Ep06: Myers Briggs – Brilliant or Bullshit..?

In this episode, Business Psychologist (and lead consultant at Oblong), Leanne Elliott digs into psychometric tests, and starts by asking if the MBT is as good as they say it is.

You’ll hear her draw on both her decade of recruitment & engagement, as well as explain the science behind it all.

Let’s dive in!

Resources

All the links mentioned in the show.

• Myers Briggs
• 16 Personalities
• The SHL Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ32)
• Real World Group Leader – use this for recruitment of leaders
• Real World Group Leader – use this for the development of existing leaders
• Hogan Personality Inventory tool

Connect with your hosts

• Connect with Al on LinkedIn 
• Connect with Leanne on LinkedIn
• Join the discussion about this episode on LinkedIn
• Email: podcast@TruthLiesandWork.com
• Follow us on Instagram @truthlieswork
• Chat with us on Twitter @truthlieswork
• YouTube channel for the podcast @TruthLiesWork
• Check us out on TikTok (LOL!!!) @truthlieswork

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The Transcript

⚠️ NOTE: This is an automated transcript, so it might not always be 100% accurate!

Al Elliott
Okay, and I mean, just the test itself was fairly, fairly non-intrusive.

Hello, and welcome to the truth lies and workplace culture podcast. This is Episode Six. I’m owl, and Leanne. And if you’re brand new to this, then let’s just give you a little bit of background. So Leanne Wu, who are you? And why should people listen to you?

Leanne Elliott
My name is Leanne Elliott, I’m business psychologist and some people may. So that’s why you should listen to me. I’m not sure that is the case. But what I can tell you is I’ve been working in people and culture for 15 years. And I’ve helped various businesses scale through people. So if that is something that you’re interested in, I will have some of the answers for you. I won’t have all of them, but we’ll find them out together.

Al Elliott
Brilliant. And I’m Al I’ve run several businesses. I’m also Leanne’s husband, and the CO creator of our blog, which we’ll talk about shortly, which is that consultancy, but I’ve run several businesses. And so basically, I’m here to keep us on track. So if you’re listening and thinking, Well, I don’t really know much about the subject when we’re talking about today or business psychology, don’t worry, I’ve got your back, I will be pushing my wife to use real world terms. And not techno science mumbo jumbo, talking of which, what are we talking about today?

Leanne Elliott
So today, we are talking about psychometrics, psychometric testing or psychometric inventories their use in business? Are they brilliant? Or are the bullshit?

Al Elliott
Great, great title. We haven’t yet decided at this point, whether we’re going to bleep out that, that word we quite like swearing the two of us, but we’re not quite sure whether whether you do so we’ll find out. Okay, so let’s just start at the very, very beginning. So what are psychometric tests?

Leanne Elliott
So Mike, so micrometric, psychometric tests fall into two main categories, you either have those that will assess general mental ability or IQ or your ability in terms of cognitive processing your intelligence, or there are psychometric tests that measure personality, then there are others that measure behaviours rather than personality or measure behaviour within that. And then other various little bits and pieces in between, but typically how you think, feel or behave at work.

Al Elliott
Okay, so. So what you’ve told us what they are, but what are they actually good for? Why would I as a leader, or business owner or manager, why should I care about what’s like about psychometric tests?

