Psyched For Business Podcast Episode 11
Episode 11:
Everything you wanted to know about Psychometrics but were afraid to ask with Tameron Chappell
Discover the answers to all your unanswered questions about psychometrics on this episode of Psyched for Business.
Host Richard Anderson sits down with expert occupational psychologist Tameron Chappell to explore the topic in depth. With Tameron's extensive experience in consulting and applying psychometric tools in businesses, she sheds light on a range of subjects that listeners may have been curious about but hesitant to ask.
Tune in for a comprehensive and engaging discussion on the ins and outs of psychometrics in this enlightening episode of Psyched For Business.
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Episode 11 - Transcript
Voiceover 0:00
Welcome to Psyched for Business, helping business leaders understand and apply cutting edge business psychology principles in the workplace.
Richard Anderson 0:11
Hi, and welcome to Psyched for Business. My name is Richard Anderson. Thank you for joining me. In this episode I sit down with occupational psychologist Tamron Chappell and pick her brains about all things psychometrics. Tameron is a psychometric specialist who was consulted and applied psychometric tools across many businesses for both recruitment and development. So this is everything you've always wanted to know about psychometrics, but were too afraid to ask. I hope you enjoy. Thanks again for listening. Tamron Chappell thank you very much for joining me. Welcome to Psyched for Business.
Tameron Chappell 0:42
Lovely to be here.
Richard Anderson 0:44
Great. I've been very much looking forward to having you on because we've got to what I think is a very interesting topic today. And I was just certainly before we started recording there that that I am the layman when it comes to psychometrics, obviously, we've developed psychometric software. But I'm brand new to this when it comes to the ins and outs of all these different tests, questionnaires, assessments, and I think in the world of psychometrics, there's probably a lot of dare I say jargon or terminology that's used that is often assumed that everybody understands. And for a lot of people that use psychometrics or are looking to use psychometrics, it's quite daunting, I think. So we're going to use this time Tameron with an expert as you are to, I guess, demystify psychometrics or everything we wanted to know about psychometrics for such a long period of time, but we're too afraid to ask. So we'll get into that. But before we do all of that time, and would you just be happy to introduce yourself, so kind of who you are and what you do.
Tameron Chappell 1:37
My official title is a chartered occupational psychologist, which for those in the know and know about our profession, it just means that I'm registered with the HCPC, as well as the Association for Business Psychologists and the British Psychological Society. So I'm registered with all of them. So I can call myself that protected title. But basically, what it means is, I focus on using the models and ideas and theories from psychology in the place of work to help people be more effective at work. And I pull on different ideas too, because I'm also trained in a psychodynamic approach. So I use transactional analysis and systemic constellations and internal family systems, which are all kind of from the psychotherapeutic side of the world. And I am quite happy for those to sit alongside that had numbers of psychometrics. So I'd like what they can both offer.
Richard Anderson 2:30
So the psychodynamic stuff that sounds really interesting. It's maybe we'll maybe get into that later on, or it's probably a full new topic. Of course, it is. Brilliant. So you're obviously well qualified to speak about psychometrics. How long have you been working in the world of, how long have you been expert in psychometrics?
Tameron Chappell 2:46
Well, expert's an interesting title as well, it implies that I have all the knowledge and the power, I think I would say, I'm a specialist. So I've maybe read more books and read more LinkedIn articles and been to more conferences, shall we say? But I started out in academia. So I was really interested in psychology and the psychology of language particularly, and how language influences how you think what happens to your language when you've had trauma. So research and ideas and models and knowledge have always been really interesting. But I wanted to have more of a practical focus to it. So it's great to have a theory, but then how does it actually work? So I set up my own consultancy, which sounds grand it was me it was moving out of academia into as my mum calls it, the real world. But so I've always had part of my own practice, I guess it's called and a job as well. So I've worked in various places in a in a psychometrics publisher briefly, in a company that was helping to create change in the NHS, in a tech recruitment firm in leadership consulting firms in learning and development organisations. So that's allowed me to have quite a broad range of experiences and clients, different professions and different approaches. And I think it's that wealth of experience and exposure to different organisations, different people, different ways of working in the professional background that they bring. That means they can feel comfortable saying I'm a specialist and have a lot of knowledge but the expert bit I was supposed to say that my LinkedIn profile, and I haven't got it in there for the search terms, but it does sit a little uncomfortable because of the power dynamics.
Richard Anderson 4:40
Okay, we've got a thought leader in there yet.
Tameron Chappell 4:42
Oh, no, I don't think I
Richard Anderson 4:44
that's another one akin to expert, I guess. But I'll use specialist respectfully, of course, it's more
Tameron Chappell 4:48
about my own analysis and psychodynamics as to whether I want to be viewed as the expert or not. I have a lot of knowledge and I'm happy to share it.
Richard Anderson 4:57
Brilliant. Well, look, we look forward to that. I think Probably the easiest place to start, or the most obvious place to start is what do we mean by psychometric metrics?
Tameron Chappell 5:06
It's both an inclusive and exclusive word, isn't it? It's a good conversation opener if people go, Wow, what are those? In essence, it means psychological measurement. So psychometrics is just the measurement of psychological concepts. Personality, basically, splitting the word up, personality measurement. That's what it is. But the common all language use of the word cycle has all of that baggage that we bring to it. I think lots of people in business particularly think, all psychometrics, they're a scary word, I don't know about them, I project onto them that they're really detailed and excluding. So it depends what you bring to the word, but it basically just means measuring personality.
