You're at the Coaching Inn 3d Coaching Virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who are engaged in the world of coaching. Welcome to this week's edition of the Coaching Inn, I'm Claire Pedrick. And today we have an open table in our pub. Uh and we're here to talk about coaching and psychometrics.
So if you remember, and there's a link in the show notes, if you don't remember, William mckee was on a few months ago and had we had a great conversation about the use of psychometrics in coaching and it has been the number two download, a podcast of 2023 well done. William. Uh whether or not you can ever surpass Katherine Mannix is a really interesting question, but maybe you can. Uh so William, hello and uh hello to all our guests.
Uh We are going to get you to introduce yourselves in a minute, but William give us a bit of a who are you? And a bit of a summary of what you think about psychometrics and coaching. A very, a very quick summary. Thank you, Claire. Um OK, so my name is, my name is William. I'm a business psychologist and executive coach. Once upon a time I was a civil engineer. Um, but I got more interested in people than tarmac and whatnot.
I think maybe the school's career advice, people could have been a bit more on it whenever they were talking to me. But anyway, we are who we are. Um, it was a bit of a switch but I'm glad I made it. So, one of the things about making that switch from engineering into people was getting interested in some of the sort of sacred cows and ideas and things like that.
And, and one of the, one of the ones that I did a bit of exploring around was psychometrics, personality, personality testing and research. And I just found it quite interesting that some of the very, very popular tools were not particularly well supported by evident. And I guess over the last couple of years, I have just raised that in a few different places, made a bit of a nuisance of myself. So that would be, I guess that would be my short introduction.
Thank you, William. Uh So let's find out who's come to the pub today and I'm really interested in what has made you interested in this conversation. So, Jamie Adam. Hello. Good morning. It's good to be here. So, what piqued your interest? Ooh. Now, that's a good question. Um For me, it's this, this quest for truth that we all embark on, I think within the coaching sphere, I don't wanna say industry that sounds a bit mechanical. But you know, that's for another conversation.
A lot of truth gets assigned to psychometric testing, profiling what have you and it automatically leads people down a particular path. And is that with good reason? What value is there in that? Can we trust these things to people accept things wholeheartedly without understanding the full, full nature of it? So it was just to, I'm here to kind of explore that a little bit further with, um, the good people who I'm with here today. Fantastic William. Put his thinking face on.
So that's good, John Barton. Hello. Hi, Claire. Hi, everyone. Um, yeah, I'm, I uh been coaching for several years. I'm still in a corporate role. So I do coaching in addition to my, my kind of day job if you like. Um, I've been on the receiving end of uh, of psychometrics a few times. So for, you know, job interviews in the past, um, and also as a coach. So I've been coached and had psychometrics introduced to me that way and I found them very interesting.
Um, and as, as I've developed as a coach, I found the tools, you know, particularly interesting as I've been able to get a deeper knowledge of how they work. But I think as a coach, I've also become aware of some of the potential pitfalls as well and, um, the, the kind of allure if you like that these, these tools can have. And so I think that the thing that brings me here, I think is to reflect a bit more about, um whether we're sometimes using the tools to satisfy our own needs as coaches.
And we, we, we need to remember to keep the client at the center of it. Um, particularly if we've only got superficial knowledge of a particular tool. I'm really struck by that word allure because it's that shiny thing that's attracting people. Uh, I love how I'm, I'm sitting here watching the conversation watching William go. Oh, Liz. Hello. Hi, Claire. Hi, everyone. Um, I, I work in the NHS part time and also have my own coaching business part time.
But I have the joy of being able to coach in both places. And, um, I've, I've put my hand up to come along today really, I suppose to challenge myself in a conversation that's going to be much more rigorous than perhaps I'm used to. Um, uh, I'm a fan of a particular type of psychometric and I often use the theory of that within conversations as an invitation as another way to think about things.
Um, and it is, it's a union based tool and it is the way I see the world, it's so ingrained in the way, the way I see people and try to understand what's going on for them to think about how best I can work with them. What are their preferences, things like that. So I'm conscious that I might be in a, in a room full of people who think very differently to that. So open to be nudged around a bit, I suppose what a wonderful thing is difference because it helps us make our own meaning, doesn't it?