Leanne Elliott
So I think psychometric tests tend to fall into two, two places that can be of of use to an organisation. And if you think about that through the lens of the oblong framework, which if you’re a regular listener, you will know if you’re new here. The three levels are recruitment, engagement, and management and other three areas, we really need to focus on to build a great culture and team that cares as much about your business as you do. So if we look at those three levels, psychometrics are useful in terms of recruitment, they can give you insights into an individual that may be difficult to generate through other recruitment methods. From a predictability perspective, and we’ve talked about this on the podcast before, there is a certain percentage of work performance that is predicted by either a general mental ability, which is actually the biggest predictor of performance in work, which I think was about was it about 50 60%. Maybe it’s lower than that, though, but it was it’s the highest. And then we have personality that comes in at around about 10, to 15%, and a few of the psychometrics, such as integrity tests that fall somewhere in between, so they can be predictive of work performance. From a recruitment perspective. The second area we’d look at using psychometrics is then team development or culture development, particularly at a leadership level, having an understanding of self awareness of yourself and understanding of how your team think and feel about you for looking at 360 psychometric can be really useful. And there’s just giving yourself insights in that understanding of self awareness can be really useful in developing your, your leadership team in line with the values and culture of your business. And in turn, that is going to have a positive impact on the performance engagement and engagement of your team.

Al Elliott
Okay, so we talked about predictors there, let’s talk in real world words. What you mean is, if you’re, this is tell me for you if this is what you mean. So what you mean is that if you are recruiting for a particular role, then rather than just saying Oh, yeah, he’s got a good CV. She’s She was good at interview. Yeah, we’ll give them a go. What you’re saying is that doing a psychometric test could predict how good they would be not roll. Yes. Okay. And then when you’re talking about existing team members, then what you’re talking about is that psychometrics would help people to communicate better or is it was it more than

Leanne Elliott
that? It’s, it’s that as well as the things and I think we’ll probably touch on this in a little while the kind of the art of psychometrics or the science of psychometrics birth is to understand the problem and pick the right tool for you. But I think as a starting point, psychometrics particularly, if we look at personality can be a brilliant way to really understand more about yourself, give you that common language to, to talk about, and really just understand how you can interact as a team. So to demonstrate this, I’ve actually put out through the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, which you’ve probably heard of it is one of the most popular psychometrics out there that looks at personality types. It’s used by loads of fortune 100 companies. So we’ve taken out through that, and I’m gonna go through now some of his feedback to see how he feels about it, if it resonates, we’ve not gone through this before. So it’s gonna be real reactions. And really just see how you respond to our perhaps we’re gonna have a demonstration might might help our listeners. I understand what where we’re coming from.

Al Elliott
Okay. And I mean, just the test itself was fairly, fairly non intrusive. It was like four or five questions, wasn’t it? Yeah, just say with your ARB.

Leanne Elliott
We did a very short version, the Myers Briggs, actual Myers Briggs is actually 100 questions, which is quite intensive, it’s really a lot more scaled down version, but it gives us a really good idea of what you’re likely to fall into. But let’s see, let’s find out, perhaps it’s not as accurate as we think.

Al Elliott
Okay, so what how do we do this?

Leanne Elliott
So your Myers Briggs looks at personality from a type perspective. So there’s two main schools of thought in psychology when it comes to understanding and measuring personality. One is type. So basically, you are put in a box, there are only so many personality types in the world, and you are one of them. The second school of thought is trait that’s when there are multiple different traits of personality, and each person will measure somewhere on that continuum. So to give you an example, if you are using a type based Personality Inventory, you will be extrovert or introvert. If you’re using a trait based Personality Inventory, you will have a score that lands somewhere on a scale between introvert and extrovert. Got it? So Myers Briggs is a type based Personality Inventory. So you are ENFP a campaigner. You’re extroverted, intuitive feeling and prospecting. You embrace big ideas, actions that reflect a sense of hope and goodwill towards others. You’re very brand, you’ve got energy, people just want to be around you. What’s really important strength of yours is you’re massively adaptable, you’re willing to try anything once you’re very flexible, you’re able to adjust quickly, effectively. And one of your biggest things such as your personalities, your intelligence, you’re typically highly intelligent, or this personality type is typically highly intelligent, you love to learn, and you can always be interested to innovate, and come up with new ideas. In terms of workplace habits. Chances are that you are a great manager, your Empath empathic, your collaborative, you love bringing others into decisions, and teamwork is absolutely central for you.