Richard Anderson 6:00
Brilliant, so measuring personality through psychometrics. We know that they're used for both recruitment and development, but I guess very differently.
Tameron Chappell 6:09
Well, this is the big question that is totally, always debated on LinkedIn in various stages. And it points to another question that we're going to come to which is difference between type and trait and Myers Briggs, and why everyone, so it all sort of comes together in some way. So strap in.
Richard Anderson 6:29
So why in that case, why do we use psychometrics? Why is it a good thing for a business to implement a psychometric?
Tameron Chappell 6:36
So let's start there, and then explain why because it's a way of measuring something that's consistent in order to predict future. So businesses want to predict what's happening, right, because then you can plan, then you can adjust, you can manage, so they want to be able to predict what's going on, we live in a really chaotic place, even more so in the last few years than we thought was possible. So predicting how people will behave in certain environments has value to it, because you want to be able to plan and know what to expect. So in essence, psychometrics are useful because it helps you make better predictions about how people will behave in a role. It's not perfect. I'm married to a nuclear physicist, and we have had many a discussion over the years about the social psychology and personality, and how can you predict sort of things. So we talked about correlations. And we've got validity and all of the terminology, that basically saying mathematically, we can be certain about what it is we're saying here. But he kind of laughs and scoffs as a nuclear physicist going, there's no predictability there. But I remind him, we're dealing with people, not laws of nature. So it's as good as we can get. But there is a whole range of ways of measuring people's factory settings, looking at what they how they're likely to behave. And that's not to say that you want then be able to change and learn different ways of behaving, because that's in essence, what we're doing as we go through our working lives, we are learning how to behave in different roles in different situations. That doesn't mean the fundamental who you are in your personality shifts. But it does mean that you learn to apply it in different roles, and you learn to extend your kind of corridor of comfort about where you can work. So if you're looking at the heart theory, personality does not really change from the age of about 30, late 20s, early 30s. So if you're looking at the research, and you look at a population level of of all of the data together, there aren't large shifts in personality, once you hit that kind of age 30. But if you speak to individuals, anecdotally, they say, Oh, I've, I've really changed in my career, or something happened in my life that really was pivotal for me. And I changed how I did things. So it depends on and this is an age old debate, whether you view personality is more mobile and human brains is able to change more, or whether there really is a genetic component that's there. That's for a whole different talk, we won't go to from my point of view, I think that we're knowing more and more about how plastic brains are in terms of being able to learn and adapt, and that's as what we are as humans. I think we have factory settings is the way I describe it. So that's the trait level of personality. So the things that the evidence base says, if you look at one point in time, and you look in two years time or three years time, there's a pretty good likelihood that they'll be pretty similar, especially when they get to be older. So that's the trait based approach where you're comparing someone to everyone else around them. So you know how much of something somebody's got. So it's like height, we all have a height, we all sit somewhere on a continuum of our height, and the majority of us are about the same height. So the lowest people are average, and average doesn't mean mediocre, right? It means about the same. And then there are some who are a bit taller and a little bit shorter, and some who are really tall and some are really short. So it gets narrower towards the end, like the bell curve of Absolutely, it's the bell shaped curve. So that's what trait personality has, as its underpinning assumption, we all have some level of this bit of personality. And we sit on that curve somewhere. So we're either like everyone else in the middle, or we're at the extremes. And the more extreme you are, the more that's likely to be a standout strength, because there's not as many people as you have got it. And the less likely it is for you to be able to flex your style to work in a different way, or to work with people who are at the opposite end of the scale, say,
Richard Anderson 11:13
so maybe that's a strength on the development area, because I suppose as a layman, from the outside looking in, he would imagine if somebody's right at the end there, and they're fantastic at one trade for one of a better expression, then that's a great thing. But if they can't adapt their personalities or behaviours to the other things, it's gonna be a bit of a challenge.
Tameron Chappell 11:30
So that's why when you're looking for either development, but particularly for recruitment, you're looking at the individual and their makeup, their factory settings, what their personalities like. And it has to be within the context of where they're operating. So someone could have a standout strength, that's fabulous in the job they've done so far, really not fit for purpose in the context of the job that they're applying for. Because of the nature of the work, the people they're working with the long term expectations in the role, whole manner of things. So trait personality allows you to have that conversation with, say, the hiring manager and the organisation to think beyond the individual. And think about the context in which they're going to be working and operating, and also who their colleagues might be, and what their personalities might be like, and whether that's a good fit or not. Because we know from the research that diversity, cognitive diversity, thinking differently, is valuable for an organisation for innovation, for responding to changing context for customers, all of those reasons. But if you haven't got the right situation set up. So you haven't got the right culture that allows people to bring that cognitive diversity to bear to share it, if you haven't got the right psychological safety in place, then it doesn't matter how diverse your team is, in some ways, they won't share
Richard Anderson 12:56
that ideas to the table, and all of that sort of stuff
Tameron Chappell 12:59
shouted down because it's negative or whatever reason. And similarly, we know that diversity is good for a team. So we could recruit people that are really different. But when you're working with someone who's really different from you, it's really hard, right? It's harder than working with someone who's similar. And so cognitive diversity is something we need diversity of personalities, something we need in a team. And by its very nature that makes it harder to work well together in a team. So trait personality can really help predict that for a organisation, type personality is not to be used in recruitment.
