On the latest season of Visiting Experts, author Richard Davis joins host Brett Hendrie to talk about his new book Good Judgement. Richard offers leaders a framework for how to judge people more effectively and breaks down why we should discount emotional intelligence in favour of personality. Give it a listen now!
On the latest season of Visiting Experts, author Richard Davis joins host Brett Hendrie to talk about his new book Good Judgement. Richard offers leaders a framework for how to judge people more effectively and breaks down why we should discount emotional intelligence in favour of personality. Give it a listen now!
Brett Hendrie: How often have you heard that you shouldn't judge others growing up? It's a well-intentioned idea, but isn't it also a little naïve?
In reality, we have to make judgments about people every day at work, we have to decide who we hire to whom we assign the next big project, whom to trust with important financial decisions, and if you think about it, our ability to make good judgments of others is one of the most critical skills that determines our own success. So how well equipped are you really to understand other people's personalities?
Welcome to Visiting Experts, a Rotman School podcast for lifelong learners, exploring transformative ideas about business and society with the influential scholars, thinkers and leaders, featured in our acclaimed Speaker Series.
I'm your host, Brett Hendrie, and I'm joined by Richard Davis. Richard is an organizational psychologist, an expert in assessing personalities, and he has spent decades advising business leaders from some of the world's biggest companies, including Amazon, meta, Starbucks, Nike and the NBA. Richard's specialties include CEO succession and executive assessment, and his new book is Good Judgment: Making Better Business Decisions with the Science of Personality. It's a terrific read and a great roadmap to becoming better at assessing the people in our lives.
Richard, welcome to the Rotman School and welcome to the podcast.
Richard Davis: Thank you so much. Great to be here.
BH: So you are an expert in this field. You have been trained, and your career has been focused on how to assess people, how to judge people, but the rest of us don't have that level of expertise. Can you help us understand from your point of view, what are the ways that you see people making judgments today, and why do you think that that is generally ineffective?
RD: We tend to think about judgment as some sort of analytical decision making process. You know, you have two options in front of you. You have to choose between one or the other. And we kind of detach that from the people that actually influence those decisions. And from my perspective, good judgment is actually good judgment about people. We're the sum total of those decisions, and inevitably, people have influenced those decisions. So you know who you're friends with, who you date, or who you marry, who you hire, how you get along with people that work. All of the decisions that you make at some point are influenced by the people around you. So the whole idea is, get better at reading other people, pay attention to the science of personality psychology, I call this perceptivity. Really build muscles around this, and you'll end up making better decisions and therefore living a happier and more successful life.
BH: One of the things you also talk about in the book is that there's a lot of misinformation out there in terms of how to psychologically assess people and how to assess personalities, and you are somewhat disparaging at the idea of emotional intelligence and even some of the popular personality tests out there, like the Myers, Briggs and so forth. Why have people gravitated to wanting to use models and terminology like that?
RD: With respect to the pop psychology tests, it's not actually based on science. It's based on someone's conception of how to categorize people. Look, when you talk making good judgments about people, inevitably emotional intelligence comes up. Someone's going to say, “Well, you need EQ in order to have good insight into other people.”
Emotional intelligence was originally conceived of as an ability, and that is the ability to understand emotions in others and do something with that information. Then Daniel Goleman comes along and writes a very popular book. It was on the cover of Time Magazine as the most important thing since sliced bread, and that becomes the way to have good insight into other people. The problem is that he changed the concept of emotional intelligence from an ability to a disposition. There are people now who have EQ, and there's no real science to back that up. And the last thing I'll say about this is emotions are helpful to understand in people, but they are fleeting. Personality is persistent, and personality is predictive of behavior. So while it's helpful for me to understand, for example, if you are angry, it's much more powerful for me to understand that you're an angry person.
I was working with a client, and someone in the middle of a hallway slapped someone else. You can imagine that did not go over very well, and HR got involved. This person who did the slapping, which was wholly inappropriate and probably grounds for firing, was also a superstar at work, so they were trying to do something about it. And the initial request was, “Hey, this person needs to control their emotions more.” When I did my assessment, I unpacked what was going on in the psychology of that individual, and there were all kinds of reasons why the person was angry, and it was dispositional. It's not just a momentary lapse of judgment and not a momentary loss of control of emotions. It was core to the person's personality, based on his upbringing and a whole host of other developmental factors. So in the end, the person actually needed clinical psychology help just to support the personality disorders that were that were underlying the person's disposition, rather than just the emotions of the moment and the expression of those moments.
