CASE STUDY 15 - HR Accreditation Review

Case Study 15 – HR accreditation review

This article will certainly ruffle feathers. I’m counting on it. It is a topic bubbling under my skin. So, the article is a little intense.

Twice I have done units of training in regard to emotional intelligence. Two different RTOs with two different course titles, but both were so out of touch.

Part of which is due to the psychometrics they lean on. Testing that is riddled with holes and used as a one size fits all. I sit outside of the spectrum these tests measure.

I spoke about a number of flaws I found in psychometric testing with my assessor. Their response was; “How Dare You!” I was not surprised. But the real question that should be asked, is; Why aren’t you? It was very clear to me that the assessor approached their role without questioning or examining the curricula.

I didn’t do well with some units of study because I spent most of the time challenging the quality of the material. One of the big guns with my arguments on psychometric testing came from what is known as The Big Five: Agreeability, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Oppen to Experience and Conscientiousness. I got 100% for Agreeability. How in the hell, did a person who contested so much of the material used by the RTO get 100% for Agreeability. Where is the logic?

I looked into the history and modelling of The Big Five. One thing I found was that Agreeability didn’t match the descriptive makeup in the construction of the questions. That is to say, the factors and characteristics did not align.

I found a range of modeling for The Big Five, but the characteristics weren’t a match for me at all.

While the McCrae and Costa model does identify traits that in part do reflect Agreeableness, with the exception of me being softhearted and good - natured, these traits don’t match my traits at all. So where is the 100% coming from?

While conversely to the Costa McCrae model, some of the traits in the Lim model, are strongly and perfectly aligned to me; Straightforwardness, Altruism and Empathy.

Compliance, sympathy and trust - (opportunity and forgiveness yes, blind trust, no), aren’t me though.

Empathy and altruism go hand in hand. People act altruistically because of having empathy. Yet, Altruism is a long way away from agreeability. People who are altruistic stand in defiance of what is wrong. Think of Captain America. Altruism in human form. In all the Captain America and Avenger movies, he is defiant, not compliant. Altruism doesn’t fit under the agreeability umbrella at all.

I am altruistic, not agreeable.

Straightforward? Yeh, clearly me. But this doesn’t belong under the agreeable umbrella either. Speaking the truth and being forthright, like altruism can be contentious. Not an agreeability trait at all.?

I suspect that the test that I got 100% in may have been a similar model to the Lim model, but the Lim model doesn’t understand agreeability.

When I think of agreeability, I think of adjectives like; compliant, gullible, submissive, subservient, acquiescent, sheepish and sycophantic.

To get a genuine 100% out of me, we need to model the questions around adjectives like; reasonable, empathetic, pleasant, dependable, forthright, altruistic, tenacious, audacious and pragmatic. I’m a person in service of people. Not a servant to them. There is no way I should have got 100% for agreeability. The test doesn’t work.

But what I think doesn’t really matter. What is important is that the test misread my qualities dramatically and that our psychologists depicted above are not on the same page. That in itself should be a red flag.

Clearly, if the psychologists don’t agree on what The Big Five represents, then we have a real problem right there.

I don’t believe that the psychologists having different opinions is wrong though. Only the fact that we use these tests in blanket form despite the psychologists not agreeing. I believe that the problem is when we use it as a one size fits all model. Each model can work effectively if targeted at specific demographics. However, to make it work more effectively, we should forget the notion of The Big Five all together and just look to the qualities we want in relation to specific roles.

For instance, If we need someone in admin, what qualities are we looking for?

Trick question by the way. Admin is certainly a long way from a one size fits all experience. Consider the fact that some admin may focus on writing reports, while other admin may require jumping on the phone a lot. So first we have to clearly define the role and what is required specially for our workplace. Yet, the proposition still stands; we should be looking at the characteristics required for specific roles, not a blanket on-size-fits-all model.

Consider Leadership:

Well, would you look at that? I’m a leader. 16/16 high score characteristics.

Screw The Big Five. What qualities are you looking for in roles you want to fill specific to your workplace? Blanket modelling may as well be a dust cloth covering antiquities. How about you trust your own judgement or if you need help, I’m sure there are other psychologists out there that can work with you in modelling something for your specific needs. While, you should also look to the people who actually perform the role. What are their qualities and what would you like them to have?

The Locus of Control.

The Locus of Control is a psychometric assessment that focuses on emotional triggers.

The scope of the statements posed are very narrow minded. The world I live in is far more complex than black or white responses. I don’t take ultimatums seriously and that is basically what the Locus of Control is comprised of. My thinking, attitudes and ideologies are far more complex.

Moreover, I’m a Capricorn; so, things like insults or other emotional triggers are something I give very little regard. I’m bullet proof like that. I don’t see myself as a victim, but there are certainly a broad range of factors not in my control that influence outcomes. I’m not corrupted or enticed with greed because I have an altruistic nature. My efforts are not wasted, because they are part of my journey. The journey and its failures is where I learn and become stronger. I only get emotional for others. Their successes and failures get me emotional, while my mindset around my own successes and failures is fleeting; with an attitude of that’s over, back to work. I don’t care for accolades, just impact.

