339. Is a personality test just your horoscope? With Nikita Mikhailov, co-author of Personality: A User's Guide

25:55It also might be relative. So let's say Somebody who Worked in a very high pressure Cutthroat environment Then goes working in the charity sector They will Even if they were like average On how driven they were In that high pressure environment They will seem like Absolutely off the charts in a different environment Because it's all relative And we need to understand how quickly people adapt to different environments. So recently I was on a podcast, well, not podcast, it was a session with four psychologists who work with NASA. And I was like, so you work with people in space? They're like, yeah.

26:42I was like, what surprises you about people in space? How quickly we adapt to zero gravity? I was like, what do you mean? So if you go into orbit, very quickly the bottom of your feet will become very smooth, like a baby's. Because there's no pressure on them anymore. Then you become very short-sighted. Well, not very, but short-sighted. Because the capsule is so small. So you don't need looking into long distances. And then quite quickly, your bones will start to dissolve. Because your body notices there's no more gravity, so I don't really need bones that much anymore. So if we can adapt to zero gravity as humans, How quickly can we adapt to different corporate cultures?

27:27Humans are highly adaptable to different environments. The question is the cost. And this is why it's important to study personality and behavior. So let's say if you're naturally a super nice person, and then you go into an environment where every year the bottom 10 % of performers are cut. Your performance is measured on a daily basis. You're measured as a single performer. And then we add like a very strong incentive, like you get a huge bonus at the end of the year. If you're like the toughest, biggest earner, doesn't matter the price, then so we give you a risk. If you perform low, you're fired.

28:09And we give you a reward, which is really high financial that you'll perform. So what could people justify by that? and then they might develop some traits which outside of that environment might seem as

28:23Al Elliott:psychopathic so this person at work might appear psychopathic to someone who doesn't know that environment yet this person at home could have a almost a different personality and behaviors that we're saying well people manage their behavior all the time and for for example you sit down with a client to go through his psychometric debrief and one of their first questions is like, well, I've done this loads of time, Nikita, but can you answer me one question? I was like, go. Is this my home self or my work self? And then you ask, how are the two different? Because people are aware we all manage ourselves.

28:56We manage ourselves at work, but we also manage ourselves at home. We manage ourselves against, well, what did I say against? I mean, with different people. And we manage ourselves in all sorts of environments. It's just the key thing is if people know that I'm one self at work and one at home, that means the behavior and personalities are so different at this stage. It almost gives a sense to the person they're two different people. And this is what's really interesting. And why are they there? Like what does being professional mean to you? Like how much of individuality goes to die under that word being professional?

29:37And why? Why? Because we adapt to the environments around us. So be very careful what environments you pick to adapt, because you might surprise yourself how quickly you adapt to it. Right. So personality shift with environment, which raises a practical question for anyone who's actually sat through one of these debriefs. What actually happens in the room?

29:56Al Elliott:Talking of reactions to results, what generally happens when you deliver results, either in group or one-to-one? do you what what is the sort of reaction to what you're telling them there's a lot of stuff potentially in play the feedback session of a psychometric that you need to be aware of so first of all is uh some people are quite tempted by power especially when they do assessments that measure the dark side of personality like i know you're something that you don't know about yourself though the whole assessment is based on the self-report a person completed about themselves So it's very unlikely you have something which the person doesn't know about themselves in front of you.

30:37Also, quite often people debrief the portrait is like, well, you score high on this and you low on that. And so they're kind of telling them who they are or you can co-explore with the client. So when people go like, what's your favorite assessment of personality? I go asking the person the question how they describe themselves. How would you describe your personality? because we're co-exploring your self-narrative. So when I sit down with a client, I ask them how they would describe their personality, what do people get wrong about them because it's kind of room of 12 people, how you see yourself, how other people see you.

31:14What do they manage about their personality at work and why? Is there any problems they're currently facing at work they would like a personality perspective on so we can contextualize it in their workplace? And only then I opened their report. And then we co-explore this report with them and see what kind of interesting points or different perspective a psychometric can provide to the current situation a person is in, rather than debriefing their personality. Okay, this is the part leaders have been waiting for. Should you use this in hiring? And if so, how? Let's see what Nikita thinks.

31:53Al Elliott:So I think the question on most people's lips at this point is, okay, if I can't rely solely on MBTI, one, should I be measuring personality, for example, in hiring or in teams? And two, if so, how do I do it properly? Well, so as one of my favorite psychologists, Colin DeYoung, on a recent podcast goes, when people go, well, at parties, when people find out I'm a psychologist, especially a personality psychologist, they ask me, are you analyzing me right now? And he goes, at this point, I need to lie and say, no, of course I'm analyzing you. We're analyzing each other all the time as humans. So for example, even if you're not using a personality assessment in hiring, the people doing the interviewing will be assessing the personality of the candidates.