Al Elliott
Wow, well, that sounds pretty good. How the hell can we know all that from just 468 or even 100 questions. And also, something I noticed in there was that even when it said the weaknesses, it’s still they still prefaced it with something like because of your intelligence does this, you know these weaknesses? So I can’t imagine anyone getting getting filled reports like this. I can’t imagine you’re getting a report and going I don’t like this.

Leanne Elliott
No, absolutely not. I think what is particularly impressive about Myers Briggs is it is complete bullshit. I just read to you, I was in your feedback flipping between your personality type as defined by Myers Briggs. And what it means to be a Gemini, you’re still saying,

Al Elliott
wow, wow. So half of what you said there came from my horoscope. Wow. So what we’re saying if I’m right, because I have another question, follow up on this. But what we’re saying is that, essentially Myers Briggs Well, horoscopes split us into 12 different types of people and tell us that a 12 of the world will experience something very A generic today Oh, you’ll probably have a have something you have to overcome. But then you’ll have some good news. And then what you’re saying is that Myers Briggs just goes an extra four and turns it into 16 different types of people, and then tries generalise?

Leanne Elliott
Yes. And the thing I’m I don’t know much about cost cosmology, what is it cost? I don’t know a lot about it, but I think it is based on some kind of, of bullshit know, like, like the earth and stars and how they move. And, you know, there’s some kind of science ish swayed of science in that there is zero science, or psychology, behind Myers Briggs, there is no, it’s not based on any formal psychology whatsoever. And bearing in mind, this is a tool that was developed in like the early 20th century, like early 1900s. By a mom and daughter, no respect to mom and daughters, but they weren’t psychologists, that’s all.

Al Elliott
So tell me, then we I think we’ve just we’ve just basically identified the Myers Briggs is probably not going to be your psychometric test.

Leanne Elliott
No, it’s not. But I think what it has just demonstrated is that you have to be really, really careful when selecting a psychometric tool, and particularly if you’re going to make big business decisions on the outcome of the psychometric tools, such as a hiring decision or a promotion decision. The reality is that particularly in what we call self report psychometric. So when I, as an individual asked questions about how I perceive my personality, my behaviour, my strengths, the result of that isn’t going to be surprising, because it’s my assessment of me. So I’m going to connect with things that I’ve, I’ve said about myself. But in a similar way, as you said, then, you know, any nice thing that somebody says about, you’re going to try and find a way to, to connect with. So it’s really making sure that if you are using this data, and that’s what it is, what a psychometrics should be generating data to make big, big business business decisions, you really need to be confident this data is is reliable, but it’s actually telling you what it’s meant to be.

Al Elliott
Brilliant. So in that case, then when I am so I don’t know whether you’ve just answered that fully. But let me ask it explicit, no, not that kind of explicitly. Explicit question. What should I think about when I’m choosing the test? And is it the same test that I would choose for recruitment as I would for engagement?

Leanne Elliott
It’s probably unusual that we’ve used psychometrics and engagement very often. That in itself is a separate, separate thing. We’ll probably use psychometrics to dig deeper into aspects of engagement, perhaps BrewDog, and more about using, generally speaking, psychometrics in either recruitment, or development. There are tools that you can use in both recruitment and development. There are tools that you should only use in recruitment, there are tools that you should only use in development. The first question I always, I always say to people, when they talk about psychometrics and start to identify potential tools to use is actually first of all, define your objective, what is it you actually want to achieve? Or what data do you want to generate? What insights do you want to have by either yourself or your employees taking this psychometric? Because until you really understand the objective and the outcomes, and how you’re then going to apply that data within your business, either in terms of recruitment decisions or development decisions, is impossible to pick at all. So that’s the first thing to really think about is your objective. In terms of then if you have an objective to, I mean, recruitments, probably the simplest objective to, to think through really, in that you want to gather different insights into an individual to understand how likely they are to perform well in the role in that scenario, and then there are some really, really robust psychometrics that you can use. In terms of the type of role you’re recruiting for the type of level you’re recruiting for. So again, it’s understanding not only that I want to use psychometrics in my recruitment process, but what is the role I’m recruiting for? What does this person need to have and how to psychometrics helped me assess that.