Yeah, Richard Bennett, I'm going in alphabetical order. You may have noticed Richard Bennett. Welcome. Oh, my name's Richard. I, uh, run AAA business um that provides executive search team board, systemic um coaching services. And uh I'm also a Psychometric practitioner. Um I'm here today because William is always my go to, I love his, um his healthy obsession with uh reliability and validity of um of uh of various tools when I go around with my curiosity wanting to collect a new one.
So, um he probably has stopped me over the last five or five odd years of, of investing money to learn something that might not be reliable and might not be valid. And I'm, you know, he really is my, um my guiding light on sticking with tools which are, which are true and real.
Um And the reason I'm, I'm here today, Claire is when I listen to the podcast and conversation that you had with William, um, a line that you said, um around from the coaches' perspective, oh, you know, a little bit more about me than I know about you. And I thought, oh, that's true. And that sort of sparked a bit of a nerve really? So I thought, and, and I've changed my style actually since then. Um, but I thought it would be great to turn up and, um, and, and join the, join the conversation.
Well, it's lovely to meet you, Richard. It's funny, isn't it? Because what you've done there is you've given a really good example of how a line, which is what we're doing here and cause us to think about stuff and make things different. Um Somebody said something to me on Friday about something else altogether and I've sat with it all weekend and it sort of arrived yesterday. Yeah. Ok. Now I understand. So Richard Proctor. Hello. Hello. Uh Good to be here.
And I've been wondering as you've been talking, whether I could describe myself as a recovering psychometric junkie. Uh So prior to, prior to training as a coach and getting involved in coaching, I did a lot of um facilitation for management teams and leadership teams and businesses um and leadership training. And they probably used I would it probably an exaggeration to say virtually every psychometric tool on the market in one guise or another.
And I had the principle of always doing it on myself before I subjected it on clients, even if I was beginning a contractor to do it so that I could understand it. So sorry, I was enjoyed that, but did begin to question and I think I moved during that time from, you know, probably 1012 years ago, the, the thing about pull pulling out that rabbit from the hat saying, and this is you through to um saying this is some interesting information, isn't it? What do you think?
Uh to, to, because I think uh Clare uses the term about making meaning and who, who's making the meaning. Uh And I think in the early days, I was definitely using the Psychometric to make meaning on behalf of the cloud. Whereas I've learned that this is much more important that people make their own meaning. So, so I'm interested to learn about that. I do less of that. Now, I still do coaching.
Um But I'm still interested, I still carry around my personal strength finders profile as a kind of template of that really describes who I am. So I kind of like that cos it feels true to me for me. Um And, and, and I'm in the middle stage, somebody else who I'm doing some work for has asked me to do a psychometric profile. So I filled it in and not yet had the feedback. So it's an interesting stage at which I have this conversation.
What an amazing plethora of insights and questions and experience and wondering that we have around the table. I feel we represent an awful lot of things that are going on in the, in well in leadership generally and in humanity, William, as you hear all those lovely things. What are you noticing? Um, I'm feeling quite, feeling, quite nervous. There's a lot of really interesting perspectives in the room and, um, I want to, I want to tread lightly.
Um, so, so I guess, I guess just something, something that I'm noticing that is a little bit on my radar just now is this idea of making? We'll just go. Ok, let's just go straight, shall we? So, this idea of meaning making I think is a really important one. And one of the things I've been wrestling with recently, I've got a whole bunch of like half written blog articles about this and I never quite finished one of the published.
But one of the, one of the places that some of these tools go to and I'm thinking about a couple of tools in particular that the evidence base for in terms of published research is, is pretty poor. And I'm not saying that published research is the benchmark for everything either, but the benchmark for that is pretty poor, but the marketing is very aggressive.
So you've got, you've got this kind of disconnect and where that marketing tends to if I was going to be a bit cheeky hide is in this idea of self awareness that actually the purpose of the tool is to help build self awareness.
And you don't really have to have a discussion about objective accuracy if we're just saying, well, ok, my friend, it's all about self awareness and meaning making and what, what, what I would say is, well, how do we know that we're doing self-awareness rather than self delusion because something can appear meaningful subjectively to the individual. But it, but it's, you know, it's just not, it's not accurate.
And so, so one of the things I'd like to introduce as an idea is this idea of something that is um neutral in terms of a worldview. So something like those ink blocks, you know, the roar in blocks or somebody showed me a pack of cards the other week, I think they're called Saga Cards or something like that. And they've got sort of very sort of um Freudian images on them. So it would be like, you know, an old haggard man, but he's wearing a beautiful robe. That was the one that caught me.