32:41They just won't have an assessment. They will be looking at CVs, they will be looking at their behavior, anecdotal evidence. Well, you know, if a person scratches their nose left to right instead of right to left, people make up all sorts of stuff. Also, even if you don't use personality assessments, the personalities of the hiring panel are going to be interesting. So, does the hiring panel have the same personalities as each other. So therefore, it's kind of like an echo chamber. Like, oh, did you see that? Oh, yeah, I know. Exactly. So personality doesn't only get assessed of the candidate.

33:17It's already placed in the dynamic, for example, in a hiring panel, whether you use an assessment or not. Then we need to be careful about the history of psychometrics, that you don't take it too seriously. Like, for example, you know, we believe in diversity and inclusion in this organization. But we only hire people who score above 95th percentile on extroversion. Like, that doesn't really match up, does it? And then are you hiring for particular personality traits? And what's the potential long-term impact of this? So one of the ways this could be done is that you get some psychologists coming to your organizations.

33:57Let's take sales. And psychologists love sales departments because you have a clear KPI. key performance indicators, the amount of sales made against the person's name. So you can profile those people with lots of psychometrics and you find out that, let's say, people high on extroversion, lower on agreeableness, sell more. And so you go, we need those people. But the issue is, you're looking what worked in the past. And right now in our world of VUCA, or as I affectionately call it, FUCA, at this point, the world is very unpredictable. And will the traits of personalities that worked in the last 10 years or even five work for you in the next year?

34:42And if you focus too much on correlating with the past performance, you might be actually shooting yourself in the foot because you will be selecting people who would have worked before rather than now. Also, personalities work with other people. So let's say if you have a high extrovert, low on agreeableness, making more sales in an environment with diversity of personality around them of other sales staff. Are they really taking more, make sales or they take more credit for sales?

35:09Al Elliott:Maybe there was a sales that was a little bit on the border, you know, and they go, oh, I just take that. You know, it's like that back in the day when you had like supermarket points and cards, when it's like, oh, I didn't bring my card and there was a grandma behind you. Oh, I'll take the points if you don't mind. So, you know, it just can help themselves. Same as high extroverts with low agreeableness. Well, no one's taking credit for it, so I will. So it skews the data. So are you really selecting people who are better at sales or better at taking credit for sales? So there's things like that and a hundred other variables you need to keep into account.

35:46So it's not as easy to use personality assessments and selection as might first seem. But even if you don't use it, people will still be assessing personality. So, ah!

35:57Al Elliott:Well, Nikita, then, yeah, you've just answered my question there, and I'm going to ask it again then. So if I'm hiring for someone in sales, should I even be using a personality indicator? I would suggest, first, you could consider it, but make sure you have the supervision of occupational psychologists who work across different psychometrics or not just the ones, so they can give you a more kind of perspective. Another key thing right now, because of technology is evolving this way, consider making your own assessment with the help of psychologists, of course, and professionals who do this. Because, for example, as I mentioned, MBTI was first published in 1944.

36:39Other assessments like OPQ and some of the Hogan's, 1980s. A lot of the Big Five assessments like the NEO, also 1980s. So to an extent, a psychometric is a time capsule. It's what was known up to this point. So even if you take all the research, incorporate all the research done in personality psychology up to that point in history, the question is how after publication this assessment is updated. Because some of them are 80 years old, 40 years old. And the issue becomes then, some assessments might stay more current than others. So you might be not only, let's say, assessing based on past performance, but also an understanding of personality from 60 years ago.

37:23And is this really the most relevant for you? Plus, you might be asking a lot of stuff that's irrelevant to sales. You might ask 200 items, but we find out only 20 items of that questionnaire relevant to sales performance in your organization in that department. So why not just create your own assessment with the right help so you own it and you can update it. and it might cost you the fraction of what buying off-the-shelf assessments cost you.

37:51Al Elliott:Have I understood this correctly? That if I said to you, go away and design me the best personality assessment you can find, you would come back to me and go, yes, but what is the context of this? What are you trying to measure? Is that right? I would also say why we're trying to measure it. So we're not going to be assessing performance of your sales staff. We want to understand sales performance better and we'll work from there. It's like when people say, you know, we should be evidence-based. I always say we should be problem-based and evidence-informed. So it's like, what's the issue we're trying to solve with the evidence?

38:25Why are we measuring? Like, we need to measure personality of our leaders. Not necessarily. You need to measure effectiveness of the leaders during the change process. Like that might personality plays a part in it. It might not. But if we start with measuring personality, we might end up measuring stuff that's not relevant for you. If we start measuring a problem you're facing and where the pain points for you are and opportunities, and then we sprinkle some personality over it, that's more likely to be effective for you. So that's the case for building your own inventory. But Nikita also raised something stranger, that your Google searches and your AI chats might already know your personality better than any questionnaire does.

