Episode 06 · 2 August 2022 · 31:33
Myers Briggs - Brilliant or Bulls**t..?
Myers Briggs - Brilliant or Bulls**t..?
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What psychometric tests actually measure
Why leaders should care: recruitment & development
Live experiment: putting Al through Myers-Briggs
The reveal: MBTI vs horoscopes
Choosing a tool: the objective-first rule
The recruitment shortlist: OPQ-32, Real World Leader & Hogan
The dark side: selecting *in* the 'borderline sociopaths'
The ethics: GDPR, voluntariness & never selecting out on personality
Can you game a psychometric test? (Yes, and good tests catch you)
Show notes
Myers-Briggs: Brilliant or Bulls**t? A Business Psychologist Investigates
You've probably done a Myers-Briggs test. You might even know your four letters — ENFP, INTJ, whatever the internet told you. But here's the question nobody asks before they post their result: how accurate is it really?
Leanne Elliott — Chartered Occupational Psychologist with 15 years in people and culture — digs into psychometrics, starting with the most famous personality test of them all. And she doesn't just talk about it: she puts Al through a Myers-Briggs-style assessment live on air, reads him his feedback... and then reveals where half of it actually came from. (Spoiler: it wasn't psychology.)
It's a demonstration that explains everything you need to know about choosing — and trusting — a psychometric test, whether you're hiring, developing leaders, or just trying to understand your team.
🔬 The Experiment: MBTI vs Horoscope
Myers-Briggs is a type-based personality inventory: you're put in one of 16 boxes, extrovert or introvert, thinking or feeling. Al's result: ENFP, "the Campaigner" — extroverted, intuitive, feeling, prospecting. Vibrant, adaptable, highly intelligent, a great manager, loved by everyone. Impressive stuff from a 100-question test.
Then Leanne drops the bomb: she was reading Al's MBTI feedback and his Gemini horoscope side by side, and the descriptions were practically interchangeable. Myers-Briggs, she says, is "complete bullshit" — developed in the early 1900s by a mother and daughter who weren't psychologists, and based on no formal psychology whatsoever. It's astrology with four extra letters.
The lesson isn't "never use psychometrics" — it's that the warm, flattering, generic feedback you get from a self-report test is exactly what a self-report test is designed to produce. You'll connect with anything nice that's said about you. That's the problem when big decisions ride on it.
🛠️ How to Pick a Good Psychometric
Leanne's first rule: define your objective before you pick a tool. What decision is this data going to help you make? Until you know the problem, you shouldn't know the test — there are hundreds out there, and the good, the bad, and the ugly all look the same on a brochure.
Then demand the science:
- Validity — is it actually measuring what it claims to measure?
- Reliability — would you get the same result if you took it twice?
- The publisher test — a good test publisher publishes the reliability and validity data on their tools. If they have no information: run. The gold standard is publishers who hand their data to third parties to validate.
Her recruitment shortlist: the SHL OPQ-32 for non-leadership roles (it even has a built-in social desirability scale — effectively a lie detector for people answering what they think you want to hear), the Real World Leader from the Real World Group for leadership recruitment and development, and the Hogan Development Survey, which flips psychometrics on their head by measuring the dark side — the subclinical personality traits that can turn destructive under pressure.
And yes, that dark side can be an asset: Leanne's master's dissertation explored "selecting in" people with dark-side traits for high-risk professions where a borderline sociopath is genuinely useful — pilots with hundreds of lives in their hands, bomb disposal units, specific military roles.
⚖️ The Ethics Bit
Using psychometrics in recruitment is legal — but there are lines you don't cross:
- Participation should be voluntary — no pressure, no coercion.
- Never select in or out on personality alone. A psychometric is one source of data, not a verdict.
- Candidates and employees should have access to their own reports, and if a manager wants to see them, it's done transparently with express permission.
- Results need support: offer a one-to-one with someone trained in the tool to coach people through what might be surprising or hard to digest.
Key Takeaways
- Know your objective before you pick a test. If you can't say what decision the data will inform, you can't choose the right tool — and you shouldn't have to.
- Beware the horoscope effect. MBTI-style feedback feels eerily accurate because it's flattering and generic. Al's "personalised" results were interchangeable with his star sign.
- Demand validity, reliability, and third-party data. If a publisher won't show you the science behind their tool, don't let it make your hiring decisions.
- Never select in or out on personality alone. Psychometrics are data, not destiny — pair them with structured interviews and good job analysis.
- The reliable shortlist: SHL OPQ-32 (recruitment), Real World Group's Real World Leader (leadership), and the Hogan suite (including the dark side). Anything by SHL, Hogan, or Real World Group is a safe starting point.
