about it? Well, what I like to do is, in the design of psychometrics, make a conscious effort to remove that bias. So I like to call that evaluative bias. It has been given many names, but it's an evaluative bias because we have like a different emotional response to one end of a scale being that's good and the other end not so good. So one thing we can do is to make sure that we measure both ends of the scale equally positively and constructively. So it's good to be open and full of good ideas. It's also good to be down to earth and practical and sensible and not get carried away with good ideas. Now, the risk in doing that is that we can sugarcoat things and go into sort of la la land of everything's positive, because of course we can be closed and not open to stuff. I call that kind of overextending if we overdo it. If I overdo my down to earth, I get negative and sceptical and so on. But of course I can overdo my openness. So I call it big picture thinking, going over the top with too many crazy ideas. So both ends of the scale can overextend.

Speaker 3:

So what I learned in my PhD was one technique which comes from a psychologist in the 60s called Peabody, to reduce this bias is to make sure you measure both ends. And make sure you measure both ends equally constructively and equally in a sort of overplayed or dysfunctional mode and pay great attention to balancing it, and then you will reduce that bias in the psychometrics. So kind of that's been my passion that I picked up on in my PhD and it kind of helps in terms of practical application as well. You know, if people are neurodiverse in a workplace and say they have a more spiky profile and they're more extreme on introversion or, as you said, amanda, they could be low on conscientiousness, like people calling me lazy surely not Then they'll feel that they get a fairer reading if the questions that describe them are more acknowledging of their actual strengths and qualities. So that's why it can be a really helpful thing to reduce that bias if you're using it at work.

Speaker 2:

We are using a very similar approach in our tool as well. So we have the concept of overused strengths and underused, because with the Be Talent Strengths questionnaire, we're looking for spiky profiles, we're looking for ways to understand ways in which people are particularly energised by certain areas, but recognising that under pressure we might overuse, but also we may move away from certain things and avoid them, particularly under pressure or situations of complacency, and therefore don't realise that we have to dial up certain things in order to perform at a certain level. So very similar actually. But all of the language we try to use is neutral or positive.

Speaker 3:

We try not to call anyone lazy or what other language I was using earlier I think we probably arrived at a kind of similar place of our different routes, because you're talking about overplaying your strengths or underusing them. I just have slight a slightly different vernacular with the language of overextended and so on, but in essence it's pretty similar I think.

Speaker 2:

You talked about shadow earlier. What do you mean by shadow?

Speaker 3:

The concept has been popularized by Jung. So if we're looking at it in terms of personality, my shadow it could be. It could be that in my shadow is the disowned bits of myself that I like to ignore. The humorous example for me would be when I first, you know, I was in my 20s and I had a job, and someone said what's your boss like? And I said they're awful, they're controlling me, they're telling me what to do. And uh, you know, 18 months later I had another boss and they said how are you doing with your new boss? Oh, they've turned out to be terrible as well, absolutely control free. Anyway, by the time I got on top of my fourth boss, who were all you know? They were all control freaks.

Speaker 3:

Apparently, someone said to me are you sure this couldn't be you? Could there be a disowned part of you? That's like projecting that onto other people. So for me, you know that onto other people. So for me, you know, explaining it in simple terms, the shadow is that sort of potentially disowned bit of me that I'm not willing to normally look at, but of course, we think it is good to look at. So, with Luminous Spark, we like to start with a strengths approach. It's always good to start there, but we also do encourage people to take a peek or be willing to look at their shadow. That can be an incredibly useful thing if people are motivated to go there and look at it. It's certainly helped me improve and evolve my approach to leading people.

Speaker 2:

So personally, it's helped you. Personally, that's great.

Speaker 3:

It has helped me personally. Yeah, the truth is. What's helped me personally in truth is what I've baked into my PhD and what I do with psychometrics. I always say, if you really want to understand a psychometric, fortunately or not, their biases and worldview will be baked into it.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my goodness, that's such a good point If I think about the products I've built over the years, which have been plentiful, but the six that we still sell, they really are an extension of my thinking.

Speaker 3:

I think there's a bit of a mandarin there for sure.

Speaker 2:

really cool, actually. So one of the things I have a real problem with is misuse of personality strengths, resilience questionnaires, any psychometric. So as an organization, we regard ourselves to be highly ethical and therefore we won't sell our products to organizations if they plan to use them in an inappropriate way, for example, profile matching. So I was wondering about your view on that, stuart, because I know you've had an incredible success with your organization and your product is being used around the world. How do you maintain quality and standards and make sure that your product is being used ethically? And also, what does it mean to be ethical with the use of your product? I wondered if we have different views on it.

