Beware The Corporate Crystal Ball
Mark LeBusque
Humans Leading Humans - The Human Manager Academy Founder - Leadership Coach/Mentor and Facilitator - Author - Speaker- Podcaster
He who looks in the crystal ball ends up eating glass... They're way, way too close - Mary Matalin
So, you arranged a self-development/team session and were convinced by a corporate gypsy (consultant) with a crystal ball, to fill out a pre-session algorithm based survey containing a series of loaded questions, who then proceeds to tell you all about the colour, letter, quadrant or matrix that you fit into and are defined by.
DISC, MBTI, SHL Occupational Personality, Caliper Profile……..(I could go on) are the readily available off-the-shelf products, that with accreditation bring more gypsies out into the streets and peddling their wares.
Beware of the Corporate Crystal Ball approach.
This is a very easy and at times lazy way to fill in time at a development day, confuse the hell out of your employees, and have a corporate gypsy make a quick buck.
As a manager be prepared to do the 'long work of human', and get to know your people before you have some stranger give you the answers or their human ‘cheat sheet’ on each of your people.
Sure we are curious beings however have you considered there could be a downside to caging your humans like some kind of animal, and then worse of all creating or confirming the stories that you carry about them based upon a 20-minute warm-up activity for your development day.
Look through their eyes as well. Is this having the same impact upon them? How does this limit their scope for growth if all of a sudden they are labelled and worse that label sticks? Or what about the ones who then use the word of the gypsy as gospel and then use it as an excuse for how they behave?
Perhaps a combination of your observations and some crystal balling could be useful after you’ve done the hard work of understanding those in your care.
When was the last time you invited the corporate gypsy with the crystal ball into the room?
Mark LeBusque is in the business of building Connection and Belonging in Workplaces, and believes that there are some Simple and Practical ways to drive up the humanness that we miss in the pursuit of complexity or the "next big thing".
PCC; Executive & Team Coach; Difference Maker; Pattern Seeker
4 年Glad to see you have your provocation energy on full blast Mark ?? As noted by yourself and a couple of the comments, it isn't the diagnostic tool that adds the value it's the conversation between people that makes the real difference in understanding others world views and perspectives. Getting to know each other is important work and in my opinion if one of those tools you mention gets the conversation going then all for the better. if on the other hand as you point out if it's just to fill in the "development day" then oh woe!!
talent management | human experience design | story exploration
4 年Mark LeBusque 2 years back, I would have whole heartedly agreed with you, but after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and resultant revelation of how Facebook has been using particularly the Five-Factor Model of personality type to train its algorithms and ultimately make tons of 'real-money/business impact', I believe there are models that are in some ways hacking the human-psyche. 'The Five-Factor Model of personality types has been utilized by a number of computer science and psychology academics as a framework to explore aspects of internet adoption and, more recently, social media adoption and behaviours. While the use of personality type models in research has been less popular with marketing academics, the Five-Factor Model has been used to predict the emotional appeal of advertising based on personality types and potentially to provide guidelines for tailoring adverts accordingly. Given the growing impact of advertising on social media platforms, especially Facebook’s ongoing refinements to its advertising models, the question arises for both academics and practitioners alike as to whether personality type models such as Five Factor can successfully be used to predict consumer responses to promotional messages delivered via social media.' https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263286447_Personality_types_and_Facebook_advertising_An_exploratory_study
Decrapify Work ???? Recovering Executive ?? Helping you survive corporate life ?? Making change happen ??
4 年As a trained and certified DISC Behavioural Analyst I am deeply shocked! OK, no, I'm not really. It's not the tools as such, it's the misuse. I always make absolutely clear a) this is not true, it's just a possible view of you b) absolutely NO LABELLING c) if it's not helpful, ignore it d) this tool is a framework to help you think about yourself and others. If you are going to use tools like this, use multiple ones and draw insight from each. There is also the problem of misuse by the subject. Just because your DISC profile says you are high-Red doesn't excuse you from being an arsehole and you can't dismiss your aggressive and demanding behaviour with "I'm a RED, that just how I am". I absolutely agree that there is an industry that has built up around these, notably the oldest and worst, MBTI. That pushes their use in inappropriate and damaging ways.
Create a Future-Fit Culture
4 年I hereby grant you a royalty free, non-exclusive license to use the the Marlow Personality Inventory (MPI) with attribution. It’s as scientifically valid as other tests but much easier to administer. It has just two questions: 1) Have you ever had your personality tested? 2) Did they find one? You’re welcome.