Leaders Can Put Too Much Faith in Personality Diagnostics

Personality assessments and psychometrics used in the hiring process can assist leaders in understanding who candidates really are and what tendencies they will likely display once on board. Over time, when employed consistently, patterns often emerge between existing high and low performers, giving leaders the confidence to rely even more heavily on these assessments in the decision-making process for new hires. 

This makes good sense — until the leader or recruiting team becomes convinced that only candidates with the “right” predictors should be considered for selection. When the zeal for possessing a crystal ball becomes too strong, leaders overestimate the predictive ability of personality.  

Because of the complexity associated with human behavior, especially experience, drive, passion, and learning, the predictive power of personality, or any set of psychometrics, is limited. Such diagnostics are invaluable as an important data point to discern who people are and why they might succeed. But when they become a litmus test for who can and can’t be selected, leaders go too far. 

In their quest for certainty, leaders can sometimes fall prey to believing too strongly in the power of diagnostics to predict organizational success. Instead of using the findings and patterns associated with a preferred diagnostic or personality test as important data, they rely exclusively on one or more assessments to tell them who to hire or not. 

The confirmation bias associated with this belief is well-known. Once a leader convinces themselves that a diagnostic can accurately predict success, they rationalize why many predictions fail to deliver over time. They then double down on the tools to help discriminate between future high and low-performing team members. 

Once set by a senior leader or the recruiting team, the ideology of relying exclusively on the preferred diagnostics is rarely challenged. In many organizations, everyone knows such thinking is flawed. They can see the evidence in their colleagues, many of whom have the right stuff but fail to succeed. 

The best organizations reject this thinking and use personality assessments to increase their confidence in selection, but not to determine who to hire. 

The best leaders accept the fact that the pursuit of 100 percent confidence in prediction is a fool’s errand. They work hard to stack the odds in their favor by understanding what creates success in the organization and what indicators and experiences to weigh in the decision process. 

Personality matters, but not more than experience, skill, and self-awareness. By utilizing a full array of data, including the demonstration of skill and judgment, great organizations select a higher percentage of team members who will succeed in the future. 

In reality, the most accurate prediction leaders can make about prospective hires is that they will confound description. New hires will always surprise leaders, in both good and bad ways.