Knowing how your people work
How someone deals with people is an important part of how they work.
Knowing the job is only part of how someone works. How they deal with people matters too: whether they persuade or instruct, take charge or wait to be asked, stay steady when someone pushes back.
That is personality, and it is what a development conversation with an employee should be about. It also shapes who you promote into a new role, and who you are preparing to take over from your senior managers. How someone deals with people is what their development should focus on, and what you should be hiring for in the first place.
What the person does, and what you get
About 30 minutes online, and a report on twenty scales, with interview questions and development suggestions for each.
The Managing Others scales explore how someone works with and influences others. Influence and persuasion, taking charge and working through a team matter in many roles, including those without formal management responsibility. And the Managing Tasks scales show how readily someone accepts an established procedure, and how they handle a situation the policy doesn't cover.
You choose which scales go into the report and how much detail it gives. For specific roles, our organisational psychologists write role-specific reports.
Compared with the right people
Results are set against norms for the industry and job level, so an employee or candidate is compared with people in comparable roles.
A score only means something against a comparison. Business Personality Reflections has norms across a range of industries and job levels, so a candidate is compared with people at a similar job level, not with the population at large.
The same profile — the pattern of someone's results across the twenty scales — can then follow them through their time with you. Used at hiring, it shapes the interview. Used a year later, it shapes their development plan. Used when you plan who will replace your senior staff, it shows who has the profile for the next role — one assessment, read three ways, across someone's whole career in your organisation.
The assessment that shapes the hiring interview can shape the development plan a year later.
What happens after the report
It shapes the interview when you are hiring, and the development plan once someone is in the role.
When you are hiring or promoting someone, the report includes suggested interview questions for each of the twenty scales, so you can test in person what the results suggest about how they work. For a full written assessment against a specific role, it forms the personality part of our selection reports.
When you are developing someone, the development suggestions for each scale are the starting point. They pair naturally with 360 degree feedback, which shows how the same person comes across to the colleagues and clients who work with them, and with development and coaching to act on both.
It is also used for promotions, succession planning and executive coaching — anywhere the question is how someone is likely to behave in a role they haven't done yet.
The evidence behind it
Built on the model of personality most strongly linked to leadership in the research.
Business Personality Reflections follows the Five Factor Model, a framework at the centre of modern personality research, and adapts it to business and management challenges.
That foundation matters for leadership roles. A review of 73 samples found that the five factors together were strongly related to leadership — both to who emerges as a leader and to how effective they are. (Judge, Bono, Ilies and Gerhardt, Journal of Applied Psychology, 2002.)
The assessment's validity and reliability have been statistically tested and confirmed. Psych Press has developed and published psychometric instruments since 1995, in-house and in partnership with universities and international test publishers.
Who it suits, and who it doesn't
Organisations selecting and developing employees, promoting people and planning succession.
It suits
Employees and managers, whether you are hiring or developing them; senior staff in succession planning; people moving into their first leadership role; and anyone in your business whose role depends on how they work with others.
It isn't built for
Front-line volume screening, which our screening questionnaires handle in 10 to 15 minutes.
Frequently asked questions
Can candidates fake their answers?
Reports include a check for answers that look too good to be true, and the interview questions for each scale are there to test what the profile suggests. A candidate who scores high on influence can be asked about the last time they persuaded someone who didn't report to them.
How is this different from a selection report?
Business Personality Reflections is the assessment. A selection report is a psychologist's written judgement on a candidate for a specific role, drawing on this assessment and on reasoning tests. For development, promotion or a quick read on a candidate, the assessment's own report is often enough. For an important external hire, the selection report goes further.
Can we use it with people already in the role?
Yes, and for development that is the main use. Run across a team, it can also show the balance of styles in the team — who leads, who supports, who pushes back.
How long does it take?
About 30 minutes online. The report is ready as soon as it is completed.
What does it cost?
It is priced per person, and depends on whether you use the standard report or one written by a psychologist for the role. We quote once we know what you need.
Start a conversation with us
Tell us about your situation and the support you are looking for. You can write as much as you need.
Or call us on +61 3 9670 0590.