Richard Anderson 13:44
And the questions I was going to ask you,
Tameron Chappell 13:46
in essence, the reason is, and I think most people who just dip a little bit into this area will know that for some reason, you know, you're not supposed to use one, and you're supposed to use another but they might not know why. And they might not know and type and try. Which one is it not quite sure. In essence, we talked about that bell shaped curve, the track tool allows you to be somewhere along there. And so you can compare with other people, a type tool takes a line down the middle, and forces you to decide which side of the fence you're on. You're one type or you're another. And so by doing that, you're minimising the construct of personality, because you're one thing or another as opposed to, oh, all manner of things on this
Richard Anderson 14:35
person. You're forcing somebody down on one particular Yeah.
Tameron Chappell 14:38
And if you remember about what we said, the way that mathematically a bell shaped curve works, the majority of people are average. So the majority of people will go, sometimes I'm not sad. Sometimes I'm not. So it's not really very strong for me, whereas the ones that the extreme will go, Yes, I am that type. I am an extrovert, hurray. MBTI I don't like that at all. I'm an introvert and I know that this is some of the problems I've experienced. And because all those extroverts are talking and doing whatever it is, that is definitely me. And then the majority of people who are average go, sometimes I am sometimes I'm not, which is why on LinkedIn, you get this, I'm an introverted extrovert, or am an extrovert introvert. Actually, you're just somewhere along that extrovert curve, but you're probably average. And so you can do a bit of both, whereas those at the extremes go, that's me. It's recognised me, it's awesome. It's not predictable enough. And it's not nuanced enough to use for a recruitment decision, because it's not reproducible enough. So for those people who are at the extreme ends, type tools are probably quite reliable. Because they say, I'm still
Richard Anderson 15:53
really, really it's fairly obvious that you're going to be one side or the other. Yeah. Whereas if
Tameron Chappell 15:56
you're in the middle, which most people are, sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not. And the thing about type tools is they can also ask about your whole self inside work outside work. And they don't always narrow down to how am I in the work setting. And because we have many roles that we play, we may be in the average on, say, extraversion, but in a work setting, were slightly more extroverted than how we are when we're at home. It's just not as predictable. It's not as robust in terms of how confident you can be to say, when you look again, at this person, they'll still be in that same spot. Whereas trade does that a bit better,
Richard Anderson 16:39
much more, like consistent, probably I would imagine, legally defensible from a recruitment point of view as well, because I would imagine if you're selecting somebody based on the results of a personality type questionnaire, you could probably have a few problems.
Tameron Chappell 16:52
You should not select the one. No, it's a definite no, no. But people don't explain why it's not a no as in, oh, you idiot, why would you use that because that doesn't explain it at all. It's because of the way the nature of the tool doesn't allow you to have someone who's a little bit like this or a little bit more like that. Or it's a reductionist view of personality, in essence. So it's almost like you're making a decision about someone with a blindfold on and one arm behind your back, you're not using the fool tool to find out where they are. They're often used for development brilliantly, because it's about team interaction, because sometimes, this is the first time that people have come across the idea that, Oh, there's something like personality, and we can be really different in our factory settings. And that might be why I really don't get on with John at work because he's at the opposite end. So for a development tool for a team building tool, they're amazing. And it's usually the first encounter people have with these kinds of tools. But they don't really look at emotional reactivity, which is one aspect of trait tools that look at the whole of personality. emotional reactivity are, as many models call it neuroticism, psychologist, favourite. Everybody's neurotic because of that normal distribution, we are all neurotic to some level, but because of the stigma around that particular word, everyday use neurotic means a certain thing and we only expect it to mean people who are very highly emotionally reactive. So tend to use in polite company emotional reactivity as the descriptor. So type tools don't usually look at emotional reactivity. They're looking for a much more positivist viewpoint about the rest of personality, about how you make decisions, how you connect with others, about how you organise yourselves, it's looking at that side of personality, it depends on the tool, some dip a bit more in, but as a as a broad brushstroke type tools, look at less of the personality range, and they look at it in a reductionist way to put you in a bucket. And they are less predictable and less consistent over time, because you can move move from buckets.
Richard Anderson 19:23
I mean, I'm really, really interested in everything that you've gone through so far, I've probably got a lot of questions and quite a bit to unpack. So I'll just find a way to get I am really interested in going back to the types of that you've just talked about, because I want to give a quick story about when I've used them before, and I got a lot of benefit from a development perspective. But just to go back to the trait type assessments that are typically used, often used for recruitment as psychologists and psychometricians. How do we demonstrate the trade best tools of which I'm sure there are very many, how do we prove that they are predictive? What are the types of measures that you would undertake to say that this is doing what it shouldn't be doing.
