Inspired Workplaces: Sydney Trapeze School

April 26th, 2011

Since writing recently about the oyster farmers of the Manning River and their magnificent workplace, I’ve been thinking about other equally inspiring workplaces.

Our launch was held at Sydney Trapeze School a number of years ago, with a metaphorical wish to help our clients “fly”, and though on the surface, a trapeze school seems very different from a workplace psychology practice, we have had a close psychological connection to the school and have used it as a source of inspiration since we began.

Sydney Trapeze School operates from an historical, edgy and extremely stylish old factory, which still retains its enormous original gantry crane, in the grungy inner-city suburb of St Peters in Sydney. In an industrial and old working class suburb, STS is located in an old factory complex next to the train tracks, where these days a number of adventure and arts enterprises share the space with operating factories, workshops and industrial businesses.

The environment of Sydney Trapeze School is the first thing that makes it special, and inspirational. It is huge, lofty, and cathedral-like, and of course the flying trapeze rig and other circus apparatus makes it seem exotic and colourful. The juxtaposition of colourful circus paraphernalia with the industrial atmosphere of the original building makes you feel as though you are somewhere special and enthralling.

But in addition to the physical impact of STS, there is much more that makes it a very special place. Sydney Trapeze School was begun nearly three years ago by twin brothers Frank and Rob Taylor, whose enduring laid-back and casually friendly demeanour belies the inspiration and drive that must have been required to bring their dream to fruition, and make it the successful operation it is.

Flying Trapeze is a growing sport, recreation and fitness activity, because it combines a number of physical and mental challenges, including gymnastic skill, careful timing, tenacity, trust, teamwork, and personal mental and physical courage. Learning to fly on the flying trapeze is the kind of activity that helps people realise and generalise skills that are needed for all other aspects of a successful life. Because these skills, especially over-coming personal challenges and fears, are extremely relevant to the workplace, Sydney Trapeze School offers corporate workshops to work teams and organisations among its services.

At the end of every term, Sydney Trapeze School stages a performance, which showcases its students’ hard work. At the most recent show, based on a pirate theme, the completion of a huge mural was also celebrated. Local street artists, Tom McDonald and Peter Lloyd Jones were commissioned to paint a mural along almost the entire length of one wall, and the project took a year to complete.

With a teaching staff now of over a dozen, students from across Sydney, a secondary out-door rig for use in summer, and an Australia-wide reputation, the Taylor brothers have developed their business from the ground up into an impressively successful operation which still retains the friendly and inclusive atmosphere it began with.

It’s success and continuing growth is a testament to what can happen when you have clear vision, faith and tenacity.

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

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Zen & the Art of Timeliness

April 7th, 2011

Shortly after I started this blog last year, as a result of my outrage about bad manners in the workplace (Leadership and Good Manners), I googled to see if there was anyone else out there thinking about manners and etiquette in business. It turns out there are lots of people, and one the articles I came upon was, No you are not ‘running late’ you are rude and stupid by high profile, straight-talking and eminently sensible Firebrand recruiter Greg Savage, on his beautifully named blog, The Savage Truth.

The article was posted on 7th June 2010, and to date has attracted an astonishing 107 comments, with very polarised views, and many of them astoundingly vitriolic.

Who would have thought that the subject of lateness would ignite passionate debate and uncover such heatedly conflicting responses?

Greg’s article is clever, honest and funny, and addresses the frustration I’m sure most of us have experienced when people are late for appointments and meetings, and worse, don’t even seem to think this is a problem. While there are all sorts of reasons for lateness (circumstances, psychology, culture, lack of time management skills etc), and all have us have been late from time to time, and should expect some degree of tolerance and understanding for this occasionally, an underlying attitude that being on time doesn’t matter is just wrong, because everything you do sends a clear message.

You are your brand. Everything you do, and everything about the way you present yourself, affects the way you are perceived.

Psychology* tells us that people are judging everything about us, all the time. And whether we like it or not, think it’s “fair” or not, the sooner we learn that everything sends a message, the more control over our lives we are going to have.