They're not putting forward a worldview. They're just saying here's an image make of it what you will. So I'm not against this idea of subjective meaning making at all. Sometimes people say that to me, oh, you know, everything doesn't have to be published in a peer reviewed journal, you know, like, yeah, yeah, true. But those things aren't putting forward a worldview. They're just saying here we are make up is what you will when it comes to these.
Some of these, I should also say some of these psychometrics that the evidence base is pretty poor for. They are, they are putting forward something and saying, make it me what you will. But they're also putting forward a worldview saying this is how people are and it's that this is how people are. That I would challenge, I would say, well, what's the evidence for that?
So it's not so they're not neutral the way that some of these more subjective tools might be, they're introducing a paradigm or a mindset or a view. And it's that view that I think hang on a minute here. If I, if I swallow that view and start to work from that view of how people are, how do I know that I'm not leading people into self delusion rather than self awareness? I guess that's where I've gone. Oh, self delusion or self awareness, what are we thinking?
Silence, mind is blown in the first five minutes. It feels like a really big question. That one of those ones that's going to sit with me for a while as it trickles down, I think and then back up. Um, and, um, I guess I'm immediately thinking about the conversations, even the ones that I've had this week coaching conversations that I've had this week and 363 bucks. Actually, um, I think what's my role in, what has been my role already in the, in that process towards self of self awareness?
Where am I comfortable? I suppose in questioning, playing with my head, can I invite you to consider a different question you said? Where am I culpable? Yeah, I think my question, my less guilty question is, what's my role? Yeah. Sure. Richard Bennett. II, I think if, if through invalid and unreliable tools we are as practitioners in, well, it's quite an unregulated industry leading people and encouraging people to be delusional about themselves.
Um, at best, that's not fair and at worst it's, um, I, I, it's, it, it's almost like against trade descriptions act. It's um it's inappropriate, I think and, and I've watched people even on linkedin who are not super qualified, um get super overexcited about tools and clients that they've got, that they've got over excited about tools that are unreliable and uni and unvalidated.
Um, and, and, and it just, it's, it just strikes me as a little bit of a con and then what's even more worrying is when you challenge the practitioner, they're completely unaware of it. And that's probably even more worrying that people are selling things that they don't, that they don't know enough about. I think there's something underneath what you're saying, Richard as well because there's something about ethical practice of the practitioner.
I was struggling as you saw as well as well as, as well as ethical practice of the thing. And what I think I heard you say was when you take, when you take a lack of maturity in the ethical practice of the practitioner and a lack of maturity in the ethical practice of the tool you get what you've just described.
I, I was in conversation yesterday or the day before with a psychiatrist academic around, around the challenge in the coaching world that it's unregulated that people can set themselves up and they can do anything and we're working with vulnerable people and actually, it's the vulnerable people where this is most, uh, an ethical thing. Everybody wants to speak Richard Proctor.
Um I'm thinking about persuasion in, in the sense of the, I, I completely agree with the comments that have, that have been made. Part of me is slightly a bit more relaxed. And I'm thinking if tools are used to ask questions rather than to give answers is, is a slightly less harm being done than if we use it as a prescriptive thing. Not that I'm disagreeing with what Richard or, or William said.
Um, and, and the whole thing about persuasion is and, and uh yeah, I've played a role, I have not been comfortable. I've played a role in the past where it's certainly used to kind of almost say, well, this is a really, you know, I, I don't think I've ever said this is absolutely you, but that it, it carries a persuasive element, doesn't it? That the glossy, the nice brand, all the rest of it is a sense of trying to persuade, which seems to be antithetical.
Oh, not a pub word is, it seems to be going against what uh uh what the spirit of and the, and the philosophy and the ethics of coaching is about, which is not about persuading, but about discovery. Yeah, John. Uh yeah, I, I um I like one of the terms you use Claire in simplifying coaching, you use the term power tool. So I really like that because um with a power tool, you need to know what you're doing otherwise someone can get hurt so they can be quite clunky and clumsy.
Um So I, the, the other, the other thing I like about your, your metaphor of a power tool when, when using psychometrics is um the imbalance of power. So, you know, whether we can obviously discuss um the different types of psychometrics, the extent to which they're kind of rigorously uh tested scientifically.
Um But w when you use a a psychometric tool, um how you introduce that into the coaching is, is really important um because it can just disrupt the very natural, otherwise, very natural conversation you can have uh with a coach. E so I think the um so I think the power tool metaphor is, is really helpful to, to help reflect on, you know, some of these ethical questions that, that we're covering. That's so interesting.