Al Elliott
Okay, so, there’s a lot of there’s a lot there. So for the person who’s like, you know what, I just want to know, which should I use? So how do I know when there’s a between a good one and a bad one like Myers Briggs? Can you give some what give us a little bit of advice on someone who’s looking to recruit and they just want to know Look, just know narrowed down to two or three for me so I can choose.

Leanne Elliott
Yep. So if we’re looking at recruitment, I think if you’re looking at non leadership roles, then one of the most reliable and valid psychometrics out there is the O PQ 32. Now, by valid, I mean, they will have really catchy names. That’s why things like Myers Briggs do so well, because it’s catchy people can remember it. But in terms of validity, I mean, it is actually measuring what it’s meant to measure. By reliability, I mean that if I was to repeat this test, I’d likely highly likely get the same or very similar result. So good psychometric is going to have high reliability and high validity. On a side note of that as well. Test publishes which of the basically the providers of the psychometrics, a good test publisher is going to have information available to you on the reliability and validity of all the tools that they offer. If they have no information, run it, they have some information, they’ve generated themselves, great. read into it, scrutinise it. But the gold standard is when you find a provider who actually releases the data they collect on people undertaking their their assessments and give it to third parties to validate and understand the reliability. Those are the people that we’re that we want to trust in. And we now are really, really good providers and have good sized psychometrics. So SHL is one of those testing, test publishes. In terms of recruitment, the O PQ, 32, is great. If we’re talking about leadership recruitment, there are two that I would recommend. One is a real world leader by the real world group huge amounts of research that go into that. And that’s also more behaviour type psychometric, which is fantastic for, for people at a leadership level, where behaviours are really the most important things we need to measure in terms of how good they’re going to be in their role. And the second is the Hogan development survey. So this completely flips, psychometrics on their head. So Hogan development survey actually measures subclinical personality traits, or personality traits that if they continue on this continuum, so it’s a trait based inventory. If it continues on this continuum, it could actually be very destructive. So we’re looking at actually things that were bought on them their psychological, clinical psychological condition, such as signs of being a psychopath or sociopath, that type of thing. So it really looks at the dark side of personality, and looks at leaders who may exhibit some of these traits, there may be at risk of some point, particularly under pressure, being more destructive within the workplace.

Al Elliott
When I first met you about 15 years ago, you were doing dissertation where you for your masters? And I think you were using the Hogan thing? Yeah, because you told me all kinds of great stories about PILOTs and surgeons and how they’re bordering sociopaths, psychopaths.

Leanne Elliott
Sociopaths Yeah. So that so my campaign if you if you’re interested, if you not stop and pick up in about two minutes, but my my dissertation was on dark side, the ratio between dark side personality traits and work performance, with the argument being that rather than to select out in a recruiting process what we’re doing we’re removing candidates who are exhibiting these dark side personality traits we’re actually using to select in for particular high risk professions we’re actually being a borderline sociopath may actually be beneficial so for example, pilots who regularly have hundreds of people in their in their hands their safety in their hands, bomb disposal units particular roles within the Army could actually be better to have people who do exhibit these Darkside personality traits.

Al Elliott
Love it. Love it. I’d love to get the house MD do yes,

Leanne Elliott
absolutely. He would be somebody who would Yeah, definitely have a few Darkside personality strengths in there to make him exceptional what he does.

Al Elliott
Whereas Myers Briggs probably just say that he’s a nice guy who makes quick decisions.

Leanne Elliott
Bold, assertive, confident.

