People vs Place: The Changing Landscape of Assessments
"Definitely mention your assessment, people love anything that feeds their ego" said a mentor in a recent call about a keynote I was writing.
"My Strengthsfinder says I'm not very strategic, so I don't take on certain projects at work", said my friend, a psychologist.
Another friend once sent me her personality test from work. “See? I’m just conflict avoidant. It’s just who I am.”
These are simply limiting beliefs masked as our personality test results. Our strengths can be weaknesses (just ask anyone with “communication” as a strength), and we can learn to have difficult conversations (use “the million dollar rule”).
Yes, we have steady parts to our personalities we repeat over decades. But as it turns out, its the environment in which we currently behave that determines much of the behavior we act upon (for example, that friend becomes pretty confrontation-loving if you were to put a hand on an animal or child!).
While we all love to feed our egos, I’d rather measure a place over a person any day.
A timely NYT article recently raised the question of the efficacy and usefulness — not to mention potential bias — of the world’s most popular personality tests, and why we allow ourselves to put so much faith in them.
As writer Emma Goldberg describes, the ego-driven moment we receive machine- or stranger-derived results about the deepest pieces of who we are as humans is “the type of fun that’s both earnest and indulgent… like an iPhone burst of selfies fused with the self-help section of an airport bookstore.”
But, much like selfies, social media and the self-help section of the airport bookstore — what are we getting from it? Other than, of course, the dopamine rush that comes with validation about who we are in the world. Which can feel pretty nice.
The Myers-Briggs Inventory has approximately a 50% test-retest reliability, meaning that if you take it again, there is only a 50% chance you'll get the same outcomes, which is abysmal. If you saw my MBI results, you'd put me in a sales role (because my report would have told you to, I hit every single point on the extroversion scale). But I would've failed you miserably.
As it turns out, “extroversion” (if it’s still considered that) is contextual. For some of us, when we are around people we connect with and find interesting, it’s a caffeine shot to the soul. Conversely, if we are subjected to gossip, chit chat or uninterested in our surroundings, we may become bored, ditch the event and prefer to go home and snuggle our dogs.
During interviews for my book, we heard an all-too-familiar story in which a personality test was, unfortunately, misused:
“A close friend of mine had a job that she loved. But her boss continuously tried to “help” her female team members by telling them to ‘be T’s (thinkers) instead of F’s (feelers)’.” This comes from the Myers-Briggs assessment, which aggregates people into compartmentalized, tidy, wildly useless buckets. Most people I know can manage to think and feel.”
Telling people to “be a T instead of an F” goes against everything that person naturally is. It’s another limiting belief given to some poor souls who now categorize “F” as wrong and “T” as right.
I don’t mean to pick on the MBI, these are common misuses and misinterpretations present in nearly any personality assessment. Any type of data requires interpretation, which the bulk of humanity is not wholly equipped to accurately execute. For this reason, many personality tests come with loads of workbooks or additional training on how to interpret results (hello, upselling!), which is marketed as professional development.
But how does this work in reality?
When is the last time an employee said, “Hi, I’m Nisha. I’m a blue (or a tiger, or an ENTP, or a 7 wing 8…)”, and you immediately felt like you knew her, how to manage her, and what you could reliably expect from her?
You didn’t. You had to get to know her and observe her behavior across a variety of situations. You had to experience how your interactions and all the traits you bring to the table interact with her at any given time, across various changes and events in her own life.
Using myself an an example — I can tell you I’m a Gemini, and you’d be correct in assuming I’m gregarious and love to converse with people. And, I also observe, stay quiet and listen, and I am sometimes extremely shy. It all depends on the environment, perceived rewards and consequences, and my wants, needs and goals at the time.
Yes, a test may tell you that Nisha is less likely to speak up than the rest of the people on her team. But what do you do with that information?
Do you make a point to call on her in meetings so she gets to share her ideas (which could potentially paralyze a person who is simply shy)?
Do you ask for her input in one to one meetings instead (robbing the rest of the team of her ideas and possibly sabotaging the momentum and creativity that comes with it)?