Cos recently, one of my colleagues put on Facebook, can anyone lend me a chainsaw? And I went, do you know how to use that? And she went? Yes, I do. And it was that it was that fit or response of me? That goes, oh, that's a very dangerous thing to do because of course, it is, cos if I, if I used a chainsaw that would be a very dangerous thing to do. But she's trained and experienced and knows what she's doing.
So interesting, Jamie, this has been a very interesting conversation so far and it's gone deep very quickly. I'm, I'm struck by this thought of, of the tools that we use and the question that we kind of need to ask as coaches perhaps of, is it a means or is it an end? And I think some of the marketing that gets wrapped around these things, it puts them more as a, as am uh an end in themselves rather than a tool for a greater end.
Um The other side to that is the, what, what are we looking at that's useful and what are we looking at? That's sacred, what we're dealing with? And I think Claire, you mentioned about the vulnerability of some of the people that we deal with. Um, and also in our approach, what we're doing is very, very quickly and I'm, I'm, I'm sure everyone here's experienced this within a few minutes of a, of an initial conversation.
People are opening up and sharing things that they haven't shared with friends and family and you, you treat that's a sacred space, that's a sacred space. We're dealing with this beautiful complex creature that we call people and we, we tread that lightly the second that we stop remembering that it becomes an industrial exercise and, and a bit clunky and we, we kind of lose our ee ethical right to continue in that conversation.
And then everything else that gets added to that kind of disappears out the window cos we've, we've lost our, our mooring so to speak. But the keeping the question of what is it that's sacred. What is it that is it? That's good allows us to then approach this question of how valid is a tool knowing that there might be no perfect tool. But how good is good enough for the end that we're actually setting out for? Interesting. Thank you, William. What's she thinking?
Oh, a couple of things, lots of things. Um So just, just a continuous point that I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I would separate for, for, for the interest of thought. I would separate the tool from the end.
And that, that's quite, you know, it's like on one level, the most, the most effective tool out there, however, we choose to define effective might be one that I would choose not to use for other reasons and, and the reasons would be that it's, um, it's subjectively very effective, but it's objectively not very accurate.
And I think there's a really somebody, somebody told me something a wee while ago that apparently, you know how the IC F have like a complaints email address that people can send complaints in about coaches. Um, and I only know this because someone told me, I don't know this from personal experience. I've yet to be, I've yet to be complained about in spite of my best efforts.
But, um, apparently the biggest, um, bucket of complaints that the IC F get is about coaches using psychometrics that they're not qualified to use. And I think that's really, I think that's really irony, really ironic because it really irony, you know, I'm sorry, I've been up all night with a toddler. Um I think it's really ironic because I would say actually, it's not even if you're qualified to use some of these ones that's not good.
I would say the biggest complaint should be coaches using tools that are not fit for purpose, not be unqualified to use them. Um, but where I've ended up at is not so much looking at people, I've ended up looking at the vendors of these things and the more I look at them, the more I get really angry. Actually, it's funny somebody mentioned trading standards that I have actually contacted and emailed trading standards about these things and treating standards are very polite.
But they said actually we, we've got quite a few other, other things to worry about my friend. You know, this isn't, this isn't such a big deal. We've got a lot of counterfeit items. We've got this, that and the other, we've got a lot of poisonous things on the market that people shouldn't be eating. That they are so well. Ok. But these are potentially psychologically poisonous. But at the very least I'd say very commercially aggressive and very cynical.
So, one of the vendors that I can nudge quite a lot has a big section on the site about having a science team in the last 20 years. They published one paper and the paper was not good. I mean, you could almost argue the paper, what they found in the paper and validates the tool. So, um so I think a lot of these vendors and some of the vendors are very good. They publish a lot of research, they update their stuff, you know.
So I'm not, I wouldn't lump all psychometrics into the same place, but some of these vendors are very, very commercially aggressive and it is sort of buyer beware, you know, caveat. Um Another one that I was looking at the other day, they've started, I get more and more of their adverts on my linkedin feed because I made the mistake of engaging with one of their adverts.
I'm just asking a question and, you know, they're using the term, become a coach, you know, do our, do our three day qualification and become a coach and they're starting to stitch that word. And you can really see, you know, if, if I'd never thought, you know, if I'd never thought about it why wouldn't I just sign up because it's a global brand. It's organizations talk about it. You wouldn't, you wouldn't think for a second. Hang on a minute here.
