Bring Out the Best in Your People

More and more organizations are recognizing that individuals and leaders who are self-aware tend to be better at managing their emotions, influencing others, and building strong, collaborative relationships.

To help employees develop self-awareness, companies often use one of the various psychometric assessments available on the market.  Unfortunately, many of these tools were developed decades ago and are still using old thinking with regard to individuals and personalities. They focus on categorizing people into specific “types,” without acknowledging the vast complexity of the human personality.

This approach has been widely criticized, especially in the academic world, as being too limiting. In fact, according to a recent Fortune magazine article, personality “typing” has been subject to sustained criticism by professional psychologists for more than 30 years.

One of the key criticisms is that “typing” mistakenly assumes that personality falls into mutually exclusive categories. For example, you are either an introvert OR an extravert. You are either logical OR emotional. Typing assigns an individual all of the characteristics of a trait without any of the characteristics of the opposite of that trait. The danger in this, of course, is that when organizations use these typing tools their culture can become biased toward one type or another. For example, they may associate a particular type with leadership more strongly than other types and may even eliminate one or more types from leadership consideration. The result is that employees who are not this type but want to become leaders will either try to change who they are, or become disengaged, or leave. This is not bringing out the best in people and helping them feel like valued contributors. 

Evaluative bias threatens personal satisfaction and contributes to an organizational culture of disengagement.  The first damages employee happiness and well-being, while the second damages the bottom line.  According to recent Gallup studies, disengaged employees can cost US organizations up to $605 billion each year in lost productivity.

Humans are far too complex to be categorized as either/or, or to be segmented into particular types.  They may display more characteristics of a trait (or its opposite) based on a particular situation. Reducing the complexity of the human personality into such a narrow scope can limit an individual in their own eyes, and in the eyes of others. It is both limited and limiting.

Fortunately, there are emerging, state-of-the-art psychometric assessments that help to eliminate evaluative bias.  These are tools that do not type people, instead they scientifically measure behaviors exhibited or qualities a person utilizes.  Even better are the ones that embrace “and” thinking as opposed to “either/or” thinking. These are the ‘open-system’ tools where you measure each factor individually.  Therefore, a person’s unique gifts and talents are highlighted. 

National Geographic’s publication Your Personality Explained, called the Big5 the cutting edge approach to measuring personality because it doesn’t categorize people as “types,” but rather empirically and scientifically measures each of their 5 personality factors for a more unique and comprehensive picture. Assessments based on the Big5 principle are one step in the right direction.

No matter what you choose to use in your organization to help raise employees’ self-awareness, be mindful of the effects that creating an atmosphere that rewards or limits certain ‘types’ of people can have on employee morale.  Instead, help your employees look for hidden gems and talents in each other; help them see the uniqueness each person has to offer.  Help them feel valued, and watch them contribute.  Bring out the best in your people and they will bring out the best in your organization. 

Cheers to Deeper Diversity,

Rebecca Bales

Global Partner Lumina Learning

Contact us at info-us@luminalearning.com to learn about upcoming Lumina events.