Speaker 3:

Well, firstly, I do. I salute you, acknowledge you for taking an ethical stand and being really really clear on it, and, of course, that's what we all should do. As you mentioned earlier, it's not all just about money and selling stuff, and that's where ethical challenges come. So we've all seen people produce measures that are non-scientific and flaky, but are able to sell them and bake them into technology, and that's an increasing risk. I think, with technology and digital and AI making it so easy to do this stuff, it's easy to do something that's not accurate and then use it in an inappropriate context as well. Well, what's my view? My view is, first of all, make sure that you're basing it on science that's valid and reliable, so that that's not a new thing. The technology for doing that's been around for the best part of you know, 70 or 80 years. So that's making sure you have your Cronbach alphas, your factor analysis, your predictive validity, all the things that you would normally be looking for. Make sure those have been designed in and that you're continually paying attention to that. Make sure, when you translate it, the nuance of different languages is taken into account, with skilled translators that understand the local culture. That's all an important part of it, the thing that from my perspective, is also important that sometimes is missed, even by people with a very scientific approach.

Speaker 3:

Sometimes they miss what's been called consequential validity, which is how is this instrument that may well be very valid and scientific, but what is the consequence of using it over time? Is it bringing about benefit? Is it doing any harm in ways unintended or not thought of in advance? So I do work quite hard to ensure that we do good with what we do, and that involves putting time and energy into attempting to measure the benefits and attempting to look at the outcomes over a long period of time. So, to give you a positive example, joy Horden and Aiyah Shaikh from Animo I've been working with them and the Amos Bursary a brilliant charity for over a decade, and they were coaching over 20 individuals over a decade, using our resources and many other resources as well, and so a really long-term, decade-long study on the impact of using psychometrics and the development approach on these individuals' lives, as assessed by them with their lived experience, is a good way of looking at what I would call consequential validity, and I'm always delighted to see, when you know, organisations like the ABP do place weight on that and not just the pure numbers, so that would be part of it for me.

Speaker 2:

I really love that long-term impact, long-term benefit for the individual or for the organization. The risk is that people throw psychometrics at people and they profile match, which is the big one. I talk about that using the language we were talking about earlier. That actually what we want is we want some agreeable, conscientious big five language, rather than spark language. Yes, yes, indeed, conscientious, agreeable, emotionally stable big five language rather than spark language.

Speaker 2:

Yes yes, indeed Conscientious agreeable, emotionally stable people for this organization, please. And therefore, what you get is you get homogeneity and you don't get that beautiful richness of diversity, which is what actually drives innovation and drives disruption.

Speaker 3:

I completely agree with you, and it's even where you know it's the big five, some people say it's a seven, some people say three, two, one, the big one actually, which some people do like to use. That's mad. It's a bit mad, isn't it? It's almost like the Alan Sugar definition of personality. Have you got bags of personality? It's like a one dimensional thing.

Speaker 2:

Have you got a personality or not? You've got to or not, and it kind of means highly extroverted, fairly open, throwing ideas in, quite emotionally stable.

Speaker 3:

I'd call it a reward reactor, full of confidence and optimism. It's a really one dimensional approach to personality and one risk of profile matching is that you end up, certainly in leadership roles, homing in on that sort of stereotype. Homing in on that sort of stereotype and the risk of that even if you can gather data that can show that in some circumstances that gets good outcomes if we do that consistently over time we will clone our culture and we will lose the diversity in our leadership style. So I'm 100% with you, amanda, if you're using psychometrics in this area around talent development, a really important factor is to do the opposite of that and actually look at, well, who's in the team now? If other people are joining the team, what does that do to our diversity? And one thing I always like to do when I work with a team is have a look. Has somebody been recruiting in the image of the boss? Have we got a clone team? And that's normally a huge challenge. It will unbalance the culture. It will result in sort of mini-me's occurring where people are trying to unconsciously replicate the boss or what they think is needed in the culture. And again. I'd like to see what I do as kind of the antidote to that.

Speaker 3:

I mean, I have had in the past clients bring me or Lumina in and say something's gone a bit wrong here.

Speaker 3:

We've been using the psychometrics and we're 10 years down the line and we seem to have a sort of mono, one dimensional culture.

Speaker 3:

Can you help us understand what's going on? One large organization I worked with, they were using like a four quadrant model for it and they kind of got into everybody at the senior level was kind of driven, focused, didn't express feelings and they kind of made a science out of saying that's what we want. And then a number of years down the line they were saying something strange has happened. We've lost. We used to be so empowered and we used to have lots of innovation and it's all disappeared. And the really curious thing about that was it was staggeringly obvious to me what happened and I got all their data and discussed it with them. Their HR people were on board, but it was really hard to persuade some of the other senior people to change because they say things like but we like it, like this, it's fast-paced, it's you know, that's how we are. They kind of got attached to the culture that they were part of and then it's pretty hard to change it.