📚 Tools Mentioned in This Episode
- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and 16 Personalities — the popular type-based tests, and why Leanne won't be using them
- SHL Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ-32) — recruitment for non-leadership roles
- Real World Group Real World Leader — recruitment and development of leaders
- Hogan Personality Inventory & Hogan Development Survey — personality and the "dark side"
- Leanne's framework: the Oblong roadmap — every team problem is recruitment, engagement, or management: oblonghq.com/roadmap
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect (placeholder — build this page once; every future episode links to it instead of repeating 5 lines of links)
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. 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 6. I'm Al.
Leanne ElliottI'm Leanne.
Al ElliottAnd if you're brand new to this, then let's just give you a little bit of background. So, Leanne, who are you? And why should people listen to you?
Leanne ElliottMy name is Leanne Elliott. I'm a business psychologist. And some people may say 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 ElliottBrilliant. And I'm Al. I've run several businesses. I'm also Leanne's husband and the co-creator of Oblong, which we'll talk about shortly, which is our 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 we're gonna be 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 ElliottSo today we are talking about psychometrics, psychometric testing, or psychometric inventories. They're used in business. Are they brilliant or are they bullshit?
Al ElliottGreat, great title. We haven't yet decided at this point whether we're going to bleep out that word. We quite like swearing, the two of us, but we're not quite sure 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 ElliottSo, mycometric? Psychometric tests fall into 2 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 behaviour. So rather than personality, they'll 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 ElliottOkay. So, 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 psychometric tests?
Leanne ElliottI think psychometric tests tend to fall into 2 places that can be of use to an organisation. 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 3 levels are recruitment, engagement, and management. They're the 3 areas we feel you need to focus on to build a great culture and a team that cares as much about your business as you do. If we look at those 3 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 a Was it about 50, 60%? Maybe it's lower than that, actually, but 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, an understanding of how your team think and feel about you, if we're looking at a 360 psychometric, can be really useful. And as I said, just giving yourself insights and that understanding of self-awareness can be really useful in developing 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 and engagement of your team.
Al ElliottOkay, so we talk about predictors there. Let's talk in real-world words. What you mean is, if you're— this is— tell me 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 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 in that role.
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottOkay. 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 that?
Leanne ElliottIt's that as well as other things, and I think we'll probably touch on this in a little while, that the kind of the art of psychometrics or the science of psychometrics both 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 talk about. and really just understand how you can interact as a team. So, to demonstrate this, I've actually put Al through the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which you have 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 Al through that, and I'm going to 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 going to be real reactions.
Al ElliottNo.
Leanne ElliottAnd maybe just see how you respond to it, Al, perhaps. We can have a demonstration, might help our listeners understand where we're coming from.
Al ElliottOkay. And I mean, just the test itself was fairly, fairly non-intrusive. It was like 4 or 5 questions, wasn't it? You had to say whether you're A or B.
Leanne ElliottWe did a very short version. The Myers-Briggs, actual Myers-Briggs is actually 100 questions, which is quite intensive. So, we did 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 It's not as accurate as we think.
Al ElliottOkay. So what, what, how do we do this?
Leanne ElliottSo, you're, uh, so Myers-Briggs looks at personality from a type perspective. So there's 2 main schools of thought in psychology when it comes to understanding and measuring personality. One is type. Uh, 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 traits. 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.
Al ElliottGot it. Understood.
Leanne ElliottSo Myers-Briggs is a type-based personality inventory. So you are ENFP, a campaigner. You are extroverted, intuitive, feeling, and prospecting. You embrace big ideas, actions that reflect a sense of hope and goodwill towards others. You're vibrant. You've got energy. People just want to be around you. What's really an 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, as so is your personality, is your intelligence. You're typically highly intelligent, or this personality type is typically highly intelligent. You love to learn, and you can always be trusted to innovate and come up with new ideas. In terms of workplace habits, uh, chances are that you are a great manager. You're empathic, you're collaborative, you love bringing others into decisions, and teamwork is absolutely central for you. Wow.
Al ElliottWell, that sounds pretty good. How the hell can we know all that from just 4, 6, 8, even 100 questions? And also, something I noticed in there was that even when it said the weaknesses, it still, it still prefaced it with something like, because of your intelligence, there's this Mm-hmm. You know, these weaknesses. So I can't imagine anyone getting— getting— if all the reports are like this, I can't imagine you getting a report and going, I don't like this.
Leanne ElliottNo, absolutely not. And 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, your star sign.
Al ElliottWow. Wow. So half of what you said there came from my horoscope.
