Highest Potential Feedback with Psychometrics

Our brains are powerful. We have the potential to shift into a positive mindset, but it's not as simple as it sounds. To access a positive mindset and mental toughness under pressure and during setbacks, we need self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking skills. So if you're curious about science-backed tools to strengthen your mental resilience, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Mind Body Space Podcast, where I aim to share actionable tools you can use to reach your highest potential. I'm Dr. Juna Bobby MD. I'm a mom of two kids who love challenges, for the most part, and I'm also a physician, and my specialty is teaching the science of resilience. In this episode, my awesome friend Fiona Murden joins me to share her expertise on human performance. Fiona is an award-winning author and Chartered UK Organizational Psychologist who works with top-level executives and leaders.

Hello, Fi, how are you? I'm so excited to see you.

Hello, lovely Juna. It's good to be here.

So last time we spoke, we were talking about feedback, which is so important, right? Feedback about ourselves and our personalities and You know, it's kind of like having a mirror, right? If you're, if you're going to look at your face and fix your hair, like you need a mirror. And when you have feedback from people around us, as an organizational psychologist, I know you do psychometric testing on your clients, which is another kind of feedback, but it's a little more stringent and scientific. I had an experience with a psychometric test once when I Got a job with this company. They flew me out to Toronto in Canada.

I'm smiling because I remember you telling me this, but tell, tell the audience because I think it's fabulous.

Um, yes, so they flew me out to Toronto. It was a one-day thing and met with this organizational psychologist who I guess he did coaching also for golfers and, and sports people. But he had me sit down and I took a battery of tests. Part of it was doing a puzzle under pressure, and there was one that I just couldn't together. And afterwards he told me like, almost nobody gets that one. So they just kind of watch you struggle with it and see what your reactions are. Obviously I passed because I did get the job, although I ended up not staying at the company. But it was an interesting experience, and I really actually had fun doing it, um, even though it was a little stressful. So I know you do these psychometric tests on your corporate clients. What is your favorite go-to, or do you have ones for different things?

I don't really have a favorite, partly because of the way that I use them. So myself and my colleagues use them differently to people in HR further down organizations sometimes use them. So there's a danger that people will use the test on someone and then say, oh, you came out as this, this is therefore that's what you are.

Which is terrible because you could label somebody, right?

Absolutely.

Before we go on, can you explain a little bit in lay language what a psychometric test is? Because I think 80% of executives go through psychometric before they go into a— before a company hires them.