So what does lateness say about you? Some of the commenters (“commentators” doesn’t quite work here) on Greg’s blog say they think lateness should be respected as a personal behaviour style, some say lateness should be excused if you have children, and some say that lateness is cultural and should therefore not be “judged” (implied racism, I gather).

If you are chronically and/or unapologetically late, and you are trying to make it in the business world or the workplace generally, lateness will not be seen as a positive personal attribute. Lateness is insulting to the person who is waiting for you – it tells them you don’t think their time is as important as yours, and that you don’t respect them. Lateness is an indicator that you are a bad time manager and disorganised at a very basic incompetence level. Lateness tells people you are selfish, and maybe lazy or indolent (could you not get out of bed in time, like the rest of us?). Lateness says you are stressed and not in control. Lateness, in a cultural context (personal or otherwise) says you don’t fit into an organisational culture. In short, lateness is unprofessional.

None of this sounds great for your reputation or personal, not to mention corporate, brand! I’d say the sooner you “get it”, the better.

So if you are chronically late, how do you change it?

I’m an expert on this because I grew up in a family where chronic lateness was the norm, and I had to work really hard to overcome it in myself.

The first thing I realised was that I was much more relaxed when I was on time. The second thing I worked out was that you just have to get organised (in quite a small way really) and work out how long things will take. You need to work out a realistic (as opposed to hopeful!) estimation of how much time all the steps, like driving across the city, putting on your make-up, getting in the lift and to the coffee shop, are likely to take, then factor in reasonable time for the unforeseen like traffic jams or fractious kids. Thirdly, you have to realise that lateness is rude and selfish and that your word is your bond. If you say you are going to do something, try to do it, every time, and that includes turning up when you say you will. And lastly (for now), forgive yourself if you are SOMETIMES late, despite all your best efforts, and expect other people to forgive you too, SOMETIMES. All you can do is the best you can do, and now you have changed your ways, you should rarely be late.

Now, while this might just sound like fixing a problem for other people’s benefit, and a lot of hard work (and you’re a nice, casual, laid-back kinda person, right?) the amazing thing is that there are huge personal and professional benefits for you.

If people can depend on you, you will get respect. If you have respect, you will have more influence, and this will show up in every facet of your life, not least your professional life. If you are not always anxious because you are running late, or having to make excuses and being on the back foot all the time, you will be able to concentrate on the job at hand, and this means you’ll have more focus, time and energy for the real things that deserve your attention.

And from my own experience, an extraordinary thing happens: you start to get into a Zen-like love for perfect timing. Time takes on a water-like fluidness and serenity, and when this happens, you have a real sense of personal control and satisfaction. Who knew?

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

*Psychology is primarily a discipline that gathers statistics based on people’s behaviour and responses, and subsequently works out what’s “normal” culturally and personally, which is to say how people are and how they think and behave.

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King of the Manning River: Creativity & Problem Solving in the Workplace

March 28th, 2011

Two things in my psyche, a commitment to the important role of creativity, and a love of boats and the sea, converged this week in the form of a Manning River oyster farmer, Gary Ruprecht.

Through the week, I’ve been involved in a discussion on the Linked In Occupational and Organisational Psychologists Group, about the importance of creativity in the workplace (also see my previous post). At the same time, I’ve been re-floating my boat Aphrodite, formerly owned by Ronald Biggs, which I’ve written about before, and which decided to sink in shallow-ish water on the Manning River.

One of the hallmarks of creativity is the ability to solve problems. To solve problems consistently and well, one needs to have well-developed diverse thinking ability, because the first, second or third solution, and indeed the tried and true method, might not work. A creative person will think of many things, and continue to think of new things as the situation changes. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again”. Creative people, according to some of the reading I’ve been doing, also tend to have a “never say die” attitude, which drives them to find alternative routes when the more obvious might not work.

