Clever Uses for Psychometric Assessments
Ticonderoga Learning & Talent Newsletter
What's in this month's Newsletter?
Jobs and Talent
Clever Uses for Psychometric Assessments
Endeavorun Professional Update
Personal Update
Jobs and Talent
Organizational Development Roles (2) - Visiting Nurse Service of NY
The team at VNSNY are looking for two team members to work on Organizational Development – an OD Director and Program Lead. If you’ve got over 7 years experience in the field and are looking for an OD job in NYC, these roles are highly in demand!
Facilitator - JetBlue
Some terrific friends at JetBlue are looking for a facilitator to lead large group, small group and virtual sessions with a focus on a variety of interpersonal and leadership development topics. Guide participants through experiential learning simulations and activities.
Multiple Openings – Justworks
According to the talented Jen Fox (Hi Jen!), Justworks has over 140 open positions including many in the People and Workplace group. Roles such as Director of People Ops, DEI recruiting specialists and talent sourcers, Director of Total Rewards, and more. Check them out and email me if interested.
Note: If you’d like me to feature relevant openings in this monthly newsletter, just message me. There’s no cost associated with this… I just enjoy it! I typically feature roles in the talent/learning/people space, but I’m open to occasionally sharing others. I’m quite proud that readers have filled important roles thanks to this Newsletter!
Clever Uses for Psychometric Assessments
I frequently use various psychometric assessments in executive coaching engagements and in assisting with leadership/executive search and selection. While these are some of the most common use-cases for psychometrics, there are some less-common but potentially valuable ways to deploy these powerful tools:
Recruiting Conversations/Offer Letters: Credit for idea comes courtesy of Kristina Thomas, who I met during a recent Hogan Assessments practitioner workshop. We were working with the Motives, Values, & Preferences Inventory (MVPI) and she suggested recruiting departments use the data (e.g. how much is someone driven by commerce, recognition, affiliation, aesthetic, etc.) to tailor offer letters to preferred candidates by highlighting how their particular preferences are prevalent in the workplace. I love this. I also think it could be extremely valuable in executive search. Firms that deploy the Hogan suite in selection (shameless plug: like Ticonderoga does) can coach their clients around how to sell their opportunity to top candidates. This is a low-cost, high-yield opportunity – especially for organizations already using the MVPI or similar assessments.
'Disguised’ Team Building: While there are psychometric tools that I will often use explicitly for team building (often the FIRO-B or Social Styles assessments), a workshop geared toward interpreting “individual” psychometric assessments in a group setting would have a powerful team building impact. The structure could involve everyone completing a powerful, individually-focused psychometric (OPQ32 or Hogan are my two favorites) and then attending a hands-on workshop to dissect and apply their own results. This “individual” development work in a group setting involves self-reflection, honesty, and openness which produces you the camaraderie and trust-building effects of a formal Team Building workshop without the eye rolls.
OD Interventions: At a 50,000 foot level, when workplace cultures go sour it’s often the result of a discrepancy between espoused and enacted values. By default, leaders will create a culture that reinforces their personal motivations and workplace values. If these are in conflict with the organization’s spoken values, employees may find a divide between what drew them to the job and “the way things really work around here”. One way to diagnose this is to utilize a values-based psychometric assessment with key leaders to evaluate where their personal value-drivers might differ from the organization’s. This would provide some context as to why organizational culture isn’t meeting desired expectations. More importantly, it would also give leaders permission to acknowledge why they have created and reinforced a sub-optimal environment without wagging a finger at them, thus minimizing resistance to kickstarting meaningful change.
Experiential Simulation Training: Putting your team through an experiential simulation? Give everyone a psychometric assessment beforehand and some coaching at the end of the experience to showcase how their tendencies played out (or didn’t) during the exercise. If the simulation is well-designed and parallels their work environment, it’ll be easy to take the self-reflection elements and apply them back in the ‘real world’. A warning: this takes some deliberate, sometimes delicate facilitation as it can cause confusion if not done with purpose. So don’t try this at home, kids. Especially if you work from home.
Endeavorun Professional Update:
Many of you know that my side-venture, Endeavorun, recently hosted its first event in Boulder, CO. The 3-day running retreat brought together runners of all abilities with some of the most renowned running coaches, writers, Olympians, pros, and experts in the world for a few days of training, clinics (sports nutrition, strength training, etc.), and developmental conversations.
I’m quite pleased to say that thanks to my incredible staff the event was a huge success by all metrics! We had over 20 registrants during a pandemic for a previously non-existent in-person experience who paid about $1K each (plus food and housing), and over 10 brand partners who provided goods for our participants as well as paid sponsors. The event managed to turn a profit. Most importantly, the participants’ and coaches’ experiences speak for themselves (see a few here, here, here, here, etc.). I’m bragging quite a bit here because I’m really proud of everything my team pulled together.
Moving forward, we have already been approached by several partners to co-host various retreats next year as well as several prominent brands looking to sponsor all or part of different events. In fact, our next running retreat will be announced shortly (keep your calendars open for President’s Day Weekend in February if interested…) and we’re planning a major triathlon retreat in early spring, among others.
With that said, I could really use your help. The next phase of success for Endeavorun depends on a notable shortcoming of mine as CEO: raising investment capital. I only have an undergraduate level of understanding about the mechanisms of corporate investment.
(The irony is that given our profitability, we don’t need to bring on investment and could continue to grow organically. Which, in direct acknowledgement of my general risk-averseness, is leading me to conclude that this is probably therefore a good time to push things forward and raise a little money!)
While I’m considering taking on a formal seed-round investment, I’m leaning toward a more low-key friends/family fundraising round to raise $150-200K in small sums… but I’m not sure yet.
If you have any expertise or general thoughts on how I should proceed, please consider this a solicitation for your advice and wisdom and message me! I have a significant amount to learn from you all.
Personal News
Charlotte is 20 months old today and going on 20 years. I love watching her immerse herself in her toys as she talks to herself in play. She speaks in (very short) complete sentences and communicates very well, which is such a welcome relief for me as I’m so verbally-driven. She’s also been enjoying a big separation anxiety phase every time Jess leaves the room and now is refusing to get in the bath, which is super fun (actually, it is kinda cute). She has to switch to a new daycare later this month as her current daycare is closing (which is a huge bummer – it is a small, in-home daycare run by a wonderful woman who is retiring), so we’ll see how she processes that change. She did manage to sleep past 5:15 once… except it was on the morning I needed to leave for Colorado at 5:10am and was counting on her being awake so she could accompany me to the airport. Obviously, she slept until 6:30 that one day.
That's it for this edition - please reach out if I can be at all helpful.
Stay safe, get vaccinated! Be compassionate and intentional.