That’s a pretty alarming figure.  This research covers a lot of reason within the scope of accidents and necessity, such as moving towns and needing to find a job quickly, needing a job that was flexible to fit round children, having had a bad experience and needed to do something different.  All sorts of reasons, but only 7% cited the reason for being in their current job as “it matched the skills I have”…………….hmmm, worrying!

So, what does this have to do with psychometrics and how can they change your life?

I have been using psychometric tests and giving psychometric feedback for a long time on all sorts of applications such as assessment centres, influencing personal development plans, highlighting people with potential and assessing skills.  In each of these situations, the psychometric is being used to identify gaps in the individual against a job they are applying for, currently doing or developing for.  Nearly always, these are assessments about the job fit, from the organisation’s perspective.  Which makes sense, of course and I’m not knocking this approach.  This is part of what we offer as a business.

But, in reality few organisations use psychometrics to any great extent.  Most tend to reserve the use of psychometrics to senior appointments, talent management or graduate recruitment.  Again, these are all about identifying fit with a job.

Now let me ask you a question.  Have you come into contact with someone in your business that you regard as a bit of a muppet, or worse?  They just can’t do the job.  They’re either too slow, too lazy, too fussy.  Maybe they don’t manage their people well enough, can’t deliver projects on time or are not innovative enough.  I am sure, in your mind now, you have the face of someone or at least a name, and maybe not just one either.  Maybe you are thinking about yourself being seen as one of these types of people.

Well I want you to consider, for a moment, psychometrics with a different purpose.

The Diagnostic Psychometric

If you’ve ever seen Harry Potter films, you’ll remember the bit where the sorting hat decided which house wizards and witches would belong to.  Essentially, the sorting hat was a diagnostic aimed at assessing the individual and working out where they would be best suited.

Psychometrics can do the same thing.  Time for a story.

Imagine the situation; Bob is working for an organisation in a “head of engineering role”.  Bob comes to me one day and says he has a problem with one of his team (Stuart).  Apparently Stuart is not managing his workload effectively or his team and is leaving his client’s unhappy about his effectiveness.  So Bob decides he wants to conduct a 360 feedback on Stuart, which surprise surprise confirms this view…………or so the results show!  When Bob, Stuart and I sit down to go through the feedback, it’s not long before I start to get the feeling that Stuart is not entirely at fault.  Sure enough crack’s start to appear in Bob’s management of Stuart, which has helped lead to a breakdown between the two and as a result has affected Stuart’s ability to deliver to his client.  Sure enough Bob has not really managed Stuart properly.  Objectives (to access this link, send us an e-mail and we’ll e-mail you the password to the freestuff area) have been set over e-mail, performance reviews are infrequent if at all and Bob openly talks to Stuart’s client about his lack of ability.  All of which Stuart is aware of and has effectively “switched off”.  As the 360 progresses, I help Stuart to realise that he is in fact part of the problem and has been actively avoiding confrontation with Bob.  This has meant that Stuart doesn’t communicate or manage his interactions with Bob, he doesn’t keep him informed or review his performance regularly.

  About ¾ of the way through, like a lightbulb going on, Stuart realises he has been actively disengaged.  Realising that his disengagement is leading him down a worsening situation (and that Bob has a big affect on his career) he resolves to spend the weekend thinking about how he can sort things out for himself.  After the weekend Stuart returns fresh faced and with a renewed commitment to actively manage Bob to ensure he tries to make the relationship work.  Within two weeks, Stuart seems to be back to his old, capable, happy self.  He has begun making Bob manage him and the client has also commented on the vast improvement in performance. Stuart’s team (who were happy with him anyway) are now happier than before and everything looks good.  So the 360 helped Stuart acted as a diagnostic to influence the conversations and work out what was going wrong………for Stuart!  The issue with Bob was still unresolved!