I can't remember the statistic, but it is very high. And there are two types. There's cognitive, which is about— which is a horrible term, but You could say it's IQ, so it's about how you score on numerical, verbal, and abstract reasoning. So that one tends to have more of a pass/fail element to it, but the way that myself and my colleagues would use that one is— so I did some of these for a client last week, and it's to say, okay, someone came out really, really high on 2 candidates for an organisation, a role, a leadership role. One of them came out above average on all 3, so verbal, numerical, abstract reasoning, those are the 3, and the other one came up really, really highly on numerical, but got quite low scores on verbal and abstract reasoning. And so there's one thing where you can compare them and you say, well, what type of person do you need in this role? Because one of them is quite spiky character, and it was actually a CTO role, so it is sort of technical, but in this role they have a really high need for someone who can operate across the organisation. So, then it's not to rule out the guy that got a really high numerical score, but it's to think, well, what does that mean in the context of how he behaves and how he performs? And it happened that he is quite a quirky, spiky, I'd call it spiky character, where he— some people will love him but not everyone will. So it was slightly indicative, but another time you might get the same result and it's like, well, I was— and my daughter came in when I was doing the verbal bit. Okay, that's why you didn't do so well. Or, oh, do you know what, I can't get my head around the verbal, which doesn't really make sense because I've always had great feedback on my communication skills. And then it's looking at, okay, well, we're only looking at one tiny sliver of how someone goes about solving problems that are verbal. Let's look at the rest of what the person is. So that's the cognitive one, which is the one you were describing. You would describe an abstract reasoning one with that puzzle. Then there's the personality, and sometimes you call it a test. I don't like calling it a test because it's not a pass or fail. It's preference-based. So it's really about how you see yourself, what your preferences are. And with those, when someone fills them in and when you're going through them, it's exploring. So I might say, oh, Juna Bobby MD, that's interesting. You've come out on this as saying you're quite introverted, but I would say you come across as an extrovert. And you would— you might say, what? No, no, no, I like time on my own. I say, yes, but 'When we were talking, you know, you described how much energy you get from spending time with your daughter, with your family.' And so it's basically unpacking it and looking at it in more detail. So I always say it's kind of a bit of a sort of descriptive measure that you can then use to explore things further. But proper psychometrics have got a whole load of complex statistic modeling behind them. So that means that they've got test-retest validity. So it means you can take it in different conditions and it comes up with the same answer. And the other thing that it does is it means that it's measuring what it says it's measuring. So if, for example, you had one in a magazine that said, "I like apples and I like oranges," and you said, "Oh, you like apples and you like oranges, therefore you like red and orange." Well, we know that's not true. It doesn't say just because we like apples and oranges we like— but when we do those sorts of things in a magazine, it might give us an answer we quite like, and we read it through and we think that's great. Whereas when you use a psychometric, it actually tells you something, and it's something that has been tested on thousands of people, and so there's a pattern to it, there's a predictive validity to it. When I used to work in a firm of organizational psychologists, We sometimes— you have a sort of a break when you're doing an in-depth profile. You profile for 2 hours, then you come out, they do the psychometrics. And we used to play this little game where you could predict what they were going to come out on the psychometrics with, because you just spent 2 hours with them. And most of the time, it was— we'd get it pretty right, but that was because we'd spent 2 hours exploring their life. But sometimes you'll get it wrong, A, because our judgment is incorrect, and we have— that's part of why we do it, to keep gathering evidence. But sometimes someone just misunderstands a question, or they answer it in a strange way, or they'll look at it and they'll go, no, that doesn't really describe me. And so then you use it to explore, well, what does describe you? So if I say you're extroverted and you say, oh, I'm not extroverted, I'm introverted, why are you introverted? Then we have a point of discussion around that. So it gives us more evidence and information about that person, but it also helps that person think it through out loud and work out.

So how, how good were you at, um, guessing?

Well, I mean, when you do it day in, day out, it's, it's actually, um, it's based on quite a lot of judgment, I guess, and experience. So yes, you can. I mean, I can sit down generally and, and I mean, it's not a game I play anymore, but if people, people say to me, oh, what do you think my X type is? I can usually tell them and it's usually right. And it's not because I'm psychic or anything like that. It's simply, simply because I know the constructs, constructs that make it up.

So you do 2 hours of directed or pointed analysis and questioning. And then you give them feedback, right? And how long is the feedback?

Then you give them the psych— then you give them psychometric. Then you spend the last hour doing what we call hypothesis testing, um, which obviously using different things, but it'd be saying—

do you have a set kind of question, like a set number of questions you ask, or are you just exploring?

We use what's known as in— I mean, theoretically known as social constructivist, which is allowing someone to tell their story, and through listening to their story, you're hearing which bits they're focusing on and what that means. And then all the time playing back to them and hypothesis testing, so saying, "Oh, that's interesting because you said earlier that you, you know, you—" This is a silly example, but you said earlier you like cars, but you're now saying that 'You have no interest in them, what's that about?' And then they'll tell you a bit more about themselves and I'll say, 'Yeah, that's interesting because I've noticed you use that a few times. It seems that that's quite a strong preference for you.' So you start testing these things out to make sure you're getting as much accuracy as you can. Then you do the psychometrics and you feed them back to the person. So you do that thing of 'Hey, that's interesting. You've said that you love structure and rules on this, but when we were talking earlier, you were talking about how you can't stand rigidity and you like flexibility. What's that about?' And then they'll tell you what it's about. And so you're gathering more information. And so by the— then you do— in total it's 4 hours, and by the end of the 4 hours, I always say to clients that I meet, I will give you feedback before you leave, because I don't want them to go away and then wonder what this occupational organisational psychologist is going to write about them. And so I always say— That's true, I would be wondering. Yeah, so I said, these are the things I think your strengths, these are the things that we might need to watch out for given the role and given the situation, and then I write it up in more detail.