Tameron Chappell 20:03
That's both an interesting and a tricky question, in some ways, happy to launch in on my opinion on this. There are some amazing publishers out there that devote their whole time and energy into creating really statistically robust ways of showing that there tool is solid, predictable, consistent. And there's a whole range of jargon of return. Okay? Yeah. Terminology, reliability, validity, construct validity, there are there as to whether you're measuring what you say you're measuring, whether you're measuring it, first time you measure it, you're measuring it the same way, the second way, whether what you're measuring is actually measuring what you think you're measuring. So if you say you're looking at emotional intelligence, are you really looking at emotional intelligence? Or is your questionnaire just very consistent and asking about something completely different, right? So there's lots of statistical jargon terms, and I'm not trying to minimise them, because they are very solid. And they're there mathematically, to look at that. That is usually the area that when I work with HR colleagues, and then people who are less psychometrically, knowledgeable, shall we say, not interested, they know that these things exist. And they really just want to know, is your test the same as the others in terms of consistent all of those things? So I don't personally think that the big decision maker, although if you go on a course, they often say look at the reliability, look at the validity, look at the figure it should be within this range. If it's a well known test, if it's an established publisher, you can almost bet that they've got all of their work and the solid Ness behind
Richard Anderson 21:55
1000s of completions of these things and so much data to
Tameron Chappell 21:59
absolutely, I think often when I'm talking to clients about this, yes, that's important. And I don't want to minimise it. But it's the conversation I find is more useful to say, what do you want to use the tool for? How do you want to use it in your organisation? What's your view of leadership competencies frameworks, so that, then you choose the test that best aligns with what they're trying to do, how they want to work, whether they've got people who are trained in the use of it, whether they haven't whether, so there's so many tools there in the market, some very, very good and solid, some developing and growing, and some that actually have a great facade of robustness. And when you poke around, it's not there. But if you go with a view of what's your credibility and questioning, to say, what's your background, in your tool? Where do you come from? How do you deal with this? Have you, for instance, got British Psychological Society? Yeah, exactly. But that is a process as well, that's quite involved. So some of them are newer tools that are just stablishing haven't got the data yet. But that doesn't mean you can't use them. It's about going in mindfully knowing that it's a tool to start a conversation or a process. And if you use it as a tool to help you do something, and you're clear on your purpose, then they are fantastic. And you can, I wouldn't advocate it, but you can even use some of the less robust tools, if it means, you know, the limits of what it can do in its predictability. And it's just for the start of the conversation with your team. Yeah, it's about the application of it. But unfortunately, because of the way the businesses and because of the way we are in business and who we are as individuals, it's hard to say. So why is your why is this tool better than the other one, and publishers are trying to sell their own tool? And if they're doing their job? Well, they should all be measuring the same thing, which is the Big Five trait personalities are variations of search. So they should be looking at the same stuff. So therefore, it's how are they asking about it? What do their reports look like? Does it fit with my organisational view? Can I get good support from the publisher? There's all manner of other reasons that you need to take into account when choosing a personality tool.
Richard Anderson 24:40
Yes, I've seen a lot of these things. And prior to that we host a lot of these newer tools as well that are going through the process of trying to be might be trying to become accredited or certified through the British Psychological Society. And obviously that's a big task in and of itself. And I guess as long as they follow the principles of that the likelihood is that eventually there will be a career Did you mentioned just there the Big Five personality traits? The big red personality traits? Yeah, I was gonna say titles mature all the terminology. But and somebody once said, I mean, I can't remember who it was the psychologists don't often agree on a lot, but they agree that they also agree on the five personality traits. So would you say that for the tread based tools that we've been focusing on? The majority of them focused around those five areas? And what are those five areas?
Tameron Chappell 25:25
Yeah, yeah, listeners might not be old enough to get this reference is that the ROM seal approach to personality? If you remember those, it does exactly what it says on the tin. So the big five, five, of overarching descriptions, domains of personality, they are universal. They're across gender, they're across ethnicity, they're across nationalities, they're across age, there are exceptions, but we know about them. On the whole, we're pretty sure after about 4050 years worth of research building up that the Big Five, the big five. Now, there's subtleties around it. And if people are interested, there's actually a meta two that sits above it. There's research that's emerged, that there's sort of plasticity and stability, and then the five sit underneath, which fits more with your neuro psychology and dopamine receptors. So the theory is still evolving and developing, but the big five has been more consistent than many psychology theories. So you're absolutely right. We don't agree on many things. We've all got opinions, but we do sort of agree on that. And still, there's a little disagreement around the corners and the edges, but it's consistent enough that it's a good benchmark, to then explore. What does this mean, and it's nuances for you. So the big five is about personality and predictability. But one of the things that can be off putting are confusing, that's not always explained properly, is that the big five are talking about personality behaviours, how you're likely to manifest, but then we move into competencies. So that's more behaviorally focused, how do I actually manifest my extraversion in a leader ship position, for instance. So they're similar, there is an overlap between facets and personality and competencies. The good publishers that have been around for a while and established and have got a great data set will have their own competency models where they've got the personality behind it, the five, and then they've got what they know, from research, predicting what kind of behaviours, those are going to show up as in the workplace. And they've triangulated and confirmed that by looking at other people's view of you, and performance ratings, and how you actually output because personality is a theoretical construct in that sense. And so businesses often go it's all well and good. But so what, what does this mean for how people are going to actually do things in their business. So that interface between traits, personality and competencies, some publishers do that for you. So they give you their competency based model, which absolutely can be used in recruitment, and it helps organisations that kind of kind of does the thinking for them to know they look at the competencies and say, These are the ones that we know this role needs. So then you can question against those and assess against those in the recruitment process, knowing that what sits underneath them is the predictability of personality. But not all publishers have that. So in answer to one of the questions that we discussed before, we'll talk about this, why is a psychologist useful? Why should we go to someone who specialist specialises in this? Because it doesn't have to be a psychologist, it can be someone who is just psychology and formed. So ABP does a great job of talking about business psychology, and using the models of it. It's about understanding, the personality sits underneath this. And the behaviours are things that you want to see and predict. And it's not 100% link, but you know, which ones are more consistent than others? And you know that the way some of them fit together, a little cluster of those can point to a certain nuance or a certain trickiness for a certain role. So it's more about seeing them as a predictive tool to use as a conversation as opposed to what they might experience often people who've gone away without that personality knowledge or that psychology knowledge or that assessment knowledge backing them up. We'll think I've worked with people. I'm pretty good at reading people. I'll go on one of the publishers courses Does that give me access to this tool? And then I'll go out there and apply it to everybody and everything. Whereas I think someone who's got a background in personality and psychology and assessment in that way will say, there are a number of tools that sit behind me, and I will pick the one that works best. Whilst I've understood what the client needs is rather than I've been other costs are paid for this tool and get to use this tool in every situation, which is polarising. But that's often where people are coming from if they've come to psychometrics later, because they're expensive, right? They're expensive to buy expensive to training. So you want to get your money's worth if you've gone on that training. And it's hard to then apply another one that, of course,
Richard Anderson 30:49
even what you're explaining there. Tamron, in terms of the differences between personalities, and behaviours, and behaviours are the manifestation of the personality traits that you display. In a law. I think even that there, that's what I need a psychologist to explain that a specialist in the area that differences between those things, I think that's crucially important. And I guess as well, if you're a psychologist, and you're supporting a client, with recruiting leadership, whoever it is, across the organisation, the you can, I guess, from from the outside looking into, you can be a little bit more objective in the process, you've got the expertise of how to interpret the psychometric reports, and results, and also have that level of objectivity as well, from outside.