When Aphrodite went down – probably because of a float switch failure – she tilted on the portside towards the deeper water, which meant that even at low tide, her portside gunwale (the top of the hull) was under water. Consequently, a normally fairly straightforward job of simply pumping her out at low tide wasn’t possible, because water would just flow in as fast as it was being pumped out. In addition, around Easter time we have very high tides on the Manning River, and this year they seem to have been exceptionally strong, so Aphrodite was deeper under and being pulled down more than you would normally expect.

This was a job for an expert problem solver, and despite very well-meaning offers of help from neighbours with boats, tractors, fire pumps, and impressive bravado, there was only one person I was prepared to trust to rescue my boat: Gary Ruprecht.

Gary is a third generation oyster farmer, and a fourth generation Manning River local. His German forbears settled on Mitchell’s Island, acquired land and farmed, and then took to the river to farm the famous Sydney Rock oysters. Both Gary’s sons have followed the family tradition and are also oyster farmers, and they have one of the most magnificent “offices” I know of.

Gary’s main piece of equipment is a huge and powerful flat-bottomed barge with an on-board crane, and he plies the Manning River on this boat with grace, confidence, enormous skill and not a little romance (of the river steamer by-gone days kind). After four generations, he knows the Manning River like the back of his hand. But it was as much for Gary’s talent and relish for problem solving, which I have witnessed and admired before, as for his skill and knowledge, that I asked him to rescue Aphrodite.

The operation went without a hitch really. I watched from the bank as Gary, my husband and a generous passer-by who offered his help, re-floated the boat and re-positioned her closer to shore, all in the space of a couple of hours. The process required some trial and error, creative thinking and experimentation, and the successful end result had as much to do with intelligence, creative thought and tenacity as it did with muscle, brawn, and exceptional seamanship.

Aphrodite is looking a little bit worse for wear, but nothing that time, hard work, some clean water and more tenacity can’t fix. Her ballast seems to have shifted so she’s tilting a bit, everything on board got a drenching and she’s muddy and dirty, but part of the joy of owning an old wooden boat is that it’s a constant and quite exciting adventure that pays enormous dividends in satisfaction, achievement, and yes, problem solving. (And who doesn’t love mud and saltwater!?).

Thank you Gary, Stephen and Jeremy. Here’s to creativity and problem solving, and expert applied knowledge in any workplace. I feel very grateful to have witnessed such impressive professional expertise, goodwill and thinking.

I think I’ll unofficially appoint Gary Ruprecht King of the Manning River.

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

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Grass Roots Sales Tips: Body Shapers & David Jones

February 17th, 2011

In life, everyone needs grass-roots grounding. Very early on, I was thrown into the deep end of salesmanship, and it was one of the most helpful experiences I’ve ever had.

When I was a university student, I used to be a department store “demonstrator” (spruiker, really). This began with a stint over the university holidays selling body shapers at David Jones’ flagship store in Elizabeth St, Sydney. My sister and I were set up with a microphone and a small stage between the escalators on the ground floor, opposite Make-up, and, wearing black leotards, we took it in turns to exercise while the other talked on the microphone. In between demonstrations we sold the product.

There were similar demonstrations at every other David Jones store across Sydney, but my sister and I out-sold them all by far.

It was a real thrill, and as university students, we needed the money. But mainly, it was the BEST FUN, and this is the real key: we loved it and it showed! Because of this attitude, and good practical demonstration skills, body shapers walked out the door that summer at David Jones, where, we were told by management, “Elizabeth St ladies never perspire”.

It was at the coalface of selling – only door-to-door selling could have been more basic and challenging – and it stood me in good stead for the rest of my life. I learnt the basic principles of sales on the job, and importantly I learnt they relate to every facet of selling from products, to educational subjects and information, to managing people (including one’s children), to philosophical theory (like climate change or smoking).

Here are some of the things I learnt at the coalface of sales:

1. Be honest and genuine

We made a lot of sales, for example, by telling people they could go down the road to Woolworths for a cheaper version of the product. I’ve applied this principle ever since (and you know people can smell a charlatan or or conman).

