Leadership - Engaging and Derailing Traits

The Psychometrics Forum event, February 2012

The Psychometrics Forum continued it's success at the Caledonian Club, with another sell out event. Members and guests alike were eagerly awaiting presentations from world renowned experts in leadership and they were not disappointed.

Having previously held a post at The University of Oxford as a Lecturer in Psychology, Professor Adrian Furnham has been Professor of Psychology at University College London (UCL) since 1992. His talk surrounded issues of derailing leadership traits and the dark side of personality. Two key points were eloquently emphasised by Adrian, as take-home messages. The first was the need for ‘selecting-out' in recruitment, which referred to the process of looking for traits that you don't want for a leadership role and eliminating candidates on this basis. Secondly, too much of a good thing, is a bad thing. This refers to the idea that extremes of personality traits, are abnormal and derailing. Professor Furnham went onto describe the profile of a good leader in terms of the Big five factors, which sparked large debate. If you would like to read more about this profile, see the next edition of Psyche for a full write up of the talk.

In the afternoon, Professor Beverly Alimo-Metcalfe began with her impressive knowledge of the leadership literature and enthused the audience with a history its development. She is Professor of Leadership at Bradford University School of Management and Chief Executive of Real World Group. Her daughter, Juliette Alban-Metcalfe, Managing Director of Real World Group, gave an overview of the psychometric tools that they offer and allowed the audience to complete a short diagnostic about their own organisational leaders. It was a very interesting and engaging talk, from the opposite perspective to that of the morning, of how positive, strong leadership can be.

Personality, Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness

The Psychometrics Forum event, June 2011

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.

The Brain, Personality and Behaviour

The Psychometrics Forum event, May 2011

This was a wonderful event, which took place in the plush surroundings of the Royal Over Seas League. We were fortunate to have three excellent and knowledgeable speakers in Rita Carter and Prof. Paul Brown and Prof. Colin de Young. We were breaking some new ground with presentations of some cutting edge ideas and research that explored our current understanding of the intersection between neuroscience and psychometrics and speculated on the direction and applications for future developments in the field.

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.......

Click here for a brief history of the Psychometrics Forum group, as seen from David Robert's perspective (the ex-editor of the group's Newsletter, Psyche).

Do managers need to be extraverted? Click here for a brief overview of Hugh McCredie's lastest article from March 2010.

Also, 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