Al Elliott
So one of my last questions here is around well, I’ve got a couple more. The first one is that so do it sounds like not all psychometrics measure the same thing. No. You’ve mentioned for there on you. Yes. Are there any crossover between the between the four

Leanne Elliott
so in terms of psychometrics as I said, one is always going to look at their cognitive processing, it’s your intelligence, your your how you will judge situations, kind of your your thought processes or your thinking. The other is more kind of personality or behaviour and that’s where there’s a big crossover. And there tends to be a lot of focus in that in that second category on personality. A people seem to feel that understanding people’s personalities can be the best way to understand their strengths and how teams work together. The issue with understanding personality, once you get particularly past what once you get into a leadership level, is that personality is fairly stable. Unless we go through a very traumatic event or something completely life changing, or indeed, at some kind of brain injury, our personality remains fairly stable over over short periods of time, ie the time of a 10, year of like two to four or five years. So the difficulty with understanding someone’s personality is that there is a risk of particularly if it’s a self report. So I’ve made this judgement about my personality myself, that it then leads to lack of accountability, lack of responsibility, lack of willingness to change, because I now have this science based piece of paper that tells me this is the way I am, what can I do about I’m not a complete a finisher? What can I do about it, and it just breeds this, this sense of potentially this sense of, or lack of accountability. Equally, if you have a Personality Inventory that maybe points out a few weaknesses, and I use that word very lightly when talking about personality, but in in our instance, you don’t map out as not being her being very imaginative and idealistic, but that may distract from the execution side of things. If you learn that as an individual, there’s a phenomenon which I’m sure you’ve heard of a self fulfilling prophecy, where you take that on, and, and you you just everything you do on everything you hear that validates that you absorb, and it just becomes inevitable that that is the way you will be in the way you’ll continue to be. Whereas actually, if we talk about about particular leadership level, we talk about behaviours rather than personality. behaviours can be changed, behaviours can be chosen, and that from a development perspective, in particular at leadership level, is going to be much more valuable than a Personality Inventory added onto that we were saying before about how psychometrics can predict how well someone performs on a job. personality in terms of leaders only accounts for about 5% of how well they’re going to perform on the job. Hours pay was is much, much, much higher.

Al Elliott
So to summarise, if you were recruiting for someone for oblong, then and they were in a non leadership position, what’s your which one? Would you go for?

Leanne Elliott
SHL? Oh, pq 32.

Al Elliott
There you go. There you go. So I have more of my final questions here is around about the ethical part of this and GDPR and all this sort of data protection. Because it sounds to me like if you’re going to take this test, particularly if it’s part of a job interview, you’re going to be divulging all kinds of things about you. So I mean, is there a darker side to this? Is it is it ethical to ask these things? Is it legal to ask these things a job interview? What about GDPR? Do you store the data that you get? Or do you do they get the report? What happens? What’s what that sounds like a minefield to me?

Leanne Elliott
Yeah, it can be I mean to very clearly, is it legal to include psychometrics in your recruitment development? Yes, of course it is. Should these be voluntary? For the people undertaking them? Absolutely. If somebody doesn’t want to partake in that activity, you shouldn’t be putting pressure on them to do so. Understandably, that may, you have to really then consider what that means for your recruitment process. It might not be ethical to withdraw somebody just on that basis. But in terms of including it in your in your process, absolutely fine. In terms of I guess the the ethics behind it really is a couple of things. One never select out purely on personality. There’s going to be other you know, other tools you can use to give you a bigger picture, personality segment and you should not be used alone to select in or out. General mental ability may be slightly different depending on the role, mental ability, general mental ability or IQ, depending on the role, but again, shouldn’t really be used. Any psychometric shouldn’t be used as a standalone select in or select out method. Secondly, your candidates or your employee should absolutely have access to their psychometric reports. If you’re wanting if you’re looking at this in development, and you’re wanting to as a manager, look at somebody’s psychometric report afterwards, you need their express permission before they fill it in or after they filled it in. But making sure that there is again no pressure and it is doing completely transparently. The most important thing is psychometrics as well as making sure that people are supported and the results that they get. There may be some things in there that Surprising, there may be some things that are triggering, there may be some things that it’s just hard for the person to either under understand or digest. So I’d always recommend that you offer your candidates or your employees, a one to one with a psychologist or with somebody who is trained in the use of that psychometric to coach them through results, and help them understand what it means to them, and the positive and the opportunities behind those results.