2. Believe in your product

After a few days demonstrating the body shaper, the physical results showed on our own bodies. It was easy to tell people they really worked.

3. Make sure your product is worth believing in

There’s no point believing in snake oil if all it is, is snake oil. That would just make you an idiot. If you don’t believe in your product, then find one you can believe in.

4. Love your clients or customers

Seriously! The customer is always right. Make sure you genuinely want to help them, and learn to know what they want and need.

5. Be confident

People respond to confidence & happiness. You don’t need me to tell you that ads of every kind are full of happy faces. This is for a variety of psychological reasons, but we don’t need to go into them here.

6. Be good at it

Whatever your product is, from a body shaper, a recruitment service or a sophisticated psychometric system, know it inside out and become an expert (but from your point of view – don’t pretend to know about something that you don’t).

7. The proof is in the pudding

My sister and I could prove the body shaper worked because we were always facing the audience in one direction. This meant that after only a few days of exercising on only one side, we became our own “before & after” example. People took one look at the difference between the sides of our bodies and just bought it. But we had to firstly notice it ourselves, and then we had to show them.

Provide evidence of how well your product works, and why.

8. Love what you do

You’ve only got one life, so make everything you do count towards your personal satisfaction. Success attracts success, and people will be drawn to you and your product.

9. Make sure people know you’re there

At David Jones, we had a microphone and a relatively captive audience.

You have to communicate your products and services. There’s no point in having the best product in the world, if no-one knows you do.

10. Look the part

My sister & I were young, slim, happy and reasonably fit. It helped a lot that we looked good in leotards.

Live your brand. If you are an HR Consultant or recruiter, then you might be the brand so dress appropriately, be well-groomed and be on time and courteous.

In every facet of life, a good sales technique helps. I have an old friend who is a magistrate, and she says she often wants to say to an un-engaged prosecuter, “Sell it to me!”. I think it applies to everything.

Selling is basic to human nature, not just because we like ”stuff”, but because it’s a genuine human exchange. As Sue Barrett, sales recruiter and blogger says, “Everyone lives by selling something.” A positive “sales” attitude applies to everything you do in life. It communicates that you are genuine, happy and useful, and have something unique to offer.

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

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Cheating on Psych Tests

February 7th, 2011

 

I’m getting a bit sick of hearing people talking about cheating on psych tests. All over the internet, from chat rooms to websites to blogs and legitimate news and journal articles, people are sharing stories about how they have “cleverly” worked out that they can cheat on personality tests.

Well “duh”! Most people these days have a pretty good general idea of pop psychology, and what it means in general to be an “extrovert” and an “introvert”. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t think an extrovert is an outgoing person, and an introvert is a shy person who likes to keep to themselves?

Now, armed with this basic knowledge, you could go into a psych test, and pretend to be one or the other. I’m sure that would be pretty easy for most people. You wouldn’t need much imagination to pull it off, I wouldn’t have thought.

But here’s the thing: even if you cheated in a personality test, how would you know what sort person an employer was looking for? The assumption of most of these “clever cheaters” is that an extrovert is more desirable than an introvert. This is just simply wrong. A high extrovert score or a high introvert score on any psychometric test (or magazine quiz even!) is simply an indication of a certain personality tendency and style, and neither is “good” or “bad”.

Why assume, for instance, that an extreme introvert would be harder to work with than an extreme extrovert? Is it harder to work with someone who is shy and can’t make eye contact, than with someone who wants to dance on the desks and be the centre of attention and keeps wanting to talk to you all the time and won’t let you get on with your own work? Both extremities would be problematic in most circumstances, and one or the other would be most suitable in very rare and specific circumstances. A high extrovert might (but not necessarily) make a good stand-up comedian, for example, but a high introvert might be better as a light-house keeper.

It’s horses for courses, and if you were taking a personality test as part of a job application process, you wouldn’t know what kind of person was ideal for the role. Only the prospective employer would know what was needed and what they were looking for, just like an actor doesn’t know exactly what a film-director has in mind for a character. Just because it’s a sales job for instance, it doesn’t mean they’d be looking for an extrovert (think of travelling sales-people with long hours alone on the road), and do we necessarily want managers who are so caught up in their own confidence and ego that they don’t  pay attention to their team, or their organization?

