Let’s not forget the basics – using psychometric assessments to build self-awareness in employees

Organizations are becoming more people-focused—or, at least, they should be if they’re going to retain their employees and thrive in the face of emerging workforce trends. Deloitte’s 2023 Global Human Capital Report, for example, highlights the challenges of ‘boundary-less’ work and the need for flexibility in skills deployment.

Related to this is employee agency.

Deloitte notes that, following the pandemic, more office-based workers have greater agency than before. They have, or expect to have, more influence and choice in the way they work, especially with technology facilitating remote and hybrid working. It’s one of the reasons why some organizations who’ve insisted on back-to-the-office policies have encountered resistance. It’s not the way people want to do things now. 

People can, and want to, work in different ways. This leads to some complex situations for managers, HR departments, and organizations. How can they get a handle on all of it?

One way is to get basics in place by building the fundamentals of personal development and people management: self-awareness.

When people know more about themselves, each other, their motivations, and how they interact, they have a base for improving individual and organizational performance. And psychometric assessments are a great place to start individuals on their development journey.  

Take the MBTI assessment for example (the real one, not the free knockoff quizzes that run rampant online). The MBTI assessment is made for this kind of development. It’s rooted in self-awareness and understanding differences between people and has a huge number of work-related applications. Become a certified practitioner and you can use it in your organization, but if you’re not familiar with it then here's an example of how it can work.

Let’s say you’re working on a task. When you’ve finished it, your manager gives you feedback on how you did. This makes sense and feels right to you. You like to know what you’ve done well and/or how you can improve. 

Many people are like you. However, many people aren’t. A lot of people want and need feedback while doing a task. Instead of wanting appreciating for a job well done, they want to be recognized for the effort and their unique contribution.

This might seem pointless to you—after all, how can you be assessed on something you haven’t done yet?

But to those other people who have different personality preferences to yours, that feedback really matters. Having their effort and input acknowledged is what motivates them to do their best. Receiving feedback after completion would be dispiriting.

Now think about this: if you were a manager giving feedback to a report, you’d probably default to the style that works for you, meaning you’d give feedback after completion. But as we’ve just seen, this could be demotivating if your colleague or report responds best to effort or process-oriented feedback.

Take another psychometric assessment great for self-awareness: the CPI 260®. This assessment (often used by coaches and consultants with high potential individuals, leaders and executives) describes you as an objective third party might. It gives you information on strengths and development areas in 28 competencies – everything from self-control and resilience (under the self-management category) to responsibility and accountability, resilience, and creativity. The US Military has successfully used the CPI™ competencies in their leadership development programs for years, aggregating the data to create benchmarks within its officer training program.

Self-awareness helps people understand what makes themselves and others tick. Crucially, it helps people adapt their approach, so they help others perform at their best too. It shows how something that feels perfectly natural for one person really doesn’t work for someone else—and vice versa.

Such understanding could be one of the keys to success in 2023 and beyond.

Right now, everything feels changeable and less ‘fixed’ than it was. The world is still adapting to a post-pandemic shake-up and people’s differences are coming to the fore much more. It follows that, in this complex environment with more grey areas, a better understanding of people is a critical building block. It will help to identify and effectively place talents and strengths.

To do this in your organization, take a look at these certification and training courses. Virtual, face-to-face, and self-guided programs are available for you to get certified in the way that suits you best.

By investing in your own professional development, you’ll be able to deliver your own workshops, and create a person-focused culture that builds inclusion, realizes potential, and improves performance.