39:11Al Elliott:Nikita, you mentioned something earlier on that made me think. Our Google history or our chat GPT stroke clawed questions we're asking, is that the real us? Does that hold even more data about us? Or is that just what we're trying to work out? Oh, the real me. The truth of it. It's like when people go with a psychometric thing, but how accurate is it? How do we define accuracy of a self-report? Or how do we define accuracy of your personality? To a large extent, it's to what extent we recognize ourselves. But to a large extent, it's confirmation bias. If we think we're extroverted and assessment tells us we're extroverted, we go, I'm extroverted.

39:55Or if chat GPT says, well, you're an extroverted person. We go, oh, they're right. or if I'm said I'm very logical and the assessment goes, are you very logical? I go, yeah. But my partner goes like, Nick, you're being argumentative. I'm like, no, I'm not because I think I'm being logical. So the question is that everything, it's a good old joke. What's a psychologist's answer to every question? It depends. The question is what variables it depends on. So for example, your real self, is it how you see yourself? Is it how other people see you? Is it how ChatGPT sees you? It's all of it. It's all you.

40:40It's just the different perspectives on it. So for example, you could go to ChatGPT or Claude and say, look, based on our history, how would you describe my personality? You can actually ask it and you can map it on MBTI, DISC, Big Five and all of that. And then you can ask it to explain its reasoning. like you know you talk a lot about risk so i think you might be neurotic or you're quite excitable in the way you just use lots of words awesome and excellent so it's more likely to be extrovert or you really keep on platform discussing philosophical concepts you might be high on

41:12Al Elliott:openness so all of that and so let's say that i am a manager and i've got someone on my team who who says oh yeah i've done some personality tests i know i'm an extrovert i know i'm an extrovert As a leader, if I've got someone else who says, well, I'm an introvert, should I be treating those two people differently? Going back to one of my favorite psychologists called Allport. He used to say, if I want to know something about somebody, I ask them. So ask them and how they like to work. So we use this terminology, introvert, extrovert. It's always worth asking them, tell me more what it means for you.

41:49Because those people might mean completely different things. and therefore just get a little bit more. And also, for example, ask them, people might say, but how do I give feedback to an introvert or an extrovert? Ask them, how do you like your feedback? How you don't like your feedback? It's that curiosity that is key.

42:11Al Elliott:You've studied personality for a very, very long time. If there was one thing that you wanted everybody to know about personality, what might it be? You know, I cannot do a top one. I can do a top three. so first of all uh we're social creatures so what i mean by this big part of us is how we work with others and quite often people want to change themselves so they for example see well i'm not that high on openness so i'm not creative or they make a jump to that conclusion or you know i need to be more extroverted or i need to be more pragmatic they see a gap in their report so i need to fill it.

42:48However, first of all, your job might not require this. Second, there might be people around you who are better at this just the way they are. So they might be more creative or open-minded or high on openness, basically. And then if you need ideas, you don't need to suffer in silence trying to be more creative. You can just buy them a coffee and say, what do you think about this. Same if you need to kind of like, I'm rubbish at proofreading, I can misspell personality three times in a post on LinkedIn. So to me, people who can proofread without actually reading the text and spot all the mistakes is borderline magic.

43:30So we can help each other. And often what I find with clients stops them delegating. Is their assumption that if I find something difficult, other people find it difficult too? So to delegate is too selfish. you will be putting this on their shoulders and therefore they go oh I don't want to give them the detailed tasks which I find boring but they might not find them boring so it's ability to identify these different complementary strengths so one way you can do it as a leader is when you're kicking off a meeting I mean kicking off a project at the end of this you ask each person to share what exactly they're going to do between now and the next checkpoint so make sure you're on the same page and each person shares which part of the task they will find most energy draining and then how they can help each other in a complementary way.

44:21And then when the project is done, doing a workshop, each person shares what they find most exciting or what they're most proud of, what they struggled with the most and then one suggestion how we can work together better next time. So you kind of create the cycle of learning and finding more and more about what each one of you likes and enjoys. So that's the first one. Second, it's worth living with curiosities than just assumptions. So we often assume stuff about others. What I also find really fascinating is that the less we know the person, the more stronger opinions are about them. So you meet somebody, and within seconds we know from research that you can already think what their extroversion is like.

45:07And apparently it's the rate of speech. if you speak quicker, people think you're more extroverted. So within three seconds, a couple of seconds, people made a judgment on your extroversion. After this, confirmation bias kicks in. So when you interrupt people or whatever, people go, they're an extrovert. But they miss when you listen or didn't speak up first because they see this as confirmation bias. So they keep the information which they think about you. So they don't really know you. They have an assumption about you. and you have assumptions about them. And sometimes the stronger your assumption is because you know them the less.