This is only scratching the surface. I’ve only used obvious and extreme examples. There are myriad versions of personality styles made up of combinations of all sorts of qualities (you can be a high extrovert, for example, and yet be insecure, and one of the most popular people I know is very shy and not very talkative, and yet inspires great confidence in people).

So, I’d like to say to all those incredibly imaginative people who think they know how to cheat in psych tests:

1.No one kind of personality is “better” than another.

2.Don’t assume you know what a prospective employer is looking for.

3.If you want to do well in a Personality Test, do what all psychometric publishers tell you to do and be yourself.

4.Personality Tests are designed to give you and your employer more insight, so the more straightforward you are, the more you will know about yourself and how you fit into and operate as part of the group.

5.If you want to do well in an Ability Test brush up on your thinking skills, get plenty of sleep the night before, and be on time so you don’t get anxious.

You could cheat in an interview too, by pretending to be someone you are not, or you could falsify your resume. It’s all possible. But if any of this subterfuge managed to get you a job in the short-term, I’ll bet you wouldn’t keep it long, because YOU wouldn’t be the person they were looking for, and either you, or your new employer would get tired fairly quickly. So you could save yourself and everyone else time by being honest all along.

And as post-script, most psych tests have questions built-in to identify cheating, so really you are more likely to cheat yourself!

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

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A Room with a View (Creativity in the Workplace)

January 30th, 2011

I’m writing this from our new Adelaide rooms, which have a beautiful view across East Terrace to Rymill Park. People are strolling through the park, families are picnicking, workers are industriously getting things ready for the Adelaide Fringe Festival, and despite the heat of an Adelaide summer, the grass is lush and the trees are waving gently in the breeze. A few months ago, I was inspired to begin this blog while looking out over Blackwattle Bay from our Sydney rooms.

A beautiful view makes you want to sit and stare and contemplate, and this leads to a state which psychologists call flow. Flow is when you are fully immersed in, and engaged with, what you are doing, and have no concern at all for time. In fact, time seems to cease to exist. You feel energised and alert. It’s this state of being that psychologists like Mihály Csíkszentmihályi and Martin Seligman believe is happiness. It’s also the state that is the most conducive to creativity, which brings me back to my view of the park.

To be at your most creative, you need to be in a state to think freely. A beautiful view helps you achieve this, as can listening to music, walking or jogging, the sound and/or sight of water, being in a forest, being together with a group of people, and many other situations that can trigger free thought. It’s a question of what works for you, and most people know what works best for them.

So why is creativity important in the workplace, and do we really want people staring out of windows thinking all day?

I believe that creativity is fundamental to the workplace. Firstly, because I think human beings are primarily creative (and if we weren’t we’d never have stood up, learnt to cook food or developed culture and industry), and secondly and fundamentally, because creativity allows you to make something from nothing.

All physical and intellectual achievement comes down to making something from nothing. In other words, having an idea and making it real. In general life, and particularly in the workplace, this translates into innovation, problem solving, and making more of the resources at hand.

Every organisation can benefit, I believe, from harnessing and fully employing creativity. Whether it’s to learn to make a company leaner and smarter, to stream-line systems and procedures, to learn to employ people who fit into the organisation and work in teams well, or to invent new products, creativity is at the heart of all successful operation and achievement.

Creativity doesn’t only take one person like me staring out a window though. In an article in the Harvard Business Review in 2008 about his highly innovative film production company, Pixar, Ed Catmull said of the creative process at Pixar, “…creativity involves a large number of people from different disciplines working effectively together to solve a great many problems”. It doesn’t take much to see that this process could be effectively generalised to every organisation, large and small alike.

Creativity is one of the most fundamental things about being human. Since the beginning of our species, creativity is what got us here. Creativity makes us visualise what we can become, individually and collectively. The greatest organisations, and the greatest endeavours and achievements require the greatest creativity.