Tameron Chappell 31:28
Yeah, my view and I work with clients is I try to advise, so it's not about saying, or right and wrong, because no one learns that way. It's a here's from my experience, this works well, here's the questions you need to consider when you make a decision. And then it's down to the client to make that decision. But I would often advocate using a trait tool for recruitment that you then use for onboarding development. So quite like a bug off a buy one, get one free offer. And so if you use a recruitment tool, so it's just a trick tool, because you won't use the Type tool, use the recruitment tool, then you're missing a trick, really, if you're not then using that information, to help you create a great onboarding experience for that person. Also identify development goals as they come in, in that role, and then use that for the whole team to help them fit together. So it's all about a joined up process. As an organisation, if you use psychometrics well, then it's part of your recruitment process, which is where the high risk decisions and the costs are right, you get the wrong people in, it's costly in money terms, but also in the people impact and the resource. So it's often easier to have a conversation with a client, and they're more willing to use a psychometric at recruitment. But then it's, it's sort of tidied away in a box in the recruitment only zone. And then they might go use the Type tool or something completely different for development, because they need it to be more fun. Whereas there are some recruitment tools that are specifically created now to make that bridge to be able to work as a development tool as well. And I think why wouldn't you use the same tool if you can, because then you've got the language embedded in the organisation, and you're helping your line managers to understand how teams fit together, and individuals fit together. And they can take that knowledge into the recruitment decision. Whereas if you're using a type tool to make those development decisions, it's not robust enough to take that into a recruitment decision, because it just doesn't have the nuances of it. So why not use the tool that's more in depth to start with, and then just apply it in a development way and depend, but I think that's where the skill comes. Because the team tools, the typing tools, and you said, I'm not sure which way it is, basically, do you think are you one type or another, then that's the type tool. And then the other one is the trade one. So the typing tools have great marketing collateral, they have merchandise, they have mats on the floor, they have all the things that make them fun and team development II. So you want to use them, you want to use those more. And a trade tool is often more worthy and more academically solid and doesn't and people can't feel the fun in it, but you can still apply it in the same way and some of the some of the tools on the market specifically bridge that gap and do it very well. So that's where I look for if I'm advising an organisation, in adopting recruitment practices, then it's I would say look at these tools that you can still use for development because you want to connect those functions which often are separate in an organisation as well so it helps to join up the organisation to
Richard Anderson 34:57
I guess that's the beauty of the position that you hold as well with the Client is that you can make recommendations based on what you think is going to be best for them. And if it's going to be one that bridges the gap, you've probably got access to multiple tools. And you can give them pros and cons and all that sort of stuff around those two, just to recap the personality traits, the Big Five, openness, I'm testing myself here.