Speaker 2:

You're almost into family therapy at this point, yeah we've just been asked by a large, fast fmcg, fast moving consumer goods company to map our strengths across to their capability model, which of course we can do. There's absolutely no problem in doing it. But should we? Was always the question for me, you know yes, we can do a number of things.

Speaker 3:

Of course we can do.

Speaker 2:

There's absolutely no problem in doing it, but should we? It was always the question for me. Yes, we can do a number of things, of course we can, but always the question is should we ethically, should we? Because as soon as you start mapping to competency models, what you're doing is you're driving a conversation around. Certain strengths are more important than other strengths. Whilst I might map a product, I might map decision styles If there's a decisive component to their capability framework, or resilience, if there's a awareness, well-being, resilience aspect to their model, but with something like strengths or with personality, the variety is fundamental.

Speaker 3:

So your concern there is that if you map the strengths, it'll end up in an application where they say these are the strengths you want and forget the others and then you're giving up on your strengths-based philosophy.

Speaker 3:

Now I see what you're saying there. I mean, personally, I would still like to do the exercise because I'd want to give them feedback that their capabilities may well be unbalanced, and I've seen this many times at both extremes. So I've seen really well-intended people from a HR department with consultants dream up a competency framework in a vacuum and it goes almost the other way and becomes very soft and empathetic and agreeable to such an extent that it disconnects with the C-suite level, who are tougher. And I've seen it go the other way as well, where the senior people are involved. And then when you map it I'm sure if you mapped it to your strengths or, as I would do it, with personality, I'm always intrigued to find out when it's unbalanced and I always like to give that feedback. Are you aware you've created like a capability or competency framework that's completely missed? You know three of the big five or in your case it would be a number of key strengths, and is that really really what you intended?

Speaker 2:

We did the same thing, actually without even realizing it. We did the same thing because Sarah had a client recently and they were really struggling in two particular areas and when she looked at their leadership framework and she mapped it, she said actually you're not recruiting against those things. No wonder you're having a problem. And for me, one of the things I'm trying to do when we build blueprints because that's a big part of our business our consulting business is equally as big as our product and platform business, and a big part of that is we build blueprints for clients. So capability frameworks for argument's sake.

Speaker 2:

The approach I've taken over the years is to create bigger frameworks that are agile, rather than trying to restrict the number of capabilities or potential characteristics too much, because I know they want eight or they want six or five, because it's easier to remember in the same way as values. But actually what you need is agility. Otherwise, what we're doing is we're really starting to reduce down again the complexity of human behavior and cognition rather than opening it up. So for me, I tend to design bigger models that can be used in an agile way.

Speaker 3:

I absolutely see what you're trying to do there. So you want the depth of a broader framework. That means you can draw on a broader repertoire of competencies and not make people kind of lopsided. The advantage of having six, five or four is they're kind of easier to remember. So somehow we want to do both, don't we? Somehow we want to have the depth but then keep the simplicity for people to kind of remember it. That's something I'm always striving to do in my work is take something really complex like the big five is pretty complex and it's a hierarchical model. Most people, on the face of it, will be overwhelmed by it, unless you can find really clever ways of communicating it in terms of simple dimensions to make it memorable. And I think it's brilliant what you're doing in that regard, amanda, because that's a tough challenge.

Speaker 2:

I think interestingly, I think Spark does it doesn't it in terms of big five, and I'm hoping that the BeTalent 360, our blended 360, does it in terms of potential, because we have 96 criteria in there, which would blow your mind, stuart, but from that a client can select the criteria that are the most critical for driving success at each level.

Speaker 3:

I love that you've got 96 in there and it's rigorous and detailed and scientific. I love that you've got 96 in there and it's rigorous and detailed and scientific because and I think one of the benefits from a validity point of view is that we have worked out how to measure who people are and what they're about in more detail, as well as measure the outcomes in more detail, and that's why we're getting stronger correlations and better validity. So I think we have improved our science and I do think that your 96 is part of that improvement and at the same time, we want to keep it simple. We want the science of 96, but we want the simplicity of people being able to remember it in an easy model to work with clients, to speak on the network and just have the chance to share the thing that we love.

Speaker 2:

I think we're both incredibly lucky. Actually, I know we bump into each other a lot at different conferences.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, I love bumping into conferences and it is a privilege, and I've evolved a few times in my career to find what I want to do so that I feel at home and authentic in my work. It's taken a while. I have done plenty of jobs in the past that have not been so thrilling, but that's part of life.