In the end, all achievement in the workplace, and in life, comes down to two essential things: effective problem solving, and making something from nothing.

 

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

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Psychometric Juggernaut: SHL & Previsor Merge

January 18th, 2011

 

In the last few days, it’s been announced that two of the world’s well-known psychometric publishers, SHL and Previsor, have merged. Many people in the psych test world have been asking what this merger will mean for the market.

Previsor is a USA based psych assessment publisher and SHL is UK based. In Australia, SHL has a high profile, and provides assessments for a substantial part of the Australian market, particularly the mass testing kind that is used by department stores and fast-food chains. Previsor, on the other hand, seems to have a much smaller market share in Australia, which is possibly related to Australia’s general reluctance to accept many things American.*

I am by no means a business or financial analyst, but I imagine that the effect of this merger on the Australian scene will be very minimal, since Previsor will take on the SHL name, and I suppose that there will be very little change in the way SHL assessment is presented and provided. World-wide, it will mean that SHL will now have a much greater exposure in America, but I don’t imagine that SHL will change it’s presentation or tests significantly or at all, under the influence of a Previsor relationship.

While both SHL & Previsor should benefit from an increased profile, they will also be subject to the increasing bureaucratic challenges that arise from large, juggernaut-like companies the world over.

It’s my understanding that both these testing systems, like nearly all others in the world, are offered primarily online. Their attraction to clients seems to have been that they have been seen to be quick and easy, and that, because they appear to offer to take care of the whole process, there is little for adminstrators of the tests to have to do. This style of testing suits some organisations very well, and though it can lack flexibility and control of the process, and  the data, it is a price they seem happy to pay for perceived simplicity. However, it can also result in a mass testing situation in which very little discernment is involved.

Announcing the SHL/PreVisor merger and the effect it will have on the American market on his blog  http://www.bersin.com/blog/post/2011/01/SHL-and-Previsor-Merge–New-Global-Leader-in-the-Assessment-Market.aspx, Josh Bersin from Bersin & Associates wrote as part of his assessment of the current psychometric situation, ” …only 25% of companies have any well defined job competencies for each particular role. This means they are buying ‘off the shelf’ assessments for many positions where they have not necessarily tailored the assessment for the competencies they need.”

It seems to me that any proliferation of huge psychometric companies, with a “one-size-fits-all” range of tests and assessments, combined with a possible tendency for large organisations to mass test large numbers with “off the shelf” assessments, will add to the concern that Mr Bersin expresses.

It is well-known in Australia that in our own organisation our preference using GeneSys is for a more boutique or bespoke-style psych assessment approach, where the range of tests chosen are carefully tailored, with expert advise from Organisational Psychologists, to the particular needs of the organisation and the roles they need to fill or develop. GeneSys’ UK-based publisher, Psytech International has a locally based philosophy (Global Leaders in Local Assessment Solutions) that sees psychometric assessment delivered around the world by carefully chosen distributors who are local, and who have an intimate knowledge of, and a strong relationship with, their local business and organisational environments. Its a model we are proud of, and believe is probably fairly unique, but more importantly it ensures a very sound, reliable and objective assessment process.

We wish SHL & Previsor very well with the merger. Apart from a flurry of interest by other psychometric publishers and providers however, I see very little change for the world of psychometric testing in the short term, and am hopeful that in the long-term it won’t lead to a reduction of flexibility, control and individual relevance for psychometric users across the world.

* The Simpsons, Coca-Cola and some areas of youth culture are obvious exceptions

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

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More “Style” Than Substance

January 3rd, 2011

 

A quick google search reveals all kinds of over-simplified and so called “psychometric” charts and graphics and tools, that have been deliberately, and I think cynically, designed to appeal to our human desire for colour and simplicity. Among these, you’ll find sea and water references of various kinds, circles, boats and other simplistic contrivances aimed at making the product look attractive and easy to use and understand.