Tameron Chappell 35:18
Sorry, I didn't tell you what they were ocean. So the big five is also called the ocean model. So ocean the acronym is Oh, for openness, C for conscientiousness, E for extraversion, a for agreeableness, and the psychologist, favourite and neuroticism. So, openness is on that dimension. It's about openness to new ideas, new values, depending on which model which Big Five model you want to go through, but it's mostly about that strategic thinking at the top end to the more operational here and now practical, focused piece to that bigger picture, blue sky thinking versus operational deliveries where it sits in a business sense. And I work at the C suite. So I forget people coming in saying, right, we need a new chief operating officer, they need to be able to set this strategy blue sky thinking that they need to roll up their sleeves, and actually make sure our systems work. And you say, okay, great, they sit at opposite ends of the same personality dimension. So let's have a conversation about what this will actually need. Do you need blue sky strategic thinking? Isn't there no one that set the strategy already, you need that wide open view about the future and difference? Or do you need someone that's more about take what we have and improve it and tweak it continuous improvement, because then that helps me know when a candidate comes, and I look at their psychometrics, whether they're someone who's going to be at that blue sky end, who is less likely not unlikely, less likely to be able to do the rolling the sleeves up and paying attention to processes but whereas if you've got someone who's brilliant at the process side of things, there's not necessarily a muscle that they've used very often to do that strategic setting piece. And often I find people are promoted through their technical skills, their ability to get stuff done, make money for the business, pull the team together, even but with the focus of output, and then as they get more senior in the organisation, it's all well known, we need you to move out of that stuff that you're good at, and move into strategy and think about strategy. But what you've done is we've spent the whole of your career practising down at one end of that openness, dimension, and then they're going now now you've got to step up to the C suite and the strategic piece. And that's a different things. And some people can do that because their personality underpins it. And some find it much harder. And so you need to set the expectations of the line manager as to what will be possible, but also help them understand what development to put in place to help them be successful in the role. So psychometrics are useful for that conversation. So yeah, openness, conscientiousness is as we think it's about how structured you are, how long you take to make decisions, how self confident you are, in terms of meeting your goals. So it's not just confidence and ambition, which is extraversion, it's about confidence in competence. In that sense. conscientiousness extraversion is the one that most people have heard of, because we talk endlessly on LinkedIn about extraversion and introversion. But in a in a big five way, extraversion is about energy, where you get it from and where you get to. So ambition sits in there as well, that drive to achieve sits in extraversion in some models, but it is about energy and connection. So it's often about optimism and pace, how speedy you are at getting things done, and how much you like to connect with people depending on model again, which is different from agreeableness which is about interpersonal sensitivity, and quality and investment in relationship. So you can have extroverts who are really good at connecting with people less interested in investing time in the relationship. And what you see on LinkedIn is people saying I'm an introverted extrovert, I build relationships all you know, and it's like, actually, no, you're, you're confounding extraversion, and it's pure sense and interpersonal sensitivity. You can have an introvert who is very good at building relationships because they have great interpersonal skills in that agreeableness side. Similarly, you can get an extrovert who's great at connecting with people less interested in carrying on that relationship, and they're usually the ones you meet at conferences. It's great to meet you connect, never see them again, or they see someone over your over your shoulder who they think is more important. And they go off that way.
Richard Anderson 40:08
I suppose for my perspective, I would assume that extroverts would always want to be building relationships and maintain and the politics, it's really good point that you make.
Tameron Chappell 40:16
It's about the connection. So it's like a Duracell bunny. In some ways, an extrovert needs to connect with their external environment, in order to keep their energy levels up. So they're the ones that tend to chat more, talk more, connect more with people. But whether they're then invested in the quality of the relationship is within that agreeableness piece, whether I asked you questions whether I really speak to you whether I've got good levels of trust that's in the agreeableness side of things. So they all fit together. But they're artistically more separate, so that you can look at where someone is high on one and low on the other. If they're high in both, then it kind of all fits with that typing approach. Yes, you're a extrovert. But most people have quite a spiky profile in that they've got high on one low on another average on some. And so it's that pulling it all together. That's the bit this endlessly fascinating. I think, from my point of view,
Richard Anderson 41:15
it really is one of the things I was going to chat to you about. And I've loved the conversation so far. But I was thinking just from a type personality type perspective. So when you and I had a conversation a few weeks ago, I said, you know, I'm a little bit ashamed to admit this. But I haven't done a great deal of personality tests, assessments questionnaires, but we did one with the team. And the intention is, by the way, the caveat here is I am going to do more that is 100%, the intensive, the least I can do given what I do for a living. But I know that there's a number of different tools that are available. And we took on one of the type tools, it wasn't the MBTI. But it was the 32 personality types, tools. And we had a great time as a team. And we're a small team timer. And there was there was maybe six of us did this exercise, and we had the reports dissected and gone through and I came out as for what this means an EN F p that was my personality types to you will probably explain what these things mean, in a second, but but one thing that struck a chord with what you said before, is how you work with both people that might have different personality types to you. And I realised that my business partner, and also Ashley, who I work I've worked very closely with for years, they are pretty much the direct opposite personality types. To me, I think at least one of them was an ISTJ. It opened up a really fascinating discussion about how we started to learn more about each other. And it's probably things that each of us do in a small environment that get on each other's nerves on occasion. Chairman, right. Yeah, exactly. One of the examples that that was given in the session was that if I get an email pop up, and I always thought this was because I'd always kind of work in business development, if I got an email am I going to seal in or something like that? I was always desperate to read it straight away. Whereas my colleague, Ashley, it distracts her. So she they ignore the emails. So I'm thinking why should I not reply to that email? Yeah, because that's what I would do. It's just different. And I thought that was really, really interesting. So I wonder if you would mind you spending a couple of minutes on these type tools. So let's say I'm an ENFP, Ashley or Matt? And is TJ. And so you mentioned about the differences before? But I mean, what would you do with a, you know, a small team or the recommendation would be for people using the Type tool.