If we changed some of the words about in the report, statistically, that wouldn't invalidate the report because the report is statistically invalid. Anyway, you just, you know, I can't think of, you would assume that if you go to buy a car from a car dealership, it's got an engine, you know, the sleazy and greasy as car dealerships can be, that would be a pretty rational assumption. And yet for some of these tools, the engine is completely absent.
It was a, such an interesting thing on the radio yesterday about electric, about driverless cars. And somebody who worked for a famous electric car company had left the company and is saying they say that we can have driverless cars, but you need to know that it's not about the risk to the driver of the driverless car. It's a risk to the child walking down the road with the dog. Yeah. How does it make a choice? Which is exactly. Yeah. Which is exactly what we're talking about here, isn't it?
So, there's so much ethics woven into what we're saying today. Yeah, it's a very underdeveloped ethical conversation in the coaching world. Like, you know, I think being a qualified practitioner doesn't satisfy the ethical criteria, I think there's a huge number of ethical questions it poses that are, you know, would, would you use horoscopes, would you use graphology? So, graphology was a study of writing.
And, you know, if you, if you did extra long w or if your letters were forward leaning, there's a whole load of meaning made of that which statistically turns out to predict nothing about anybody. And so, you know, coaches would really, really sort of, you know, have a reaction to the idea of bringing those tools in. And it's like, well, why not those tools and these tools where, where's the line kind of thing? But it's heavily connected, isn't it for coaches to income generation?
I'm getting a little some real noddy nods there, Liz. What are you thinking? Yeah, my brain's going in two directions which may not be helpful.
But the first train of thought I was having as I was listening to people was around really was around the ethics of the usually organizational psychologists who train us to be practitioners in these tools and just how little time, uh, and, uh, and even when there is time spent on trying to understand the statistical reasoning behind all of the tools, how poorly explained and communicated that bit is.
So I'm curious about that, you know, and I think, you know, I've been through, I've been through a three day training and a one day training. Um, yeah, and very little time spent on those to the point where I would have to go back to the back of the book and try and read what they say in order to try and explain it. I don't have a great memory to start with. But so yeah, a lot of curiosity I suppose about those people who are training us to use these tools.
The other avenue I suppose I'm thinking about is and human beings like to tell stories. They like to hear stories, they like to create stories and these tools are creating stories and we are helping to create stories by how we explain them, how we introduce them. Um You know, and to go back to that, is it self awareness? Is it self delusion through those stories? How, how will we ever know? Yeah, how will we ever know? But I agree wholeheartedly. This is all 100% about ethics. Really?
Um Yeah, I, that I, what you're saying there is so interesting. Cos I'm sitting here thinking about my husband and myself. So for years, people have said to us using words from psychometric tools, which we have also done that he's an introvert and I'm an extrovert and that's not true because actually what we have discovered in the last three years is that I gain my energy from being entirely alone and he has to have people in order to be able to function.
So, so those labels have not really served us. Um because I'm the outgoing one, he's the quiet one. That's true. But those are different kind of words, aren't they? But I've had to seek more and more to go off on my own interpersonal space because actually that's what's like life giving for me cos being the life and soul of the party is not. And then if he's on his own, he can't function. So, you know, it's, it's a really interesting thing, John.
I uh listen to this, um, you know, I think one of the important um things if we, if we, you know, we're gonna have to occasionally we, we may, you know, um find we have to use questionnaires in certain cases and um uh we're working with Corporates. Um and I think it's really important as coaches to say what we, what we can and can't do just to be very open and uh upfront about, you know, the extent to which we're an expert in something, uh or, or not.
Um the, the other thing I'm kind of taking away from this conversation is the importance of um, of not putting a limit on our personalities. Personalities are, are they're not static. Um And so, you know, uh even a rigorous questionnaire will give you a picture. It may be based on self reporting. Um I think explaining the limitations of questionnaires is really important and, and keeping the emphasis on our ability to change. Um Carl Jung talks about the wilderness of human personality.
Yeah. Thank you, John. I love how Richard's raising a virtual glass there to go. Yay. Sorry about that, Claire. I'm, I'm dyslexic and I meant to put a hand, not a thumb. So I do apologize. I read the wrong thing. Let's hear from Richard Proctor and we'll hear from you, Richard. I'm well, this is controversial. So, how are we saying? Oh, William, are you saying don't ever use these things or are you saying we need to be much more clever and aware and ethical in the way that we use them?
