Anna Keen – Acre Frameworks
“When I started it was all about compliance, enforcement, rule-following, but all that’s changed” Anna Keen told visitors at Safety & Health Expo 2016 in her seminar Developing yourself using psychometrics.
When her organisation assesses candidates it still focuses on technical knowledge, but more and more often organisations were now asking for people to be assessed on things such as motivation, she said.
“This whole subjective area around behaviour – it’s about how you actually apply that in the workplace to generate positive outcomes for the organisation as a whole. Clients say that if I can give them people with the right behaviours, they can teach them the rest.”
“So, why psychometrics?” she said. The simple answer was that it helped to remove some of the subjectivity and bias from the equation – “maybe you don’t get on with your manager, for example.”
Psychometrics were an invaluable means of providing self-awareness, which also meant making sure that people were choosing the roles that were right for them.
“One client wanted to be head of development, but the problem was he hated people. What he was great at was systems and strategy, so he was able to find the perfect position,” said Anna.
“The starting point for really building a personal brand can come from psychometrics,” she continued. “You can also make sure you know yourself well enough to know who can complement you to achieve your strategy when you’re recruiting.” A common, and understandable, mistake that people made was to simply looking to appoint people who were “exactly the same” as them, she said.
Around 70% of the leaders her company assessed and profiled were now more likely to consult with others, she said, while 85% preferred new approaches over conventional methods and 80 per cent felt they were not restricted by rules and regulations.
“Psychometrics really can be a key tool in helping us to develop ourselves as health and safety professionals.”
There was a handy five-point guide that everyone could use in terms of their professional development, she said.
1. “Review your role” – which meant finding out which competencies were the most critical for success.
2. “Go back to your drawer, pull out your profile and properly review it. What are your key strengths and what are your limiting behaviours? As human beings we tended to focus on where we could make ourselves better,” she told delegates.
3. Leveraging your strengths – “Ask yourself: what are the things that you enjoy doing?”
4. Develop your limitations to a point where they weren’t disabling. “That means developing them so that no one else knows you don’t enjoy them. Let’s say you hate looking at spreadsheets – you don’t have to love them, and you never will. All you need to do is just look at what might be holding you back from being effective.”
5. Getting feedback is vital, she stressed. “Ask yourself, has anyone noticed that you might have changed your behaviour? It’s making sure you’re aware of where you’re holding yourself back, but also of where you should give yourself a break. And you should re-visit this every 12-18 months or so.”
Meet Anna and Acre at Safety & Health Expo on stand P2400.
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