This is partly natural, and as someone who comes from a long line of graphic artists, and who used to be a high school teacher, I know the importance of making things look attractive and understandable. But as an ex-school teacher, I also know the harm that can be done to genuine understanding by over-simplifying: you can patronize your audience, and thereby lose their trust and attention, and you can completely lose the meaning of what you are trying to convey.

Any textbook or advertising writer will tell you how difficult it is to sum up meaning and information succinctly and accurately, while at the same time making it easy to understand and quickly grasp. That’s why experts have to do it!

I’ve written in a previous post Keep Psychometric Assessment Scientific about how much I hate the over-simplification, and the misunderstanding this can lead to, in many of the less credible (and they’ll all tell you they’re credible!) “psychometric” products that are available. It’s one of my favourite soap-box topics.

As our shocked graphic artist said when I showed him the material of another (and surprisingly popular) psychometric tool, “The workplace is not kindergarten!”.

The workplace is not kindergarten, but I can easily understand that everyone is keen to solve a problem in the quickest, most straightforward way, and it’s this general desire that the designers of the kindergarten-style psychometric tools are tapping into. Just as in meetings, where we expect reports and presentations to look attractive and readable, too much glitz or “bells and whistles” will distract from the underlying subject matter, and undermine our confidence in its credibility. Good communication requires a balance between presentation and meaning.

All of this is not to say that psychometrics should not be easy to use. While we are a psychometric provider with good academic credentials and connections, we are also totally committed to making psychometrics easy to understand and use in the workplace. However, we would never patronize anyone with over simplified, overly bright kindergarten charts and graphics, and I’m sure most of our clients would be insulted if we did.

While all presentation should be attractive, clear and easy to understand and interpret, I’d suggest that psychometric tools that are deliberately designed to allure, rather than clearly represent underlying scientific theory, probably have more “style” (if you can call it that) than substance.

I’m highly suspicious of, and offended by, psychometric tools dressed up likeThomas the Tank Engine. As a prospective target audience member, it makes me ask, why would their publishers do it if not to trick me, and what are they hiding, or providing, for that matter? Why wouldn’t they have more respect for me?

And ultimately, how could I trust their product?

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

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Staying Afloat: Boats & Analogies

December 24th, 2010

I was inspired to get a boat by Virgin boss Richard Branson, when I read in his autobiography about the London canal boat he lived aboard, and later held meetings on. Holding meetings aboard a colourful old wooden boat sounds like a good idea to me, because I like the idea of making work as satisfying and rich as the rest of life, so that life becomes integrated and the “work-life balance” is almost completely imperceptible.

So I bought Great Train Robber Ronald Bigg’s old boat, Aphrodite, and had her transported to my sister’s property on Oxley Island in NSW, where she currently bobs away at the end of my sister’s jetty.

The only problem is, she’s on the Manning River, which is four hours drive north of Sydney, so I can’t really hold meetings there, although if you are up for a long drive, I’ll happily entertain you when you get there.

Instead of having meetings, I spend my days on board watching birds and dolphins, listening to the gentle sloshing of the water, restoring and repairing, writing, reading books, and thinking. I have never been in an atmosphere of such bliss and inspiration before in my life.

What I like most about my boat is the metaphor for life and work she provides. “Staying afloat” has a whole new literal meaning. And to literally, physically, face up to that challenge, through storms, rain, floods and wind is both humbling and cathartic. No matter how big my ego might get, no matter how smart I think I am, or how philosophical my thoughts and revelations might be, there is just no way I can ignore the simple truth of physics and the weather. If the boat gets a hole, if you don’t plug it, you’ll sink. If the pumps fail, and water builds up, you’ll sink. If there isn’t enough sun to keep the batteries that run the pumps going, you’ll sink.

Like King Canute, and the Dutch Boy who held his finger in the dyke, human beings and their egos cannot overcome physics, we just have to learn to live with it and manage it.