Malcolm, Bob’s manager approaches me about a month after the 360 between Bob and Stuart.  He asks me to conduct a 360 for Bob, which I do of course.  When it comes time to go through the results, I can tell Bob is uncomfortable.  I try to understand how Bob is feeling about having a 360 done on himself, to which he responds “it feels much less comfortable being this side of the fence”.  Now, I know Bob is worried and I know that he knows something is not quite right.  He also knows that Malcolm is concerned.  So all in all a great atmosphere.  As we go through the results, Bob relaxes down as we talk about things in a casual and conversational way.  Being a Head of Department, Bob is responsible for managing around 20 staff and various technical projects.  The results show that both of these areas have quite differing results to his, with his being much higher than others.  The further we progress, the more Bob opens up until in one summing up he states “I don’t much like people or projects”.  A small but important revelation!

So how did Bob end up in a role that require much of what he doesn’t like?  By accident and necessity!  Bob had originally joined the organisation with the responsibility for looking at technical procedures and reviewing them, rewriting them and introducing new ones.  Essentially this was a job where he would be working on his own, through others, with no one to manage and no direct project accountability.  But, because he was in a senior job and because he did his job very well, when a reorganisation came about, Malcolm saw Bob as having the ability to absorb a larger, more complex role managing people and projects.  Bob being somewhat happy to be thought of so highly agreed to take on the job without really thinking through the implications.  As soon as Bob started the job he began to struggle and was not coping.  Not wanting to appear incapable he started manage the role to fit his strengths.  He turned things into procedures, he introduced a layer of management to avoid people management and direct project association.  Yet all of these aspects of his role were unavoidable and so once again he struggled.

Using Bob’s 360 feedback, we started to understand where the problem had come from and, in typical fashion, what the gaps where in his development.  Malcolm wrote down lots of “stuff” about Bob going on “people management” courses and attending project management training.  In reality I knew this wouldn’t solve the problem.  Fundamentally Bob didn’t want to do this type of work and even with some good skills to help him through, he still wouldn’t be happy.  By the end of Bob’s 360 feedback session I had opened his eyes to why he was struggling, helped him see where his strengths lay and helped him realise he needed to sort things out if he was to survive in his current role.

Sure enough, three weeks later Bob came to me and said he had resigned and had found a job where he was able to work primarily on his own writing technical procedures and reports.  I asked him to keep in touch and let me know how things were going in his new job which he did.  He thanked me for helping him to see that he was unhappy and needed to make a decision in order to change things for the better.  He was now in a role that he enjoyed and as a result was successful again.

The moral of the story part

Now I know that some will read this and say “with the right training and skills development he could have improved and enjoyed developing into the role he had”.  I don’t agree.  Bob fundamentally lacked the desire and interest to be responsible for other people’s work, he hated working under the kind of pressure that projects often require and he was unhappy.  This to me was more about Bob’s fundamental personality makeup than it was about his skill at being able to do something he didn’t want to.

I see this kind of thing happen far too often and I have seen many a good person damaged by trying to make them into something they clearly aren’t.  This is exactly the same situation we see in organisations when someone is promoted to their level of incompetence.  A 360 feedback is one of a number of psychometric based tools that are available to offer what I call a diagnostic process for individuals.

Both Bob and Stuart, through the use of 360 as a diagnostic, where able to understand and change things about the situation they found themselves in.  These changes ultimately led them to a better situation and in turn rewarded them with less stress, greater enjoyment and performance, which impacted their home life for the better.

So often, we fire people from situations we helped them get into, or we reorganise those difficult people out of the business or worse still, we brush the problems under the carpet or move them onto someone else’s department.

Start proactively using psychometrics such as 360 feedback or OPQ32 as a diagnostic for individuals with your business. You’ll soon start to see people making decisions for themselves about their suitability for a role and identifying things they need to change to improve and enjoy their work.  This approach will help you move people into better suited roles, help people move out of the business in a positive and constructive way and most importantly will help to make your business performance more effectively and efficiently.

It’s worth also noting that most psychometric tools will cost you in the region of £50-£150 to complete, assuming you have someone in your business to feedback the results.

At Spirit Consulting Group we offer a wide range of psychometric and 360 feedback tools.  We can also provide you with consultancy on choosing the right psychometrics tools and profiling tools to use dependent upon what you’re looking to achieve. There are also lots of sample psychometric tests available online to help you guage what is right for you. Whether you want personality tests, IQ tests, aptitude tests or other psychometric profiling tools, we can provide them or source them for you.

It pains me to see someone who is not very good at the job they have.  It also pains me to hear people refer to them as incompetent or useless, without having attempted to try and identify what the real problem is.