Do you directly point this out and ask her why she doesn’t speak up, or do you just let her find her own way to contribute?
Is openly and directly sharing ideas even critical for her job?
You know the what (less likely to openly share ideas), but you don’t know the why. And the why is important, because behavior is contextual and bidirectional.
Our behavior depends heavily on the environment, like the presence of establishing or abolishing operations (behavior analyst nerd talk), and the consequences (what happens after we act), which in turn evoke our next moves. It’s complex.
Ever had a boss you love and a boss you hate? Did you behave exactly the same with each person, or did you modify your behavior to receive a reward (from Nice Boss) or avoid punishment (from Bad Boss)?
You see where I’m going. Someone who is labeled an extrovert and loves connecting with others can suddenly behave a lot like an introvert when exposed to punishment for simply being themselves (maybe Bad Boss feels threatened by the charismatic extroversion and takes them down a peg or two, punishing components of their extroversion).
This is why our clients tell us, “When we hired them, they were the best possible choice. We had high expectations, but in the end they weren’t what we expected.”
We have to ask, was it that the employee suddenly changed, or were they influenced in one direction or another by their environment? Poor (or zero) management, harassment, high effort/low reward work, lack of clarity, training or organizational infrastructure are all environmental variables that influence our performance and personalities, regardless of what our baseline (or behavior outside of work) may be.
In the case of Nisha, it might turn out that she’s dying to speak up. She has a ton of valuable ideas to contribute. However, her learning history (past experiences) has taught her that sharing ideas is not a safe behavior, because her past work culture was psychologically unsafe. Her former boss openly reprimanded her on two occasions when she shared ideas, and it was devastating for her. As a consequence, Nisha remains quiet in meetings, even in a new environment, because we tend to choose safety over testing new waters and risking the same outcomes.
This is just one scenario you wouldn’t be aware of unless you got to know Nisha. And by get to know, I mean being kind, establishing rapport and trust, and creating a safe space for her to share when she is ready.
She could also just as easily be warming up to a new environment, focused on observing instead of adding. She could hate attention (and being called on in front of a group) because she struggles with anxiety.
Or, she could have absolutely nothing to contribute.
In our evolving, diverse world, it is more useful to learn about those we work with and depend on through investments in human connection, real-world behavior and observation over time.
Why Are Personality Still Tests Used?
Personality tests are rocking chair solutions — they give you something to do, but they don’t truly get you anywhere. However, they do provide some level of comfort. Behavioral science shows that many of us will choose ineffective and familiar over unfamiliar and potentially more effective.
A second reason is that, in reality, personality tests are bucket marketing. Our brains love buckets. They draw in well-intentioned folks with the promise of organizing complex humans into neat, predictable boxes. Sounds pretty good, right? These types of tests are lucrative in the U.S. because they promise to aggregate a slew of complex behaviors, patterns and habits, then provide an easy-to-understand bucket for each individual.
And let’s be honest, that’s attractive. Complex, interesting humans from all walks of life take a test, and a tool spits out a clean, organized picture of who they are and how they fit into your company. Maybe it even tells you how to manage them, what positions they’d be a good fit for, and other extras.
This industrial-era, assembly line approach to obtaining complex information about people is substantially easier and faster than taking the time to obtain information (based on real-world behavior in your cultural context) over the course of months and a variety of scenarios. However, when we use quick and easy test results over true connection and without critically consuming the information, this becomes a sad scenario.
As a behavior analyst with a deep love of people and their complexities, I find these tests are harmful in three main ways:
It falsely primes managers, influencing them to make bucketed assumptions about who employees are, sometimes even before they walk through the door.
It robs managers and hiring teams of learning the skills necessary to truly and accurately pinpoint behaviors, skills, personality traits, etc. for themselves, which can be interesting and exciting in itself.
It sterilizes the beauty, color and complexity of individuals into one of 5 personalities, animals or colors. And we are so much more.
If connection is a mediating factor to burnout and one of the most successful predictors of not only health but also performance (connected co-workers feel more supported, able to be creative and have a stronger sense of belonging), why not change the approach altogether?