So they take something away that they can use.

Not, not then. So then we write a detailed report, about 2,000 words, um, on their personality, areas of strength, areas for development. And then they have another session with us, which is called a feedback session, but it's like a coaching session, which might be an hour and a half, 2 hours. And during that, we go through the report and say, okay, so if you're like this, what are you going to do about it? You know, what are you going to do with it? So if they've taken the role, for example, say, right, so we see you've got a blind spot around people making poor judgments in your team. What are you going to do to mitigate that in this role? And so you make a plan of action, basically. That's so cool. But we also look very much at strengths. So we say, okay, these are your strengths. How are you going to best leverage them in this role? How are you going to be the best version of yourself?

And this could be somebody who's getting going into a job or somebody who's already in an organization, right? So if somebody's already in an organization, do you get feedback from the company? Or if they're trying to hire somebody, do you get feedback from what they want to know from you about this person, this candidate? Yeah, yeah.

So we're giving feedback to the company as well. So for example, the two guys I saw for this Chief Technology Officer role, I then speak to the company and I'm saying 'Look, these are the things that are going to work well with this guy, given what you've told me about the context. These are the things to watch out for.' Very cool.

So would you recommend this for like people who are not in a company? So if you are, let's say, a teacher or you have your own small company, like how can you get tested? And do you recommend it?

I think it'd be hard to find someone to do an in-depth profile because that's really focused on sort of leadership, which may or may not be the right way to do it. But you could definitely explore using psychometrics, and there are people who don't necessarily work with leaders in organizations who can feedback a psychometric. But I don't— I can't remember what the rules are in the US because I've done it in the US. We did a whole load of work for BP, you know, British Petroleum. But you have to be trained to feed them back. So you have to find— you can probably do some on the— well, you can do some on the internet, but they're not necessarily as accurate because they're free.

How do you get trained? You, as an organizational psychologist, you get trained while you're being trained as a psychologist, or do you get trained on each particular psychometric? Okay, for a psychologist.

So for psychologists, we get trained not only on how to use them, but also how to construct them, which is very dull. Dull, you said?

And then— oh, to make them up?

Yeah, there's so much math involved. Um, yeah, okay. It's not that— I mean, I do like it, but you get to a point where you're like, this isn't really what I want. It's right for some people, just not me.

But then to administer it, you can get trained by that particular psychometric, right?

In the UK, you can be someone in HR and get trained to use psychometric. You don't have to be a psychologist.

Okay, what do you use? What do I use? What are your favorites?

Um, Hogan, which is— there's the Normal Personality Test for Hogan, which is based on the Five Factor Theory of Personality, which is one that most psychometrics will be based on. But then there's also something called the Hogan Derailers, or the dark side as we sometimes call it.

The dark side? Why?

Yeah, because it looks at what is going to take you off course under pressure. It's really interesting.

So you said that you might, you might be able to do a psychometric on me. Which one would you do? The dark side? I want to know the dark side. You want to do— I think my guess would be that I'm actually good when there's the dark side. Well, oh wait, there's no good or bad. It's like, do you— what derails you, you said, right?

Yeah. And another way of describing it sometimes is overplayed strengths. So it's when, when does your strength actually become a weakness? At which point does it tip?

Oh, every day I have that.

Oh, that's so cool.

So it might be, you know, it might mean someone's got really good attention to detail, but when they're under huge amounts of pressure, they become so obsessed with the detail that they can't see the bigger picture.

In which case, you should— you would make a good, um, pilot or something.

But even then, so they do a lot with pilots, actually. My father-in-law in-laws was a fighter pilot and now he trains pilots.

I'm surprised they don't do this more with medical doctors, which you guys call medics, right?

