Personality, Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness

Attracting an audience of 85 members and guests, at a venue new to the Forum, the Caledonian Club near Hyde Park Corner, this was a sell-out event. Dr Bob Hogan, who had expressed a wish to return to address The Psychometrics Forum, was in sparkling form. his presentation was humorous, iconoclastic but also erudite. Dr Hogan's mantra that our goal in life is Getting Along, Getting Ahead and Finding Meaning is deceptively simple, but a valuable perspective on how to achieve succes at work - and in our lives generally. A full write-up of his talk will be available in the next issue of Psyche, the newletter of The Psychometrics Forum.

In the afternoon, Prof Peter Saville gave us the background to the development of Saville Consulting's personality instrument, Wave. He gave the audience a very interesting profile to discuss, and to our surprise, the individual concerned identifed himself as a member of the audience. Prof Saville's mystery guest turned out to be Ajaz Ahmed, the founder of Freeserve, and an entertaining and charming speaker in his own right! Saville Consulting generously offered all delegates the opportunity to complete their Wave profile prior to the event, and also to undertake accreditation at a substantial discount.

Rita Carter gave us an overview of brain structure and function pointing out that till recently, brain/behaviour studies have been largely concerned with similarities seen in human brains, rather than differences. Researchers are now starting to look at how the functions associated with these faculties vary between individuals. Recent results from imaging studies suggest that the complex behaviours associated with personality (e.g. those described by the Big Five ) can be mapped on to brain function and even structure. Rita provided a glimpse into a possible future in which "brain-reading" technology might be developed which could provide information about, for example, an individual's leadership potential.

The UK's only Professor of Organisational Neuroscience, Paul Brown introduced us to his work on integrating the Individual and the Organisation. He gave us a practical case study of neuro-behavioural modelling (NBM) within a whole systems framework, incorporating an diagnostic to determine communication flows and blocks within organisations. Fundamental to this approach is trust and biologically determined human needs for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness (SCARF).

In another first for The Psychometrics Forum, Professor Colin De Young joined us via live video link from the University of Minnesota, USA. He explored the physiological correlates of NEO derived Big 5 scales, and research into Big 5 traits that are associated with structural variation in brain systems aligned with the relevant function. He also proposed meta-traits of Stability (Neuroticism, Agreeableness & Conscientiousness) and Plasticity (Extraversion & Openness/Intellect), each associated with a neurotransmitter (Seratonin & Dopamine respectively). Interested readers can visit his web-site: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~cdeyoung/

A glimpse into a possible future indeed.......

Check out the article written by our vice-chair Hugh McCredie in Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 2009 of the BPS journal  "Assessment and Development Matters", entitled Thanks For The Big Five : Now We Can Talk To Each Other.