So is there ever a good time to use psych to? Um So, so I think you have to split them into different buckets. I think you have to say there are, there are, there are not psychometric tools, there are ones that are validated strongly by peer reviewed published research and there are ones that are effectively made up and very well marketed. Um And I would almost say those ones don't deserve the label of a psychometric tool.
Um But, but they, they own it and they wear it, they push themselves under that guise. So, um the conversation about how to use these things well is huge and even if you have the most well validated statistically accurate one, you know, you can still, you can still do quite healthy amount of damage with that. So I think it's almost two separate conversations. You know, what, what are the tools that it's ethical to use? And then what does ethical good use look like in practice.
And you've got to be a wee bit careful about what, what conversation are we having just now? Not, not just that, that sounds terrible, but I've just, I've been in enough conversations where it jumps around and it's like, well, hang on a minute. Are we talking about almost just the foundational element of if we were going to subject these, if we were going to select these things on objective quality, what does that look like?
Then it's a question of, ok, now you've got a good one, want us to do with it, which power tool is actually plugged in, working and ready to go and, and, and safe and then, ok, now how do you use a drill kind of thing? So I'm not, I'm not saying never use is the short answer, but power tool could be a sewing machine or it could be a chainsaw. Yeah. Or, you know, an old, an old scabby rusty thing that we found at the back of the garage with a fuse missing.
And, you know, you don't know if I touch that. There's like anything, there's, there's levels to it, there's, there's, there's hammers and then there's hammers and it's just ok. Which one are we going for? Then the question of technique and, and, and what actually happens when you're debriefing these things and everything like that?
I mean, that, that's a huge thing but interestingly, um, or I think interesting to Liz's point, a lot of these companies that are pushing the ones that are not so great in my view, they jump straight into the use. They don't jump into that foundation. They just go right. OK. It's almost just assumed that this is of a quality. Let's not discuss what quality looks like or how we make decisions about quality in this domain. Let's just jump into someone's completed the profile.
You've got the sheets and now you're putting it under the nose and this is what you talk about because I, I ask people, you know, when I see people on linkedin that publish a thing saying I'm qualified, I'll occasionally just send a message and say, hey, I'm just really curious to understand when you did that course, how were subjects like reliability and validity discussed? You know, how were you introduced those concepts? I never get a good answer. You know, it was like all day too.
They talked about face validity. It's like, ok, so how believable the thing is on its face, not how statistically accurate is cool. OK. Ah Then the kind of ethical, I don't know, the ethical alarm bell starts to go off a bit for me. Mm Richard Bennett. You back to your point of um what you and your husband were saying about the introvert, extrovert.
There is a, a tool on the market that does measure introversion and extroversion and when they train you to use that tool, which has huge negative press about its lack of reliability and lack of validity when they train you to use it, they tell you that. But by the way, if your clients don't like the answer, they can change the answer, cos they own the profile.
So if you were an introvert, Claire and you're actually an extrovert, you, you, you've missed a trick cos they should have told you that you can change it and make up as you go along and, and if you're gonna make up as you go along, why go through the process in the first place? Exactly. Exactly. I'm just sitting here thinking, I'm, I'm thinking of doing a little, um, a little check in list for coaches to think about how they're doing in various areas and it will be a little check in list.
It, it, it will not be a profiling tool or a psychometric test or anything else. It will be. Here are some things to think about, about how well or not you think you're doing in each of these areas? But isn't it interesting how quickly one of those things can turn into something that sounds like something else. Cos really all that is going to be is the back of an envelope and that's its purpose. Its purpose is to be a conversation starter. Here's the back of an envelope.
You know how courageous do you think you are in your coaching conversations? Not, I am doing an assessment here. So, yeah, interesting Rich Proctor to lower the hand. I apologize, William just on just two things that are hopefully quite one of the things someone said was personality is not fixed.
Um I think there's a really interesting discussion in there and what is personality and how literate on personality and personality, psychology and personality research, our coaches because I think there's a fundamental thing about what's our mindset or what our beliefs around people and how is that shaped by this? And there is, there is some good thinking out there around us. It depends how you define personality, but the idea of personality traits are pretty persistent and pretty stable.
