Please, Not Another Business Psycho Assessment

One of my kids is already a corporate controller, and he’s incredibly smart. He’s the type of smart who will be a CEO by the time he turns 40. So, I thought I’d give him the book The CEO Next Door for Christmas.

Please don’t tell him that I skimmed the book beforehand. I tried not to open the book too wide fearing it might look used, and I tried to keep my greasy fingerprints to a minimum. Mission accomplished. The book still looked brand new as I was clumsily wrapping it.

One of my findings in the first chapter was a reference to a CEO assessment. I took it, and I’ll share my results later. But beware of such tests.

A Brief Opinion on Psycho Tests

I do not trust personality assessments. I’ve taken the MBTI where I’m supposedly an INTJ. I view such assessments as nothing more than horoscopes with a little science baked in.

Wait a minute, what science? And therein lies the problem in these assessments. Where’s the empirical evidence to support the results of such tests?

Are test results reliable 100% of the time? How about predictive in any and all situations that a person might encounter?

If there is no scientific validity of any personality profiling test, then why all the rage? Why do we flock to such quizzes, me included?

Perhaps we seek validation of who we think we really are. Or maybe we want the world to know the truth about us and the sub-group we’ve been categorized in. In the end, maybe they are just fun to take.

The CEO Genome Assessment

The first chapter of The CEO Next Door provides a link to the author’s CEO behavioral assessment, and like a brainwashed zombie, I gave in and took it.

The assessment’s objective is to measure results across four CEO behaviors:

1. Decisiveness
2. Engaging for Impact
3. Relentless Reliability
4. Adapting Boldly

Here’s what my Likert-scaling results revealed.

Will I be the Next Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos?

First, no surprises on the Architect feedback. Unlike a personality profile such as the one above, the Kolbe A™ Index is the only assessment of its kind to measure our conative instincts.

According to my Kolbe A™ results, I’m a Follow Thru whose natural instinct when striving for a solution plans, coordinates, designs systems, integrates timelines, brings focus and clarity to complex processes, and prioritizes tasks and procedures. So I would expect to see the high score on Architect Reliable Results.

Be careful about how you read your results on Decide. I will argue that decisiveness is a conative trait. There are tools and concepts that will help us to become better at making decisions, a cognitive exercise. But decisiveness is a conative trait we see with Quick Starts, one of Kolbe’s Four Action Modes(R).

Decisiveness is critical in leadership. However, one of my top clients in terms of EBT margin and free operating cash flow on sales is number one in my client base. No one is close. Yet, he is not going to score high on Decide above. He’s not a Kolbe Quick Start either. Yet, he’s a brilliant, gifted, and creative CEO.

I’m not criticizing the assessment. Just approach personality assessments like the one above with caution.

The CEO Next Door: The 4 Behaviors that Transform Ordinary People into World-Class Leaders

The book is good. After skimming parts of the physical book that I bought my son for Christmas, I got a Kindle version.

The book reads fast. You can also pick parts that seem more relevant to you, and just read those sections. But don’t skip Chapter 1 which is foundational.

Don’t have time to read the book? There are two HBR articles you might like by the same authors:

• What Sets Successful CEOs Apart
• The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study

Photo Credits: Naveen Annam, Anthony DeRosa, Dave Akshar