Tameron Chappell 43:26
There are some great tech tools in the market, there are some less than great ones and and measure greatness in terms of how well what they're asking you to do to file yourself into one bucket or another is true to the concept of what they're trying to fall you into in that sense. So I use type tools all the time with teams ones, particularly that it's there, we move to this, we want to come together, we want to explore what this means for us. And we don't want to go too deep yet, because I've read on your list that you're a psychologist. And so we're not going down the psychodynamic route, but we'll we'll start with this. It's about an exploration, it's about a conversation. So it's there as a lens to basically bring into awareness, some of the things that people knew already, that I do it differently from you, and sometimes that you're successful at it, and sometimes I am, because there's different contexts out there. But what happens is, because of the psychodynamics, we often move into blame and I'm okay you're not okay. Or if there's no psychological safety, it's, we should do what we're told to do. So there's all of those are the layers that sit on top of personality. So personality is a very good, safe way in to whatever you need to discuss and wherever you're ready as a team to discuss. So I'm often called in by clients when teams are not working very effectively, usually because they've tried various things first and It's not, it's not helped. It's not done something to help shift. But I do sometimes get to work with just normal old teams. And that's a joyous because if you're right, we're going to use the Type tool, let's get in there and just explain what it means. So the way I go about it is, I usually have plenty of conversations upfront with individuals to help them understand where they are first, before they come into the team. So the way that you set up the conversation is, I think, where the USP is, in some ways for being a psychologist or for having this kind of people knowledge partner, bring to him, because we know about safety, as in personal safety, about risk. And so you can structure your interventions with a team, knowing that that feels on the surface, like it's a trivial decision, but it actually makes a fundamental difference. So for each one of these is, if I'm new to working with a team, who if they don't know me, necessarily, and I don't necessarily know about them, but they're curious enough to do something with a personality to, then there's lots of conversations up front to explain what the tool is to answer the questions that you're asking. There's no stupid question, just where's your curiosity come? And I'll answer that in the best way I can in a pragmatic way. But they are not perfect. And they are not to judge. So you sort of setting the scene of this is an exploration and we're coming together to explore what this means. They're not right or wrong. There's no right or wrong and personality. It's how far along the extremes Am I so I know how much I can change or not. And how much I'm going to be different from everyone else, that's really useful. So if you're at an extreme, that means there are far fewer people out there that are like you, and the majority of people you work with are going to be really different. So that's good to know. And I've had many people go, I always knew that. But I didn't realise I was on the 98th percentile, say. So that makes a lot of sense. So then you go right from your awareness, everyone's going to be, say, less conscientious than you. So that allows you to then have the conversation with your colleagues to let I know where I am. And know this is what I need for myself for my work. You're at the opposite end, you like to get things done at the last minute, how are we going to actually productively work together about this, and what all this mean, that we put in place for ourselves, so that we have done that before? It gets tricky. I'm originally from the Lake District, and when he went out walking, so we used to go with the school trips, you'd always have a foul weather alternative route. So if the weather was really crummy, which is often the latest, you had to give somebody your fall weather alternative route, so you might be going up on the fell. But if the weather was really crummy, you were going to come down the valley. So it was before mobile phones, if you got lost, they'd know the two places to look for you. So I often use that as a foul weather alternative route is, you have the conversations up front about what we're going to do when it gets tricky. How are we going to figure out how we make decisions together, given that we've got different decision making styles. And so all of that thing around setting a team charter, you can label it as that in a leadership book development approach. But what he's trying to do is create some resilience in the team, when the going is good when you've got that good relationship, because the good times people get along with it. And bumble along it's when things are tricky. So when you're under pressure when you're stressed when you're not feeling so well when the business is doing not so well. When you meet someone who's really different and it's an it throws the team. And so thinking about this in a transactional way up front, that gives you not only permission to raise it as a topic when it gets tricky, but it also gives you a bit of resilience in their plan, a foul weather alternative route.
Richard Anderson 49:10
I love the analogy. Yeah, I absolutely see that. And that's fantastic tamarind. From my perspective, if I look at the six or seven members of my team, and I've already already told you the the examples of people having the direct opposite personality types to me to ensure that we work as productively as we possibly can. And we all get on in harmony and all that sort of stuff. What would your recommendations be to a small team, for example, that have lots of different personality types?
Tameron Chappell 49:37
Yeah, that stuff we were just talking about around the team charter and the resilience and the fairweather alternatives that is all valuable time spent for a team at any stage, but definitely when they're coming together. So that etiquette of how will we work together that sort of meta discussion with Greg coming together and talking about our outputs, and who's going to tell At what tasks, but the conversation around? How will we go about this? How will we communicate can always be done even around a project? How are we going to manage this together knowing our styles, but I think there's something really useful just to take away in some ways around meetings. So for me, in the many years I've been working with teams, meetings are sort of the make or break place, and in many ways, and so there are some quite fundamental things you can do in a meeting, which speaks to the inclusion piece as well, if you're trying to create, if you're bringing cognitive diversity as well as visible diversity to your organisation, then it's about whether people feel like they belong or not, whether they're welcome. So psychological safety is crucial to setup. But some of the practical things you can do is to know about extraversion introversion is key one and conscientiousness. So that kind of P and J in MBTI, speak at some level, but the extraversion introversion, one knowing how extroverts think and talk and act, and how introverts do can help you structure a more productive meeting that is inclusive for everyone. And if you're looking at the inclusivity, from the lens of personality, then we all have personalities, we all have somewhere along that bell shaped curve, our personality. So if you're thinking about it that way, then inclusivity can sometimes bridge the gap of where the