The wonderful thing about humans is we can learn a whole bunch of behavior that sits around that, but the truth itself is pretty, pretty stable over time. So, so that's, that's quite interesting. And again, like the kind of um a lot of the time the vendors publishing these psychometrics take people off down a weird path when it comes to, how do we even conceptualize personality? Um And then what does that if we take on these beliefs around a particular model?
How does that then start to show up in our coaching? And how does that start to box us in or guide us or do we? It's almost like, it's almost like this idea of like A II I can, what would you call it, do you know? But memetics. The idea of the idea of like an idea traveling through a population, the way like a gene would travel through a population. And so it's like, if I become infested with the idea that personality works a certain way that then start infesting other people.
And one of the kind of tragedies of the, the really commercially aggressive nonsense vendors of these tools is that I think when I talk to people that have gone down those rabbit holes, they generally speaking, they're not, they're not then a fresh slate to talk to other ideas. You know, other ideas are then sort of a challenge to their existing thinking, which I think can be a bit of a, what am I trying to say? I just think it's a bit of a shame.
Some, sometimes I think if you hadn't met that company at that point in time and taken on this memetic idea about personality, then there might be a bit more openness to exploring other ideas about it. So open mindedness really matters. Yeah. Yeah. And I say, I say that someone is constantly trying to badge away this myself because I think actually I would love to, I would love to drop the tools that I use in favor of better ones.
The minute they're published, I think it's, you know, I'm not the tools that I use. I just, I'm just a guy that's picked up a few things and we'll drop them the minute better comes out. Interesting. So, last orders, that's an English thing for those of you listening in other parts of the world. Uh My question as we move towards the end is, is from everybody is what do you know now that you didn't know when we started this conversation?
And so that's one and the other one is, what's the question that you're taking away to think about? I love that. Now, this thinking moment, whose thought? Sure. Uh I um I found this fascinating conversation. Um just we, we particularly the, the, the um yeah, we've had some really interesting conversation about the ethics of how the tools are kind of sold and, and it's our, you know, duty as, as coaches really um to challenge the rigor with which um we're trained if we're gonna be using these.
So, you know, power tools, I think the question for me is to explore further the, the extent to which um uh when we have conversations with, with uh coaching clients, um the extent to which if they're using these tools that they, that we're saying this is this is fixed versus uh fluid.
Um iii I always see coaching as an opening up of possibility and, and um encouraging, um you know, an um an ability for, for the, for the thinker to think about their opportunities and their poten their, their potential to be the authentic person they, they were meant to be. Um And so Um I'm gonna be reflecting on how the, the tools can get in the way of that sometimes if, if we're told that that personality doesn't change as much um as, as, as, as it could otherwise do. Thank you. Thank you.
So, some really interesting opening up questions for you less. Yeah, I, I'm, I'm really um I'm sitting with that fluidity versus label uh space, I suppose. And I didn't study applied statistics. I did do sociology um amongst amongst other things. And, and I do remember, sorry, croaky, I do remember a whole module around labels and how they're damaging and helpful. And that's the spectrum. And how do you navigate that?
And I guess I'm still sitting with that, but I definitely feel like I'm edged a bit further forward with that question and that thinking and I have a very dear friend of mine who always challenges me about labels. So I feel like this is a topic for the next time we catch up. That will be a great place to explore this with. Wonderful. Thank you. I wish I'd done sociology, but that's a different story for those of you who don't know. I did a degree in applied statistics.
There, there's been no validity to me in my entire life. Richard Proctor, is that uh in terms of what do I know? I didn't know before? II, I think I'm kind of maybe rethinking or certainly thinking much clearer about this question. Of not just the validity of the tool, but then the, then the use of it, um you know, not thinking because I've tried to use the sewing machine, it's ok to pick up the chainsaw or something like that. So just kind of sort of thinking about that, that more.
Um And the question actually was, whereas it's not these days, a regular part of what I do to use the tools is, is thinking about if I were to be a, if I, you know, do approach using one in the future, actually, how do I do that? That's the question. So, you know, what is it I need to think about? Because there's lots here around the ethics and around the validity of the tool and about the way that it's used and who's doing it. And so there's lots of more questions.
So the core question is how, how do I do it the next time that I'm in that position to either offer one or have been asked to do one, right. Thank you, Richard Jamie. Well, I'm, I'm really grateful for the insights that come from uh the joys of a shared conversation. I've been really appreciative of that. I, I don't know about anybody else, but my, my mind will feast like a king on this for days. Um probably like the kings of old, more than more than modern ones.