45:47And what do we do when we fall out with them? Do you talk to them? No, you talk to somebody who agrees with you. I always say, look, if you want the evidence for existence of the human soul, you just need to go to Canary Wharf, the underground catacombs, I mean the shopping center underground. And if you take out your earpods And you're really, really quiet You will hear the sound of the human soul Escape the human body What you will also hear next to you Is some conversation like this I wasn't harsh, was I? No, they need to learn Plus, if they think they have it hard, John They have no idea what we went through in our 20s Yes, Barbara, absolutely Your round is next So somebody on a trait of, let's say being quite disagreeable, upset somebody high and agreeable, but instead of finding out for them, they go to somebody also low and agreeableness, play their bias part of the story, and get confirmation.

46:45They get this cathartic tribalism. Little do they know, in the same cafe, a couple of tables down, the person they upset are sitting down and goes, this is a psychopath we need to work. I know, right? And what's really interesting, both those people who fell out got a confirmation, and then they need to work together after lunch. But maybe if they talk to each other and say, look, what did you hear? What happened? Help me understand. You might find out that that person didn't mean to upset you. It was just a miscommunication. But instead of this, it has grown into so much more. And to me, after working 12 years in this field, miscommunication is the name of the game.

47:26That's what's more likely to happen than actually communication taking place. were more likely to mishear each other or misread each other's emails than to actually understand where the other person is coming from. So that curiosity is key. And the third thing is, just don't take yourself too seriously. You have a self-narrative of who you think you are, but to what extent you changed. People completely overestimate quite often how much they can change overnight. Like tomorrow, Al, if you wake up with a different personality, that'd be a serious medical condition requiring immediate attention of professionals.

48:04Overnight change of personality is rarely a good thing. And however, people completely underestimate how much we changed over the years because we don't notice because of confirmation bias. We're so ingrained with who we think we are, we don't notice it. So one of the things you can do after this podcast, you think of a couple of people who know you really well over the years and text them and say, look, how would they describe your personality? And how do they think you changed over the years? And to me, with all this personality assessment, psychometrics, you name it, look, as zodiac signs, MBTIs, look, if at the end of the day, we can be a couple of percent more curious about ourselves and others, and a couple of percent less judgmental about ourselves and others, I think it's worth it.

48:51Al Elliott:What a beautiful, beautiful place to leave it. Nikita tell us a bit more about your book Personality A User Guide I wrote it with my colleague Georgi Yankov I met him on LinkedIn as you do and we had an argument about personality and I have a rule that anybody who I argue with on professional topics in social media I have a call with them because you both care about the same subject but you have different opinions on the subject so maybe you can learn something from each other and out of this book came out so if you have trouble falling asleep i highly recommend it it might help and we also if you're more kind of audio visual we have a youtube channel called psychometric market where we interview people in psychometrics go through different assessments researchers you name it that was nikita mikalov and i hope you now know more about personality and personality inventories than 90 of leaders and founders out there so let's get to our top three takeaway for you lovely leaders?

49:52Number one, know what you're actually measuring. Most workplace personality inventories just capture the story somebody has already told themselves, not how they behave and definitely not how their colleagues experience them. If you want the full picture, you need self-report and feedback from the people around them. This is often called a 360 and the Real World Group has an excellent one. Lots more information on that in episode 279 with Juliet Albin-Metcoff.

50:21Al Elliott:Fabulous. We will link to that in the show notes. Secondly, don't hire for personality. Hire for the problem. This is Nikita's rule. Start with the business problem you're trying to solve, not the trait you think you want. A team full of low agreeableness extroverts might sell more until you look at who's taking credit for it. And number three, check your test birth certificate. Myers-Briggs was published in 1944. for. If the assessment your company uses hasn't been meaningfully updated since, you may be hiring for a world that doesn't exist anymore. And if there is one thing to take from this whole conversation, it's Nikita's closing point.

50:58Be a little more curious about yourself and a little less judgmental of everyone else.

51:05Al Elliott:Yes, you can find Nikita's book, Personality, a user's guide, wherever you buy your books, and his YouTube channel, Psychometrics Market, if you want to go a bit deeper links to everything in the show notes also to his website and to his linkedin of course that is all for today we are back next tuesday with the living linkedin legend bill yes the guy who was in charge of engagement surveys at google and now just the same at netflix fun fact yeah fun fact his mom was actually on the call listening in i don't know if i'm allowed to say this bill um and afterwards she asked how long we'd known each other as if like oh it must for years but leanne never met bill before and i've only met him once he's such an amazing guy that's how well this chat went do not miss it we will see you on tuesday subscribe leave comments linkedin go look at nikita's website go look at his channel go and do all the things that you know you should bye bye