Al Elliott
Lovely stuff. Okay, well, well, last question, then. What about I mean, we we all know them, the people who are highly intelligent, perhaps might know how to manipulate a questionnaire like this. So you’re going through the I’m going for my dream job, for example. And I have one of these, these surveys these you called them a test name and call them a test indicator? Was it a touring touring inventory? That was a fancy word. So I go through one of these inventories, and I go, Well, I know what they’re looking for. So I start answering the questions based on what they I think they want rather than actually, what I think what happens there.

Leanne Elliott
Yeah, and it’s, it’s, there may be people out there that believe they can do that. The reason we call them inventories, when we talk about personality or behaviour is there’s no pass or fail. It’s your personality or your behaviour. It’s, you know, it’s not correct or incorrect in that sense. When he might talk about an intelligence test. In terms of somebody being able to manipulate it, again, comes down to how robust your psychometric is, the more valid or the more validity and reliability or psychometric tool has, the less likely it’s going to be for somebody to manipulate this. If it’s if it’s not, then potentially people could, but for example, which is why I kind of mentioned a couple of times the RPKI 32, in terms of recruitment of non manager level roles, and you can use it for manager level roles as well is that they actually have a scale built into the O P Q, O P Q 32, called a social desirability scale, to ask you questions throughout the the inventory, along with everything else. And it’s actually basically a built in lie detector test. So if people that score high on social desirability, are more likely to have answered in a way that either they, they they think you want to hear or that they think that you’re looking for in in terms of the job, so a sophisticated psychometric is going to pick up

Al Elliott
very nice, very clever. So is there any question I should have asked? Or perhaps someone might be thinking, listening to this that you could answer?

Leanne Elliott
I think the only thing and I’m sure you’re probably getting to the end of this and going I’m not sure I have a better idea of what psychometric to pick now at the beginning. And good, because until you define what your problem is, you shouldn’t know what psychometric you want to pick. That’s the point. There are so many out there, there are good, there are bad, they’re ugly. First of all, understand what it is your objective is what you want this psychometric to help you achieve within your business. What? What decisions is it going to help you make? Once you’ve figured that out, look for psychometrics, high validity, high reliability, speak to a psychologist try and speak to a third party, a test publisher is always going to tell you how great their product says. It’s like any business you know, someone’s always gonna tell you how great their ketchup is over somebody else’s. That’s pretty bad example, actually, the whole ketchup thing.

Al Elliott
Yeah, Heinz is always the best, isn’t it? Yeah.

Leanne Elliott
You know what I mean? He’s done us a better you know, they’re selling so they go and tell you it’s theirs. Do your research, engage in professional, but ultimately, the you know, look for reliable, tests publishes look at resources, like the British Psychological Society, what their recommendations are, what they list is in terms of endorsed tools, but as a general rule of thumb, anyone anything by SHL Hogan, real world group.

Al Elliott
can’t really go well. Brilliant. There we go. Okay, so I think that’s going to call it a day on this one. Just wanted to let you know that if you’ve got any feedback or questions then email podcast at oblong hq.com as oblong as in rectangle hq.com. That means my blog and if you’re interested in the roadmap, which Leanne alluded to earlier, which is where it talks about breaks down all of your entire every problem you could possibly have in leading a team is either down to recruitment, engagement or management and COC the wrap that all laid out for you beautifully at oblong, hq.com forward slash roadmap. I think that’s it for now. Do you want to talk about these regular monthly workshops? We’ve got planned or should we leave that till next week? Brilliant. Okay. Well, we’ll see you very soon. Bye. Bye.