What if employers used the 15-60 minutes each employee or candidate would spend on a personality assessment and the time it takes managers to browse and read each report well enough to understand each individual (potentially hours), and instead use that time to create space for managers and employees, or hiring teams and candidates, to spend together?
The (exponentially more fun and creative) options are endless, but here are two to consider:
Create real-world playouts of common scenarios or pain points the team or company faces, and see how each person works through them. Working in a startup or chaotic industry? Set a timer to create a high stakes, escape room version. This will inspire others and create connection while providing teachable moments (for everyone) as to the work culture, what personalities and skills are needed, etc.
Design an open and safe connection space with primed questions (think Esther Perel’s game or a version of the Fair Play, but work-appropriate)
Not only are personality tests “about as reliable at predicting success in a professional endeavor as sorting candidates by astrological signs or Magic 8 Balls”, as the NYT article states, but bucketing entire humans by scores, colors or other categories perpetuates the linear, more patriarchal thinking that dominates the business world. This approach — research and humans alike are realizing — needs an update.
In a world of vibrant color, why continue to force boxed, black and white thinking?
If personality tests are ever going to meet or exceed their ROI, they need to be modernized to include measures that more accurately reflect today’s detailed and desired skill sets.
For leaders, mangers, and customer service associates, understanding the level of empathy, emotional regulation and communication an individual has would be important. For a knowledge-worker, who is not client-facing or managing others, you may want to know how an individual “scores” in areas like time management, receiving feedback, and of course demonstrated competency in their field and daily tasks.
However, no tests can replace or predict real, observed behavior like real, observed behavior. Unless, of course, we include the environment in which behavior occurs.
A Better Way
If we know that our environment (a.k.a. work culture) contains hundreds of influencing variables that encourage (or discourage) bottom line, mission-essential and culture-setting actions, putting a focus on measuring the environment would not only solve the issues found in personality tests, its also much simpler.
If a fit, healthy individual walks into the office on day one, and on day 60 is obese, depressed and not productive, would we give them a personality test, or would we do better to consider the environment?
Results from assessing the person: Maybe they are getting divorced. Maybe they have an injury that keeps them sedentary. Maybe their sweet tooth kicked in and they’ve been eating ice cream for dinner every night. Maybe a LOT of things. We don’t know, because we cannot ask these things and we can’t expect employees to openly share this information.
Things employers can’t fix: Marital relationships of employees, injuries of employees, sweet tooth of employees.
Results from assessing the environment: Presence of only pizza and soda. Long working hours that requires they sit and work from 8am-9pm 5-6 days a week. Extreme stress and increasing demands. Meaningless (or absent) performance rewards or acknowledgement. Schedule shows no breaks in the day outside of the restroom.
Things employers can fix: Stress-inducing variables. Work loads. Performance rewards. Schedules.
A focus on the environment:
Gives employers the opportunity to take a solid look at their culture and how it operates as a business and in society, and design it appropriately with full control.
Allows companies to pinpoint concrete environmental (cultural) barriers or influencers, like better training, growth opportunities or easier access to wellbeing programs for higher attendance and ROI, as opposed to trying to nail down the endless abstractions of the human race.
Highlights the more difficult parts of the culture or the job (things typically responsible for behavior change in originally amazing employees), which provides insight into who will thrive and what they’ll need to do so (i.e., burnout can be ameliorated with scheduled, restorative breaks, opportunities for task delegation and increased connection in high-risk industries)
Removes the potential for bias and improves equitable employee experiences, because you are fitting the culture to the people who operate in it, not the other way around.
As an example of a cutting-edge alternative to personality-based tests, the W3RKWELL Culturegram tool evaluates hundreds of intersecting patterns among and between 9 dimensions of the work environment, like leadership, psychological safety, growth and autonomy. A free version is available on our company website.
Regardless of where you stand in the personality test debate, one thing is clear: we all deserve a disruptive shake-up to make the world of work a better fit for employers and employees alike.