BH: What is your advice for how people can begin to make better judgments about the people in their lives?
RD: Having better judgment involves really understanding the nature of personality psychology and then applying that to decision making. I use this tool I call the personality blueprint. It's based on the science of psychology. There's 100 years of science into real personality and I apply that to this blueprint.
Imagine you have in front of you five boxes, You're meeting someone for the first time, and you have these boxes in front of you. The first box - you're going to label that intellect, and in that box you're going to put any insights that you see that relate to intellect. Maybe you can see that they're smart. Maybe it's the qualitative nature of their intellect such that they're more linear and logical people, or they're more creative and lateral kinds of people, right?
It may be the topics, in which you're talking, maybe you're talking about some global geopolitical thing that's going on. Well, that's probably indicates that they're aware of what's going on in the world around them. So they have a global mindset. So, it's not only what they're saying, but how they're seeing it as well.
BH: So intellect is box one. What's the second box?
RD: Box two is sociability, and in that box you're going to put any kind of insights that relate to how they interact with other people. That can be the type of vocabulary that they're using. That can be they’re outgoing and gregarious nature and loud, and it could be they’re more introverted and contained person. How does that person make you feel when you're interacting with them? Do they make you feel like they're manipulating you into something? Are they persuasive? Are they influential? Are they do they kind of give you the feeling like they're trying to convince you something, or like the used car salesman, kind of person, right?
It’s not just whether they're introverted or extroverted, how high or low they would be on that scale, but it's the substantive nature of their social acumen. Do they like to be at the center of attention? How do they comport themselves in complicated situations? In stressful situations? In scary situations? Do they take up a lot of space in the room? Or are they more wallflower kind of person.
BH: So we have intellect and sociability.
RD: The next one is emotionality, and in that box you're going to put any kind of insights that relate to how they express their feelings, right? Are they even keeled and composed? Or are they very emotive and very passionate? Are they resilient even? Or do they show they get frenzied around stress? Do they care about other people or not? It's not just whether they get stressed and show and anxious, but how do they show that stress? Do they tear up? Do they get red in the face? Does their voice start to waver? Those are important insights that go in that box.
BH: And so now we've got three of the five. What would the fourth be?
RD: The fourth is drive. And in that box, you're going to put any kind of information that relates to why they do what they do. And there can be a whole variety of things that motivate people and why they do what they do. Are they motivated by money? Are they motivated by fame? But also other sort of nuanced aspects of character that are really important to understand in people. For example, does faith motivate them? Are they politically motivated? What drives their political leanings? Those are the kinds of insights that we're amiss if we don't include in our in our judgment of the other person.
BH: Okay, give us the fifth box.
RD: The fifth and final box is diligence. And is in this box, you're going to put information around how people get things done, or how they approach work. Do they like processes and structure and predictability? Do they like routine? Or are they more creative and spontaneous, and how does that play out in their environment? For example, are they late? If I see that someone comes late to a meeting, especially in assessment, well that information is going to go right into that box. It may be due to all kinds of other things I want to probe into that, but it may just be that they are perennially late, and that's important insight. One example I like to tap into this dimension - you're in a meeting and you have an agenda, and the time is up, does the person want to continue the conversation and forget about all the other things that are on the, agenda? Or do they want to stick with that topic or move on? I mean, all those kind of factors are important in understanding how structured and disciplined the person is.
It’s about reliability. You know, can you rely on them to get the job done? Are they safe pair of hands at the at the wheel? How detailed and accurate are they? Or do they tend to gloss over those details?
BH: What's your advice to people in terms of how to get in a position with somebody that you can really read them in as an open book, as it were?
RD: There are two strategies to this. The first is, at a fundamental level, make them feel comfortable. So it turns out that being in a windowless room, kind of like we are now, sorry about that, is not necessarily helpful in really enabling people to open up. So the best thing you can do is to make people feel comfortable by the setting they are in, by the tone that you are taking with them, by the questions even that you're asking. The second underlying strategy is to ask questions that will enable people to expose their personalities, asking them questions that will facilitate them sharing who they are is a really, really, important strategy to getting people to open up.