Leanne ElliottYep.
Al ElliottWow. 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 12th of the world will experience something very generic today. Oh, You'll probably have a, um, 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 4 and turns it into 16 different types of people and then tries to generalize. Yes.
Leanne ElliottAnd the thing about— I don't know much about cosmology. What is it?
Al ElliottCosmology? Yeah, sure, why not?
Leanne ElliottI don't know a lot about it, but I think it is based on some kind of Bullshit? No, like, like the Earth and stars and how they move. And, you know, there's some kind of science-ish, pseudo-science in that. Um, 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 that this is a tool that was developed in like the early 20th century, like early 1900s, um, By a mum and daughter. No respect to mum and daughters, but they weren't psychologists. That's all I'm saying.
Al ElliottSo, tell me then. I think we've just basically identified that Myers-Briggs is probably not going to be your psychometric test of choice.
Leanne ElliottNo, 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 these psychometric tools, such as a hiring decision or a promotion decision. The reality is that particularly in what we call self-report psychometrics, so where I as an individual ask questions about how I perceive my personality, my behavior, 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, you're going to try and find a way to, to connect with. Um, so it's really making sure that if you are using this data— and that's what it is, what psychometrics should be generating, data to make big, big business decisions— you really need to be confident this data is, is reliable, that it's actually telling you what it's Brilliant.
Al ElliottSo in that case, then, when I am— so I don't know whether you've just answered that fully, but let me ask it explicitly. 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 ElliottIt's, it's probably unusual that we'd use psychometrics in engagement very often. itself as a separate thing. We'll probably use psychometrics to dig deeper into aspects of engagement, perhaps.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottWe're probably talking 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 say to people when they talk about psychometrics and start to identify potential tools 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, It's impossible to pick a tool. 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, recruitment's probably the simplest objective 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, then there are some really, really robust psychometrics that you can use. 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 do psychometrics help me assess that?
Al ElliottOkay, so there's, there's a lot of— there's a lot there. So for the person who's like, do 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 someone— give us a little bit of advice on someone who's looking to recruit and they just want to know, look, just narrow it down to 2 or 3 for me so I can choose?
Leanne ElliottYeah, so if we're looking at recruitment, I think if you're looking at non-leadership roles, um, then, uh, one of the most reliable, um, and valid psychometrics out there is the OPQ-32. Now, By valid, I mean—
Al ElliottCatchy name.
Leanne ElliottI know. They all 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 that 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 a very similar result. So a good psychometric is going to have high reliability and high validity. On a side note of that as well, Test publishers, which are basically the providers of these 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. If they have some information they've generated themselves, great, read into it, scrutinize it. But the gold standard is when you find a provider who actually releases the data they collect on people undertaking their assessments. and give it to third parties to validate and understand the reliability. Those are the people that we want to trust in, and we know are really, really good providers and have good, solid psychometrics. So SHL is one of those testing, um, test publishers, and in terms of recruitment, the OPQ32 is great. Um, if we're talking about leadership recruitment, there are 2 that I would recommend. One is the Real World Leader by the Real World Group. Huge amounts of research that go into that, and that's It's also a more behaviour-type psychometric, which is fantastic 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. The second is the Hogan Development Survey. This completely flips psychometrics on their head. 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 will border on a psychological, clinical psychological condition, such as 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 that may be at risk.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne Elliottrisk of, at some point, particularly under pressure, being more destructive within the workplace.
Al ElliottWhen I first met you about 15 years ago, you were doing your dissertation, weren't you, for your master's?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd I think you were using the Hogan thing.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottYeah. Because you told me all kinds of great stories about pilots and surgeons and how they're bordering socio-psychopaths. What do they—
Leanne ElliottSociopaths. Yeah. So the So my— I mean, if you're interested, if you're not, stop and pick up in about 2 minutes. But my dissertation was on dark side, the relationship between dark side personality traits and work performance, with the argument being that rather than to select out in a recruitment process, what we're doing, we're removing candidates who are exhibiting these dark side personality traits. We actually use them to select in for particular high-risk professions where 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 specific roles within the army, could actually be better to have people who do exhibit these dark side personality traits. Did you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number Marketing Podcast are both on the same podcast network.
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Leanne ElliottThe audio destination.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well. It is.
Leanne ElliottIt's so interesting. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.
Leanne ElliottSo come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in. I love it. Love it. I'd love to get to see, um, House, M.D. do a—
Leanne ElliottYes, absolutely. He would be somebody who would, yeah, definitely have a few dark side personality traits in there to make him exceptional at what he does.
Al ElliottWhereas Myers-Briggs probably just say that he's a nice guy who makes quick decisions.