Speaker 1:

Just to kind of come in with a quick question for Stuart and Amanda. Looking at it from kind of the outside point of view now coming into this space a lot of times I'm very interested in like getting that personality quiz or using the strengths to find, to figure out myself and understand myself more, being very new to the space and a lot of people can be very obsessed with that label, so they want to do the personality quiz, they want to do those quick quizzes to know who they are. So I wanted to know what would you recommend our listeners do if someone is new to the space, or using psychology for assessments or development, what would you recommend for them?

Speaker 3:

Shall I go first? Yes, please. So one thing you're getting at there is people want to do questionnaires and find out about themselves, but you're asking about the risks of labelling, and labelling is kind of seductive because it's so easy to label things and it's easier and quicker to explain it to people. But I think I take a fairly strong stance on it. I strive to avoid that labeling and typing wherever I can, because I feel that oversimplification comes at a price. You're overly being reductionist and the truth is we are complex. We do seemingly opposite things. Different circumstances trigger different things.

Speaker 3:

So I don't like labeling this as one thing and making you a thing. You'll notice in the model I use, for example, we don't say you are the big picture thinker, you are the innovative one. No, no, no, no. That's unhelpful. We say here's your score on big picture thinking. It's on a continuum. Other scores are on a continuum. It might change dependent on your circumstance. That's more nuanced.

Speaker 3:

I think that's better in the long run and try to avoid giving people labels that are, in fact, too simplistic, because no one is really a label. Now, I do understand if you're a depth typing practitioner and you really know what you're doing. You're not doing that, but I do fear, fear, and I do see on the internet lots of overly simplistic things that give you your personality as a type of a dog or whatever it might be. I sort of am against that as an approach. So I say go subtle, go nuanced, and teach people a more depth approach that allows you to be opposites even in different circumstances, so defying the concept of a label brilliant question, kashaya, and fabulous response to it, because I completely agree and I also think it's very seductive to complete questionnaires or quizzes in magazines.

Speaker 2:

I know, certainly, growing up, I certainly completed them in order to find out a little bit more about myself. But I think there's a real danger. I agree with labeling and I think there's even more of a danger with some of the direction that some of the psychometrics are going, which is around animals, for example, giving yourself an animal title, and you mentioned a dog and I know there is one, and I've actually had clients complain to me that they've actually been labeled as an animal because they've had to complete a certain questionnaire in their organization and I think there's a risk there, I agree there is.

Speaker 3:

I mean, I've experienced it personally. So if I go back when I was in my corporate career, I was described, I was sort of typed in a certain way, and I remember going for a job in an operational area and they said you can't have a job here in this operation area because you're you're the creative type and they, they sort of labeled me, using even some Jungian language, and it kind of blocked me, I mean for a while, because I don't like being blocked.

Speaker 3:

So I worked around it and eventually got the job, but let's say it might have delayed me a year in what I wanted to do. So I hate the idea that you get labeled and then your whole career could be stifled or pushed in a certain direction, because sometimes we want to do a role that's kind of the opposite of who we might really be underneath, because it's a good learning experience. So that's my take on it. So I've experienced being labeled and I didn't like it, and that's one reason why it's in me now to create a psychometric that avoids it how interesting that we can be two ends of the continuum at the same time, depending on the moment, the situation.

Speaker 2:

It's true, we can both be extrovert and introvert.

Speaker 3:

I try to do it in business psychology. I strive to be innovative, have good ideas, love the models and concepts. At the same time, I strive to be grounded and sensible and not get too carried away. Now, the truth is, instinctively I am more picture thinking and so on, but then I need to make a conscious effort to ground myself in the evidence. Having said earlier, I'm really into evidence-based and rational thinking. That's kind of possibly a learned behavior as I've embraced it as a really, really good thing. I have to make an effort, otherwise I'll slip away from it how brilliant.

Speaker 2:

Well, stuart, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. I hope the listeners have found it useful. I know it's been quite techie because both of us being passionate about our craft. I know what do you get when you get three nerds in a row. But yes, and Kashaya, thank you so much for hosting your first podcast. That was brilliant, Thank you.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, Kashaya, well done. Delighted to get to know you and thank you for your insightful questions.

Speaker 1:

I felt like that was really an incredible conversation and I learned a lot Just being here. I felt like I learned so much. I have so many things to go back to, to think about. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you everyone for listening. If you like our podcast, would you mind please clicking on that follow button. Podcasts would you mind please clicking on that follow button and, if you don't mind, would you share it with one person? Think of somebody who would really like this episode and share this episode with them. Stuart, thank you for being a guest, kishaya, thank you for hosting and thank you everyone for listening. I hope you have a wonderful and successful day.

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Dr Amanda Potter

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Tim Hepworth

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Caitlin Cooper

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