On 18 Dec 2008, at 13:07, Paul Makepeace wrote: > For one employer I was put through a battery of psychometric tests and > some definitely do not come out flattering. Typically this is in the > form of maxing out in one particular direction (which isn't wholly > positive, think "OCD") at the expense of another. Assessments present > in the form of "maybe too heavily involved in aspect X, and lack of > development in area Y may hinder dealing with situations W and V" or > "over development in aspect X may cause friction with others owing to > lack of Y" etc. >> > > If it's formalised and metrics are recorded that's a basis for > determining whether it's effective, at least. Assuming the company has > the sense to actually do that assessment :) > > ** > > I was once a mentor on a post-grad programme and we worked as a group > on various tasks, puzzles, and games. Amongst those we did various > psychometric tests, some of which were aimed at groups (Belbin's one > of them, IIRC). Our particular group for whatever reason worked > really, really well - people fell effortlessly into roles, discussions > were quick and productive, there was almost no disagreement amongst > anyone over anything. It was pretty much a perfect team. In the > day-long in the end-of-week challenge, we scored very highly. > > Now what was really interesting was that after the challenge the > results of our Belbin (I think) tests were revealed and the > combination of our various team members almost exactly matched with > complementary and equally balanced skills and traits across the board. > > I realise this is anecdotal but it was quite a "Wow" moment seeing how > we meshed as a group in practice and how the theory correlated so > well.
Flattery may have not have been the best term to use, as it's somewhat leading, but I wouldn't say that it automatically needed to equate to praise. I think there's common aspect of human nature that finds a kind of flattery in the 'status' conferred by being formally inspected in this manner, being raised from the crowd. A sense in which these tests can inherently play up to that, in as much as they draw a picture of you as a significantly individual case, because of course, you always knew you were different. I could offer up examples of my own where I've taken part in such processes, in detail, and been impressed by the effect but underwhelmed by the data, but as you say, they would just been anecdotes, so I won't bother. It's the suspicion that it's pseudo-science that mostly bothers me. And I don't see that it necessarily follows that it's improved with a formal framework around it and a history of metrics, because at the heart of it, not only the judgements, but most of the tests scored to calculate them are subjective decisions, and difficult, if not impossible, to fix to an objective base. It opens the door to a systemic labelling of people, which is something I'm discouraged by, especially within a corporate structure, where it may be informing hidden decisions that could affect you quite significantly. It's bad enough when great weight is given to short factual tests or examinations, but at least they are usually based around empirical results. These 'personality' focused tests strike me as something that might be perhaps influenced by how many cups of coffee an individual had, or what the weather was like, and it's a bit galling to ponder that that sort of event could significantly effect your subsequent job offer or career path. The usual joke to insert at this point from fans of these systems is to suggest that I would think that about the whole affair because I'm $PERSONALITY_TYPE. Myself I prefer to try and use a mental model in which people are mostly vastly more similar than they probably think that they are, and tend to be most predictable as crowds :-) -- Regards, Colin M. Strickland _______________________________________________ BristolBathPM mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.bristolbath.org/mailman/listinfo/bristolbathpm