Leanne ElliottBold, assertive, confident.
Al ElliottSo 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.
Leanne ElliottNo.
Al ElliottYou've mentioned 4 there, haven't you?
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottAre there any crossover between the 4?
Leanne ElliottSo in terms of psychometrics, as I said, one is always going to look at the cognitive processing through intelligence, how you will judge situations, kind of your thought process This is all your thinking. The other is more personality or behaviour, and that's where there's a big crossover. There tends to be a lot of focus in that second category on personality. 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 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 some kind of brain injury. Our personality remains fairly stable over, over short periods of time, i.e., the time of a tenure of like 2 to 4, 5 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 judgment about my personality myself, Um, 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 it? I'm not a completer 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 Al's instance, about being very imaginative and idealistic, but that may detract from the execution side of things. If you learn that as an individual, there is a phenomenon which I'm sure you've heard of called self-fulfilling prophecy, where you take that on and everything you do and everything you hear that validates that, you absorb, and it just becomes inevitable that that is the way you will be and the way you'll continue to be. Whereas actually, if we talk about, particularly at 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 on to that, we were saying before about how psychometrics can predict how well someone performs on a job. Um, personality in terms of leaders only accounts for about 5% of how well they're going to perform on the job, whereas behaviours is much, much, much higher.
Al ElliottSo 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 ElliottSHLO-PQ32.
Al ElliottThere you go, there you go. So I have one 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 in 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 all that? So That sounds like a minefield to me.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it can be. I mean, 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 on that basis. But in terms of including it in your process, absolutely fine. In terms of, I guess, the ethics behind it really is a couple of things. One, never select out purely on personality. There's going to be other tools you can use to give you a bigger picture. Personality psychometrics should not be used alone to select in or out. General mental ability may be slightly different depending on the role.
Al ElliottGeneral mental ability.
Leanne ElliottGeneral 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 employees 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 somebody's psychometric report afterwards. You need their express permission before they fill it in or after they've filled it in, but making sure that there is again no pressure and it is done completely transparently. The most important thing with psychometrics as well is making sure that people are supported in the results that they get. There may be some things in there that are surprising, there may be some things that are triggering, there may be some things that it's just hard for the person to either 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 positives and the opportunities behind those results.
Al ElliottLovely stuff. Okay, well, last question then. What about, I mean, 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? No, you didn't call them a test. Indicator, was it?
Leanne ElliottInventory.
Al ElliottInventory. That was the fancy word. Um, 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 ElliottYeah, 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 behavior is there's no pass or fail. It's your personality or your behavior. It's, you know, it's not correct or incorrect in that sense. When you 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 not, then potentially people could. For example, which is why I've mentioned a couple of times the OPQ-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 OPQ-32 called a social desirability scale. It will ask you questions throughout the inventory, along with everything else, and it's actually basically a built-in lie detector test. So, 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 terms of the job. So, a sophisticated psychometric is going to pick up that.
Al ElliottVery nice. Very clever.
Leanne ElliottSo, is there any question I should have asked, or perhaps someone might be thinking, listening to 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 than I did 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, there are ugly. First of all, understand what it is your objective is, what you want this psychometric to help you achieve within your business. What is What your problem?
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne Elliottdecisions is it going to help you make? Once you've figured that out, look for psychometrics with 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 is. It's like any business, you know, someone's always going to tell you how great their ketchup is over somebody else's. That's probably a bad example, actually, the whole ketchup thing.
Al ElliottYeah, Heinz is always the best, isn't it?
Leanne ElliottYeah, but you know what I mean. Whose donuts are better? You know, they're selling, so they're going to tell you it's theirs.
Al ElliottDo your research.
Leanne ElliottEngage a professional, but ultimately, look for reliable test publishers. Look at resources like the British Psychological Society, what their recommendations are, what they list in terms of endorsed tools. But as a general rule of thumb, anything by SHL, Hogan, Real World Group, you can't really go wrong.
Al ElliottBrilliant. There we go. Okay, so I think that's gonna— we'll call it a day on this one. Um, just want to let you know that, uh, if you've got any feedback or questions, then email podcast@oblonghq.com. That's oblong as in rectangle, hq.com.
Leanne ElliottDo you know what that means?
Al ElliottWhat? Oblong? Joking, I am. Um, and, um, 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 so you'll see that all laid out for you beautifully at oblonghq.com/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?
Leanne ElliottLet's leave that till next week.
Al ElliottBrilliant. Okay, well, we'll see you very soon. Bye-bye.
Leanne ElliottBye.
Al ElliottBye.