People are rarely incompetent or useless.  Most of the time they are just in the wrong job and aren’t playing to their strengths.  So what fool would land themselves the wrong job then!  How surprising is it then, of over 3000 people surveyed, more than 65% said they were in their job more by accident or necessity than based on ability and desire.

That’s a pretty alarming figure.  This research covers a lot of reason within the scope of accidents and necessity, such as moving towns and needing to find a job quickly, needing a job that was flexible to fit round children, having had a bad experience and needed to do something different.  All sorts of reasons, but only 7% cited the reason for being in their current job as “it matched the skills I have”…………….hmmm, worrying!

So, what does this have to do with psychometrics and how can they change your life?

I have been using psychometric tests for a long time on all sorts of applications such as assessment centres, influencing personal development plans, highlighting people with potential and assessing skills.  In each of these situations, the psychometric is being used to identify gaps in the individual against a job they are applying for, currently doing or developing for.  Nearly always, these are assessments about the job fit, from the organisation’s perspective.  Which makes sense, of course and I’m not knocking this approach.  This is part of what we offer as a business.

But, in reality few organisations use psychometrics to any great extent.  Most tend to reserve the use of psychometrics to senior appointments, talent management or graduate recruitment.  Again, these are all about identifying fit with a job.

Now let me ask you a question.  Have you come into contact with someone in your business that you regard as a bit of a muppet, or worse?  They just can’t do the job.  They’re either too slow, too lazy, too fussy.  Maybe they don’t manage their people well enough, can’t deliver projects on time or are not innovative enough.  I am sure, in your mind now, you have the face of someone or at least a name, and maybe not just one either.  Maybe you are thinking about yourself being seen as one of these types of people.

Well I want you to consider, for a moment, psychometrics with a different purpose.

The Diagnostic Psychometric

If you’ve ever seen Harry Potter films, you’ll remember the bit where the sorting hat decided which house wizards and witches would belong to.  Essentially, the sorting hat was a diagnostic aimed at assessing the individual and working out where they would be best suited.

Psychometrics can do the same thing.  Time for a story.

Imagine the situation; Bob is working for an organisation in a “head of engineering role”.  Bob comes to me one day and says he has a problem with one of his team (Stuart).  Apparently Stuart is not managing his workload effectively or his team and is leaving his client’s unhappy about his effectiveness.  So Bob decides he wants to conduct a 360 feedback on Stuart, which surprise surprise confirms this view…………or so the results show!  When Bob, Stuart and I sit down to go through the feedback, it’s not long before I start to get the feeling that Stuart is not entirely at fault.  Sure enough crack’s start to appear in Bob’s management of Stuart, which has helped lead to a breakdown between the two and as a result has affected Stuart’s ability to deliver to his client.  Sure enough Bob has not really managed Stuart properly.  Objectives (to access this link, send us an e-mail and we’ll e-mail you the password to the freestuff area) have been set over e-mail, performance reviews are infrequent if at all and Bob openly talks to Stuart’s client about his lack of ability.  All of which Stuart is aware of and has effectively “switched off”.  As the 360 progresses, I help Stuart to realise that he is in fact part of the problem and has been actively avoiding confrontation with Bob.  This has meant that Stuart doesn’t communicate or manage his interactions with Bob, he doesn’t keep him informed or review his performance regularly.

  About ¾ of the way through, like a lightbulb going on, Stuart realises he has been actively disengaged.  Realising that his disengagement is leading him down a worsening situation (and that Bob has a big affect on his career) he resolves to spend the weekend thinking about how he can sort things out for himself.  After the weekend Stuart returns fresh faced and with a renewed commitment to actively manage Bob to ensure he tries to make the relationship work.  Within two weeks, Stuart seems to be back to his old, capable, happy self.  He has begun making Bob manage him and the client has also commented on the vast improvement in performance. Stuart’s team (who were happy with him anyway) are now happier than before and everything looks good.  So the 360 helped Stuart acted as a diagnostic to influence the conversations and work out what was going wrong………for Stuart!  The issue with Bob was still unresolved!