polarizations are in diversity in other ways. But that's for another conversation. Some of the examples practically are extroverts and conscientiousness, because it's confounded, because that's about how organised you like to be in some ways, and how structured you are. Extroverts are usually able to think on their feet, talk things out. And in fact, the talking itself, formulates ideas, and the connecting with others allows them to have those ideas. So extroverts often don't finish their sentence and go somewhere else if they're high on openness and ideas as well. And so in a meeting, they can blank, a meeting, they can wing it, they can discuss and chat, which means if they're lower in conscientiousness, they might not have read all the papers about the meeting, they might not have got the agenda out in time, if they're the one leading it, they might not have prepared enough and thought about what do we want to get out of this meeting, and it becomes a talking shop. And so the more reflective thinkers, either they can't get a word in edgeways, or they haven't been given enough information in advance to start to process and think so they can't bring their contribution to the meeting. So sometimes we see people who are new on this journey, and they go, I have been on a course or I've watched a TED talk or something, me as the extrovert. That's enough for me. What about you, introvert? What's your thinking on this? And it's like the internet goes on. I had time to think yet. Come on, just give me a fresh thinking, you know, it's a fundamental, different process. And you need to have brought some preparation in advance for everyone, actually, not just for more reflective thinkers. Everybody, I think, will appreciate a well run meeting, that you know, what you're going to focus on, there's an agenda somewhere, even if it's a loose one. But you've all agreed in advance, and you've got some information you come, it's got a clear structure, you know what you want to get out of it, you check in with people, you allow a bit of chitchat at the beginning, because that's good for connection and for building trust and humanity. And the extroverts can do that chat, and those who are higher on agreeableness can connect and ask people, but you've also got the structure for those who like to stay task focus that 10 minutes in, we start the agenda. So I would say, once you've just explored and had a conversation with your colleague and said, Oh, look where I am on whatever scale or two you choose, oh, that's where you are, oh, let's talk about where we go. That focusing on a really good quality meeting, is where I think you can make the biggest games for different personalities, I think means is
Richard Anderson 54:23
is a huge thing. And I think a lot of this as well. Tamron is, is knowledge of the importance of these tools. And you know, I would imagine a lot a lot of larger organisations and big established businesses will all know the benefits and the merits of personality traits, types, questionnaires, whatever that might be. But I think for small businesses, in spite of the fact that we build technology to deliver these things, actually using them, it wasn't until I'd use them and seen how beneficial they could be that I've now decided this is massively important that we need to keep to keep on there. So I think, for people to be equipped with that knowledge of how important these things are as massively On hopefully podcasts like this will be helping people, right when people do that. But retirement listen to that, thanks so much for talking through that. It's been really, really interesting to listen to, I've certainly learned a huge amount in the last hour or so. And I'm sure the audience will have done as well. You've talked a little bit throughout, but tell us a little bit about how you can support businesses and the types of projects you get involved with. Yeah,
Tameron Chappell 55:22
so I called in at various levels, really, for recruitment purposes. So I write personality profiles for hiring practices, I tend to do that as an associate, because organisations aren't doing that all the time, especially at the senior level, where they tend to buy someone in because it's a high risk decision, and they will go okay, this is the one where we'll go and find a psychologist to help us with this. I would love to do more further down the organisation. But I know there's restrictions in terms of costing and price. But there are newer tools that are coming on the market that embed the same philosophy and the same robustness. But their price point is a bit lower. And I think people creating their own psychometric tools, which is what you offer, give some of that opportunity as well. So I go in at the recruitment piece. And I love that bit. It's like fitting people jigsaws together, but my passion lies in working with teams in how they fit together, how effective they are. And I really like working in startups, particularly tech startups, or engineering, places, traditionally, where there might not have had access to the ideas of personality. And where they have, they might have been dismissive, because as I'm married to a nuclear physicist, you know, it's like the load of rubbish that is soft skills, it's outside, I actually really, really like working in that space. Because the simple conversations around how to make teams work better together, how to help people fit better together, is often really, really appreciated and can make quite radical changes for a technology team say, or for an IT function, then I've got to try and work with those, those people in the rest of the organisation. So I think psychometrics are really useful in that space, to have a bit of data to go, here you are, you're on the 98th percentile, so 97% of the population are going to be quite different from you on this. So this is why you might need to adjust. And you might need to do this. I like working with teams in that way. But particularly around startups, because it can add so much value. There's lots of money in startup land, particularly in tech space at the moment. And so investment is thrown at people who are ambitious and driven and have an idea. And there's not enough knowledge out there around the interpersonal dynamics, and how people fit together in small teams. There's nowhere to hide, if you don't get on with a colleague. And it's such a fast changing world that there are so many pressures that I think personality and a knowledge about personality would make the biggest difference in that space fully agree with that. Yeah, that's where I like to work. But usually where I'm bought into work is in big corporates and in recruitment, because they're further along the journey and knowing what these tools do. They know the business value of it, they know the risks associated with it, and they have a budget that they will allocate to it. So that's where I am mostly.
Richard Anderson 58:37
Well, that's fantastic time and we'll put your details as part of the blog post. We'll be happy for us to and this will go out alongside a transcript blog, and I'll tidy it up because we'll be using some AI transcript software and on one of them or two on your horse Richard Anderson instead of it's still not perfect yet, or I do. I do have a few laughs and hopefully the majority of people know that it's a transcript and it's not my written English but anyway. Well, thanks so much for the
Tameron Chappell 59:03
vowels, I think no, don't always translate
Richard Anderson 59:08
quite clearly. Brilliant. Thanks, Tam and enjoy the rest.
Tameron Chappell 59:12
Thank you for letting me extrovertedly talk at you. With you alongside you. I've really enjoyed it.
Voiceover 59:21
Thanks for listening to Psyched for Business, for show notes resources and more visit evolveassess.com
