Leslie Pratch on Assessing and Developing Leaders

By Leslie Pratch

Now let’s turn to a clinical assessment approach. Predicting performance requires gathering information in five areas. Today we’re going to focus on one area, personality structure and dynamics. This will take us beyond interview and other self-report methods, like the Myers Briggs.

Interviews, like all self-report methods, permit canned or rehearsed responses. The questions are obvious, transparent, and easily manipulated. Most executives know what to conceal and what to reveal – about themselves, their experiences, and the depth of their commitment. They will reveal – indeed, they will highlight – what makes them look good, and conceal what does not. In my line of work, we call this “faking good.”

For example, in a job interview, we may claim to be persistent and hard working when what we really are is stubborn. In presenting ourselves, we put a spin on the stories we tell. We make our stubbornness sound like worthwhile persistence – and this is a classic example of faking good. Even the most astute interviewer will have trouble distinguishing persistence from stubbornness.

To get around the faking-good problem, one may also use projective techniques. You may have encountered them during your own careers. An example is to supply the words to finish a sentence. Another is to tell stories to describe a series of pictures, like one a boy with the violin.

Projective techniques present vague, ambiguous stimuli. By providing little structure to guide the response, they reveal aspects of psychological functioning related to underlying dimensions of personality which are inaccessible using objective techniques.

One technique designed to assess active coping asks the person to complete a series of incomplete sentences. Even executives who claim to be no-nonsense, take-charge leaders may find it difficult – if not impossible – to complete certain stems. For example, “When he failed in his work….” Take a minute and think how you would respond.

Completing the stem requires the person to mobilize energy, orient attention, and commit to make a response. If the person does not complete the stem, then he has refused to cope with the task. He has demonstrated passive coping.

Projective techniques get at underlying behaviors in ways that permit us to make inferences about how the individual will function under greater stress. They tap aspects of personality that most of us do not know or want to reveal – desires, fears, and conflicts that are disavowed or unconscious.

Executives who demonstrate active coping in structured situations (like an interview or personality inventory) may not be active copers at the deeper levels assessed by projective techniques. At the deeper level, they may be passive copers. When the measures on different levels disagree, a red flag goes up. An executive may present as an active coper but the projective measures reveal he is anything but. Under stress, this discrepancy will resolve itself in the direction of the underlying passive tendencies, compromising decision making in real life.

What this means is that desires, fears, and conflicts that are beyond conscious control nevertheless drive and shape workplace functioning. Under stress, when our defenses weaken, these warded-off parts of self are prone to appear. If an executive’s active coping rests upon passive coping, then employers run the risk of her demonstrating passive coping at a time the venture can least afford it.

Familiar signs of passive coping in normally capable executives whose functioning is breaking down under stress include paralysis in the face of major threats, uncharacteristic outbursts of rage, and over-control of subordinates.

The most predictive aspects of coping operate at levels the individual can neither identify nor control. Our assessment gets at those levels. There is no pretending, no role-playing, and no faking good. Nothing about the process allows the executive to rehearse a response or give a canned answer.

Projective techniques act as the final validity check on what an executive asserts about his or her abilities and motives. They allow us to determine whether the image he presents to the world is based on a healthy, vibrant, active coping stance, or whether it’s defensive, reactive, or compensatory, and likely to crumble when stressed.
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Leslie Pratch, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist with an M.B.A. in Strategy and Finance and a B.A. in Religion from Williams College. She works with boards of directors and private equity investors to select and develop executives. She can be reached at (312) 464-7919 or email her at leslie@pratchco.com or visit www.pratchco.com.