Malcolm, Bob’s manager approaches me about a month after the 360 between Bob and Stuart.  He asks me to conduct a 360 for Bob, which I do of course.  When it comes time to go through the results, I can tell Bob is uncomfortable.  I try to understand how Bob is feeling about having a 360 done on himself, to which he responds “it feels much less comfortable being this side of the fence”.  Now, I know Bob is worried and I know that he knows something is not quite right.  He also knows that Malcolm is concerned.  So all in all a great atmosphere.  As we go through the results, Bob relaxes down as we talk about things in a casual and conversational way.  Being a Head of Department, Bob is responsible for managing around 20 staff and various technical projects.  The results show that both of these areas have quite differing results to his, with his being much higher than others.  The further we progress, the more Bob opens up until in one summing up he states “I don’t much like people or projects”.  A small but important revelation!

So how did Bob end up in a role that require much of what he doesn’t like?  By accident and necessity!  Bob had originally joined the organisation with the responsibility for looking at technical procedures and reviewing them, rewriting them and introducing new ones.  Essentially this was a job where he would be working on his own, through others, with no one to manage and no direct project accountability.  But, because he was in a senior job and because he did his job very well, when a reorganisation came about, Malcolm saw Bob as having the ability to absorb a larger, more complex role managing people and projects.  Bob being somewhat happy to be thought of so highly agreed to take on the job without really thinking through the implications.  As soon as Bob started the job he began to struggle and was not coping.  Not wanting to appear incapable he started manage the role to fit his strengths.  He turned things into procedures, he introduced a layer of management to avoid people management and direct project association.  Yet all of these aspects of his role were unavoidable and so once again he struggled.

Using Bob’s 360 feedback, we started to understand where the problem had come from and, in typical fashion, what the gaps where in his development.  Malcolm wrote down lots of “stuff” about Bob going on “people management” courses and attending project management training.  In reality I knew this wouldn’t solve the problem.  Fundamentally Bob didn’t want to do this type of work and even with some good skills to help him through, he still wouldn’t be happy.  By the end of Bob’s 360 feedback session I had opened his eyes to why he was struggling, helped him see where his strengths lay and helped him realise he needed to sort things out if he was to survive in his current role.

Sure enough, three weeks later Bob came to me and said he had resigned and had found a job where he was able to work primarily on his own writing technical procedures and reports.  I asked him to keep in touch and let me know how things were going in his new job which he did.  He thanked me for helping him to see that he was unhappy and needed to make a decision in order to change things for the better.  He was now in a role that he enjoyed and as a result was successful again.

The moral of the story part

Now I know that some will read this and say “with the right training and skills development he could have improved and enjoyed developing into the role he had”.  I don’t agree.  Bob fundamentally lacked the desire and interest to be responsible for other people’s work, he hated working under the kind of pressure that projects often require and he was unhappy.  This to me was more about Bob’s fundamental personality makeup than it was about his skill at being able to do something he didn’t want to.

I see this kind of thing happen far too often and I have seen many a good person damaged by trying to make them into something they clearly aren’t.  This is exactly the same situation we see in organisations when someone is promoted to their level of incompetence.  A 360 feedback is one of a number of psychometric based tools that are available to offer what I call a diagnostic process for individuals.

Both Bob and Stuart, through the use of 360 as a diagnostic, where able to understand and change things about the situation they found themselves in.  These changes ultimately led them to a better situation and in turn rewarded them with less stress, greater enjoyment and performance, which impacted their home life for the better.

So often, we fire people from situations we helped them get into, or we reorganise those difficult people out of the business or worse still, we brush the problems under the carpet or move them onto someone else’s department.

Start proactively using psychometrics such as 360 feedback or OPQ32 as a diagnostic for individuals with your business. You’ll soon start to see people making decisions for themselves about their suitability for a role and identifying things they need to change to improve and enjoy their work.  This approach will help you move people into better suited roles, help people move out of the business in a positive and constructive way and most importantly will help to make your business performance more effectively and efficiently.

It’s worth also noting that most psychometric tools will cost you in the region of £50-£150 to complete, assuming you have someone in your business to feedback the results.

At Spirit Consulting Group we offer a wide range of psychometric and 360 feedback tools.  We can also provide you with consultancy on choosing the right tools to use dependent upon what you’re looking to achieve.