Yeah, it would be good to do it more with medics. Yes. Don't get enough attention on this stuff. Absolutely. Although my stepfather, he used to do quite a lot. I was actually thinking about it. I've spoken, you know, I speak to a lot of medics.

So he's a physician, your stepfather?

Oh, he's an epidemiologist but also a physician. But it tends to be the leaders in, in whatever field that will get that sort of leadership, that sort of development. They don't— but I consider every medical leader really, because you're healing people.

So I think even teachers would fit into that. They would.

And that's one of the things I'm doing with that charity, is saying, look, we're not just looking at kids here, we need to look at the teachers because if the teachers aren't happy, then the kids aren't going to be happy. It's as simple as that. It's kids' charity, um, for mentoring, and it's called Future First. It's UK-based. It's very similar to Big Brother Big Sister that you have in the US.

If you take somebody through a psychometric and the interviewing and that whole process, do you diagnose them with things at times? Like, are you able to? It's totally not— it's not related to clinical psychology. Then? It's really performance.

It's not— I mean, the things that we might see are sociopathy or psychopathy or, um, narcissism, which is, is what comes up in leaders. Okay. We wouldn't overtly call anyone those things or write that down. It might be something that we discuss with colleagues, and it might be something that we flag in different ways in a report that, you know, this person is going to work their way around. I see things and We're not, but we're also, we're not clinical psychologists. So if, and if we see someone with depression, which, yeah, I mean, you don't tend to see people in those roles. You might see them as they're burning out, but then, then you'd refer them to, um, a doctor or a clinical psychologist. You, we wouldn't deal with that ourselves.

Everybody has a personality disorder, I think.

Everybody has a mental health disorder.

Yes. We were just talking about that right before. And it is actually interesting because you said it was a human condition.

Mental health is a human condition. Mental ill health is a human condition. Yeah. Yes. But there's something called the DSM-5. I don't know if you've heard of the DSM-5. Yes, of course. Yeah. The manual. And if you go through it and you read the terms in there, anyone could pick up bits that like, oh, I'm like that.

Oh, it's almost like a horoscope.

It's a little better than the horoscope. Well, there are some arguments about the validity of it, but it is used.

Yes. Like, why? Well, you know why they use it? It's the Diagnostic Statistics Manual, and they use it for insurance purposes. And I always say, like you said, and I love what you said about it, that anyone could pick out something in there, um, given what time of the month maybe. It is, or what time of the year, or what time of the day. The clinician will have to give you a diagnosis so that you can get reimbursed for insurance. But what happens is somebody gets labeled with a diagnosis, and then it could be devastating for them. So I always say, do not take that label of the diagnosis and think that that describes you, because you can't fit everybody into like a neat cubby. Humans are not one-dimensional disorder.

And I think that's a really good point to just leave on with psychometrics as well. It doesn't define you. I mean, maybe I should even call it exploring you. You change, you evolve, your personality changes and evolves as well. We're not fixed. So that's one thing. And the other thing is we should never label ourselves. It's helpful to understand and explore, but it shouldn't be used for something that labels you because we're So complex, so multifaceted, and our brain is plastic.

Mm-hmm. And then, I mean, we do have tendencies, like you said, and it's good to be aware of them and to, you know, do what you want with them. Um, but thank you for that. I really needed to hear that today. So thank you so much. As usual, it was lovely to see you.

So good to see you. Thank you, Juna Bobby MD. Thank you so much for listening.

I hope you got as much out of it as I did. To support the creation of this content, subscribe and share this podcast with anyone curious about achieving their highest potential. Go check out Fi's website, fionamurden.com, to find out more about her podcast and award-winning books. And then go on over to mindbodyspace.com to sign up for my newsletter. You'll get tips from my unique neuroscience-based planner and courses developed from over 10 years of experience teaching high-performing students of all ages at Juilliard, NYU, Columbia, Achievement First, and many other organizations. Thanks again for spending this time with me. Until next time, this is Dr. Juna Bobby MD wishing you and your family wellness.