I find this constant lesson Aphrodite teaches me enormously helpful. We use lots of catch phrases in business and the general community, especially sports analogies, but to constantly face the challenge of keeping an old wooden boat afloat is to really understand the underlying literal meaning of the metaphors, and therefore what life is all about. It’s why some companies send their staff away to boot camps, or to climb mountains, or to fly on the trapeze – they believe that the physical challenge and hardship will make them generalize into other areas of life, particularly work, and help them to face up to challenges and learn to manage and over-come them, often by learning to work together in “teams”.

But I don’t have to do that, I just have to live aboard my boat for a few days.

While I wish I could invite you to meetings aboard Aphrodite, perhaps I have a better thing. Aphrodite provided a place for Ronald Biggs to hide out in Port Adelaide, but for me she provides a place to learn to stay afloat – literally and metaphorically.

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

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Posted in analogies & metaphors in business | 1 Comment »

Keep Psychometric Assessment Scientific

November 23rd, 2010

 

As a high-end workplace psychometric assessment provider, and a professional psychology practice, we like to keep a firm general eye on the way psychometrics are perceived, and on the quality of both the products being offered in the marketplace and the providers who supply them.

Accordingly, my attention was drawn recently to a discussion about psychometric tests that had taken place a couple of years ago on the highly regarded Stubborn Mule (“stubbornly objective”) blog by financial analyst, mathematician and generally broad thinker, Sean Carmody. This discussion is still extremely relevant, and perhaps more so now, as psychometric assessment becomes more and more customary in the workplace.

The discussion began with Sean’s post I Hate Personality Tests which was followed by psychologist Maria Skarveli’s, I have a love/hate relationship with psychometric testing and was completed by Last Word on Personality Tests.

The discussion is excellent and I highly recommend it: it’s intelligent, thought-provoking, hilarious, concerning and cathartic (for the record, may I say that I Hate Stupid, Overly-simplistic, Kindergarten-style Charts and Graphics, Especially Circles and Sea References?!), and it raises many questions, and answers, about the way psychometrics are seen and used in the workplace.

The discussion identifies the problem of balancing our desire as human beings for simple (and time-saving) answers, with the necessity for credible, qualified people to supply, support and operate valid psychometric assessment.

Proper, quality psychometric testing is a science, as Maria points out in I have a love/hate relationship with psychometric testing, based on sophisticated statistical analysis and application. There is no place in science (or in the workplace I would have thought) for tests which read like magazine quizzes or present like kindergarten pictures, or which draw on an almost magical thinking part of ourselves like astrology does. (I Hate Personality Tests).

Quality psychometric assessment is not mind reading, nor is it somehow magical. It’s a statistical analysis of data provided by the person being assessed.

There are two main sorts of psychometric assessments used in the workplace: tests for Ability, and tests for Personality. The former should indicate if a person can do a job, and the latter how a person is likely to do it.

We believe that personality tests, like the Myers-Briggs TM for instance, which is based on the elements of personality originally identified by psychologist Carl Jung, should never normally be used as part of a recruitment process (and in fact the Myers-Briggs website says this), and that their usefulness in a work context is that they might begin a discussion about personality styles and how they combine in a team environment.

It seems to me that there are two main dangers with the sort of mass and undiscerning use of personality tests in the workplace which the Stubborn Mule posts address, especially the over-simplified & brightly coloured kind, or the more credible ones in the hands of less skilful or trained practitioners. Firstly, their simplistic use or design could stereotype or define people in a way that can be meaningless, unhelpful or down right stupid and dangerous as discussed in Last Word on Personality Tests. Secondly, they can be erroneously used as part of a recruitment process.

No matter what psychometric tests are used, even at the highest and most reliable end, psych tests should always be seen as part of the process and not a “stand alone” or simplistic answer. (See our website page Psychometric Assessment) As part of a proper, thoughtful and thorough recruitment or developmental process they can provide another, objective, measure to predict job performance, which helps in your decision making.

While psych tests should be smooth and easy to use when you know what you are doing, they are based on science, not magic.

I’d steer clear of over-simplification and kindergarten graphs and pictures, if I were you!

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

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Posted in Quality Psychometric Assessment | 4 Comments »

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