But anyway, that's a different topic. Um I'm struck particularly this morning. By the ethical considerations of everything that we do, you know, Williams referred to this more eloquently previously that they, that the need for an ethical, a solid ethical foundation for everything and, and the need for that cross, everything that we do, however, that actually works it out in our individual settings. I think that's, that's absolutely crucial.
Um Just reflecting back on, on William's experience with trading standards and, and psychological poison being administered um in interesting, that's, that's one to feast on.
But uh the, the question that I'm gonna take away is how, how in practice I can approach a person's receptivity to any tool or exercise that I consider introducing because the, the validity that they attach to it will be based upon their own understanding more so than on, you know, the, the evidence or the marketing or whatever it's all about how they take it.
And if I treat that as really sacred and careful, then I will have to have done my work in preparation to even dare to suggest to bring in by invitation, anything that I might be considering. And I think I, if I can dwell on that, I stand a cat in hell's chance of doing good for people and avoiding leading them all kinds of dangerous, dangerous garden paths to the back of, of garages where rusty old power tools might be laying around. I'm just thinking about dancing with a chainsaw.
Probably not a good idea. Roger Steer said ethics is in everything. And I think for me, one of the things that this has really unpacked is the, is, is the fact that that the, the tools are an ethical thing and how we use them are a different ethical thing. So there's a huge amount of stuff here that maybe we'll have another conversation. Richard Bennett.
Yeah, I think when I came to this conversation this morning, I thought that when you use psychometrics in uh in coaching conversations that you had to be super careful, I would say now that I know that you have to be super careful. Um So I will reflect on that as I move forward and I think moving forward, um as you know, we, we talk about being qualified and being an expert in these, in these tools, I I will still continue to only use reliable and valid tools.
But what I will do is stop over preparing on the analysis with co cheese on the debrief. Continue to share all of the documentation which is usually written in the King's perfect English. So people can usually make their own, read the analysis themselves and just really hone in on those questions about what are your reflections on the information that you see, what resonates with you? What doesn't resonate with you? Is it true? Why is it true? Why isn't it true?
And not over prep myself as the expert debrief cos then I think subconsciously, you can start to lead a conversation that you shouldn't be leading and therefore give them the power tool and let them, um let them, um, fire up the Quattro. Yeah. And they might say this is really helpful. Like it is a power tool. I need to cut down my tree. Well, they might go, actually, it's a little twig and I think I can break it off my hand. That's, that's for them, isn't it?
That, that's for them to say we're gonna get through this 2.5 hour debrief whether we like it or not. Yeah. And, and it's who leads because when we lead, they follow and when we lead heavily at the beginning of a relationship, they will follow us for a long time and then we may never get back into partnership, William. What do you know now that you didn't know at the beginning of this conversation?
Wow. Um I've just massively enjoyed the gentleness that making me think about my, my approach to this whole thing because I think sometimes like I'll do the odd blog or things like that and it's generally a wee bit more spiky. So I think, I think there's something about the knowing that this can be explored in a very gentle and curious way with people that are deep into it.
Um That I've been really fascinated by how the framing of this is an ethical discussion has really kind of come up in this conversation really, really strongly. And I think that's, there's something in that for me, really something in that, that it's a, it's an area that's well worth exploring and developing and trying to contribute to, you know, what, what are the ethical dimensions, ethics and everything.
So what is good ethical practice look like across these different levels of selection of tool, use of tool to even use these things? What's the, so, so that's been, that's been really fascinating. Um And then a question would be, what would a useful contribution look like going forward? I've got a second question as well. It's quite cheeky, which is would, would Carl Young, I was reading my young at the weekend, would, would Carl Jung actually use a young game psychometric.
And I don't know if he would. I have a, I have a final question which just came up for me, which is the one I'm going to take away, which is, is the ethics of using the tool in contradiction to the ethics of coaching. Are they in conflict? So that's one to take away because that's the one I'm going to take away. Thank you all for coming to the Coaching Inn, William mckee John Barton, Jamie Adam, Richard Proctor Liz Price and Richard Bennett. What an absolute delight.
Uh people, let's uh listeners, let's let's have this conversation in the show notes. Um And I know that there'll also be a deeper conversation in the supervision community if you want to join us over there on Patreon. So thank you everybody for coming. Let's have a selfie as we go, everybody. Smile marvelous. Thank you for listening, everybody. Thank you for coming, everybody. Bye bye. Thank you.
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