Written by: Luca Berni, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
In recent years we have observed a proliferation of tools to support the measurement of the attitudes or capabilities of people within organizations. We are talking about all those measurement methods that are generically called "assessments".
There are mainly two types of assessment: psychological model-based assessments and behavioral model-based assessments.
Psychological model-based assessments.
This type of assessment investigates the personality of the person being assessed. They are usually based on psychological models (the Jungian ones are widely used) and show what the person's psychological attitudes are. We could debate whether an organization has the right to investigate this kind of because, in my opinion, this type of assessment is comparable to a clinical examination, and this can also invade a personal sphere that is not within the company's jurisdiction. In recent years, the proposed assessments have always been more careful in providing reports that do not violate the personal sphere excessively and the assessors have become much more careful in avoiding the feedback interview turns into the labeling of the person.
This kind of assessment can be useful when decisions have to be made regarding the hiring of a new resource, to evaluate whether he is compatible with the position he will have to fill or to evaluate a possible career evolution when this involves a major change in role or responsibility.
Behavioral model-based assessments.
These assessments are based on the observation of the person's behavior in carrying out certain functions. This observation can be carried out by an independent assessor proposing activities to the candidate and observing their ability to carry them out or direct observation of the person in their working environment in the normal course of their duties. Alternatively, this observation can be made indirectly, through a series of interviews with those who collaborate with the person being assessed. When just colleagues of the same rank are interviewed, it is called a 180° assessment, while it's a 360° assessment if the person's managers and collaborators are also interviewed. From the summary of the answers, it will be possible to have a complete picture of the candidate's attitudes and behavior, and professional skills.
This kind of assessment is useful whenever the area of investigation focuses on the ability to act and on the ability to relate within the organization. Of course, this type of investigation can only be carried out if the person has spent a sufficiently long time in a certain position, at least one year.
Assessments: cons
Assessments are "punctual" measurements and are influenced by the moment in which the assessment is executed. Although many companies that offer assessments claim to introduce models or statistical corrections to make the results replicable, it is difficult to think that a person does not modify his responses to the assessment stimuli on the basis of the state of mind he experiences at that moment.
If an organization is attentive to the people who are part of it, an assessment will hardly reveal something completely unknown about a collaborator.
Whoever commissions the assessment may have already developed convictions regarding the person being examined and, regardless of the skill of the assessor, could interpret the report according to their own prejudices and use it to justify their ideas, rather than draw new information from it.
If the person receiving the report is not well prepared or is not aware of the limits of an assessment, they could interpret the result as an absolute and indisputable truth and from that moment interpret every employee's behavior according to what emerged from their assessment. This would be a serious mistake because the human universe is much more complex and unpredictable than a report could ever show.
Assessments: pros
Assessments can support the organization in making decisions regarding the future of one of its members, but only if used as a complement to broader and more in-depth assessments.
Assessments are useful to show-up the main characteristics of a collaborator in a simple and rational way, through graphs, models, and quick-to-understand summaries.
The assessor's feedback can be a good moment of personal growth for the person being assessed. How useful it can depend on the spirit with which he will face the feedback and on the assessor's ability to stimulate constructive reflections in him.
The difference between the results emerging from an assessment carried out before a collaborator's development intervention (for example training, coaching, or mentoring) and the same repeated at the end, can give a measure of the collaborator's growth and the effectiveness of the chosen intervention.
Assessments can be a very useful tool for organizations provided that they always constitute an integration and never a single decision-making driver for the organization.
Luca Berni, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Luca Berni is an Executive & Team Coach that works with Leaders, Top Managers, Entrepreneurs, Boards of Directors, and Leadership Teams. Before becoming a Coach in 2009, he worked as a Manager in different Multinational companies in different Countries for almost twenty years. Luca also works as a management consultant, he co-founded and runs TheNCS The Neuroscience Coaching School, and he writes articles and books about Coaching and Management.