Those who see the world in shades of grey and/or greater spectrums of color than black or white ultimatums and those pragmatists that can remove their emotions from their discission making and those ultraistic people who live in a world where it is not about them, don’t fit Locus of Control modelling.

These tests fail to measure my emotional intellect. I suspect the biggest reasons why these tests don’t work for me is because of my open mindedness, pragmatism and altruism. It’s never about me! The test doesn’t get that. Those with true high emotional intelligence sit outside the scale of assessment.

There was another test I did while studying emotional intelligence. This one was for kindergarten kids I think. Or maybe people with severe disassociation conditions.

The test showed us a series of photos with different facial expressions and we had to match an emotion to the expression. Pretty much summed up the standard of the training.

Let’s just look at one depiction. A smiling mouth. The emotion; unless I got it wrong, was happy. However, what those who set the curricular fail to comprehend is that something as simple as a smile has far more complexity to it and doesn’t always mean happy.

There are in excess of fifty types of smiles, but despite this, we also need to gage the intent and put it into proper context. Notwithstanding, a smile doesn’t just occur at the mouth alone. The eyes and brow play a significant part as well. Posture can also be significant. The way the head is held another factor. The lips can take a variety of forms when smiling. What are the teeth and jaw doing? These variable composite factors can alter the meaning of a smile dramatically.

If you want to teach emotional intelligence, maybe you should first learn how to read people.

The point is, the curricular isn’t in touch with reality. Nor does it realize the complexities of emotional intelligence. My experiences with the two RTOs, was an amateur hour horror.

Though there was a lot more I could cover with the psychometrics, it’s probably time to move on.

Among other issues I was confronted with were mentalities and ideologies.

We were taught about empathy. Nodding our head and grunting while listening to someone speak is not empathy, its insulting and disingenuous. Yet this is one of the things they teach. Much of what was taught on empathy was an intellectual check list and missed the point that empathy is an emotional connection, not an intellectual one.

The SMART model is a great tool. I used it concisely and the points placed in each field actual had a point that contributed to the table on the whole. Yet I was made to correct the way I filled this in. Instead, I had to follow the examples one of the assessors had given me to be compliant.

The rhetoric held no value, it simply stated what had to be placed in the field. That is to say, for Situation, I was expected to put something like; ‘We will address the situation’! Instead of actually stipulating what the specific situation was.

I have seen this kind of thing far too much in documents. A generic blurb that states what must happen without actually addressing the issue at all. In many cases a lot of words are used that convey no message. This is the crap they teach.

It was a truly painful experience.

One task we had to complete was to read an article that was supposed to be about assertiveness and do a report on it. The problem was, the notions in the article were a very abstract interpretation of assertiveness. After pointing this out and defining the true nature of assertiveness to the assessor, their explanation of what I had to do to be compliant had taken the article completely out of context and corrupted it with notions of political correctness instead of aligning it to what was actually asked for in the assessment criteria.

The assessor couldn’t even align themselves to or comprehend the curricula.

Another assignment I had to complete, (for another module), was built around how to manage a business after a fire had caused damage to the workplace and in need of refurbishment.

I dipped into my experience with door-to-door sales and my experiences as an On-Call Casual. Experiences whereby we need to be agile, adaptable and mobile. I set about rerouting phones and having meetings at McDonalds/coffee shops and common spaces. Arranging to meat clients on their premises. But the assessor asserted that I need to rent a new premises. I suggested it was an unnecessary expense; as we did not have a physical product, but a service and the business premises was not destroyed. It was just in the process of refurbishment. The assessor was insistent. A couple of years after the course Covid hit. Doesn’t the RTO look silly now?

Studying at the other RTO, a point of contention was with Pear Reviews. It is very difficult to meet the assignment criteria when not sharing the views of what we had to write about. The nature of most Pear Reviews are derivatives of established norms that appease Reinforcement Syndrome.?

Articles/papers that have an alternate point of view are often treated with disregard. Using these articles to debunk a norm holds little weight.

I could look at this positively though. Despite not being a genius, I think I know how Einstein felt when endeavoring to disprove Newton’s Law of the Cosmos.

It doesn’t really matter that university employees resist any notion that someone is saying the curriculum is dysfunctional. What is important is that they themselves do their due diligence, review and research what they are teaching. If things don’t align, don’t try and corrupt them so everything fits. Take a leaf out of Einstein’s book. Question everything.

Reinforcement Syndrome is very real. And a real pain in the ass.

To date, my investigation into what is wrong with HR has in part supported some of my suspicions. One thing being that quite often, we select our most compliant Juniors to be leaders and in so doing have managers that simply convey messages from the top down instead of being proactive workgroup facilitators. Maybe you should just get a pigeon. Another being the ideology that the human resource is a problem to be managed. While this article addresses a third; the quality of what is taught.?

Yes, one of the reasons why there are so many people in HR that lack the competencies required to be good HR Managers is partially due to the training.