BH: These are the power questions?
RD: These are the power questions.
BH: Okay, share with us power questions that you suggest people can use in their conversations with new contacts, new co workers to get to know them.
RD: My style is the chronological interview. You can always ask, no matter how little time you have with them, “Tell me about your journey, and tell me what life was like, maybe in the early years, or growing up.” Note that I'm asking them to walk me through their personal journey, their origin story. That elicits so much more insights about the person's personality than competency-based, behavior-based kinds of questions.
I will say to someone, “Who was an early influencer of yours?” And I would say 90 per cent of the time, they'll think about that for a moment, and they will say a parent. And let's say they say their father was a key influencer of their of theirs at the early in the early years, I will say, “How are you similar to your dad? Dispositionally, how are you like your father? Personality wise?” It's a difficult question to answer. People get stumped by that. They're not used to or ready for that kind of question, and even listeners can think about that now. How are you similar to a parent of yours? When thinking about it, you are not only describing the parent, but you are describing yourself with that frame of reference. It's a question that enables someone to expose more of who they are as a person.
BH: So that's one power question. Are there others?
RD: A key line of question that I asked was around friends, and it goes like this: “Typically, we have lots of acquaintances in our lives, but if you think about your inner circle, it tends to typically remain relatively stable over time. Such that people come in and out of it a little bit, but there's continuity to it. So if you think about your inner circle, are there themes in the kinds of people they are, who's a friend of yours?”And then the follow up question to that is, “What about the opposite of that? Let's say you meet someone that you may be able to get along with or work with, or not, but something in that person tells you that they're not going to be a friend of yours. It's kind of like the friend turn off. What trips you off to that right?” What I'm really asking about is motivation and values because we surround ourselves, particularly on an inner-circle level, with people that share core values. So rather than me, just ask, “Hey, what are your core values?” “Tell me about your friends, your inner circle. Who do you surround yourself with, and what's a friend turn off?”
BH: So those are some helpful power questions for people to keep in mind we have the personality boxes that we spoke about in terms of how to group the different traits of people's characters help us understand how we would actually bring that into a practical situation that we might be at work like a formal interview process?
RD: It starts off a little bit before that, which is to sit down and think about what is required for success in a particular role. We look at the what's going on in the operating environment, the sort of business, the leadership challenges at hand, the culture and so forth. And from that, we develop this success profile that translates leadership competencies and requirements in the role itself with the personality factors that will be important in order to execute those leadership challenges. Too many of us go into interviews, and I see this with boards all the time, that each board member has their own version of what they think good looks like, so they're evaluating against totally different criteria.
Let's say we have a one company that has a strategy to add manufacturing facilities in more geographies. If you kind of take that one important leadership aspect of leadership that's required in order for success, you have to think about what kind of personality will be important in order to do that. That may be very different than changing the marketing strategy or having more of an emphasis on the sales force or whatever it may be. So they may need some of this high diligence orientation, and they may need to be a little bit more hierarchical than other leaders in order to establish the kind of rigor of organizational processes. So once you've established the general personality type that will be important, you also layer that into existing organizational culture, you do have to factor that in. Then you are you have some sort of template against which you can assess people
You can use this concept in a variety of contexts. It should start with, what are the business requirements? What does that mean in terms of disposition? You factor in culture as well, and that's the template against which you evaluate candidates. You can do that at any level. Too many people go right to the interview and try to come up with a list of questions that they think will help them understand if the person has the skills or competencies that they think are necessary, and they don't factor in personality and disposition. Stick with, if you can, with the chronological - tell me your origin story. Make people feel comfortable. Add in a break or two - very helpful hint. And just be really, really curious about understanding who the person is. You will dramatically increase your ability to make better decisions.
BH: Richard, your book is full of great stories, great insights. Is there one takeaway that you hope people have from reading the book, something that you hope people internalize and take forward with them?
RD: One of the big reasons I wrote the book is I'm concerned at a broader level, frankly, that we are at risk of losing perceptivity. Perceptivity will atrophy if you don't use it. And my observation is that we're just not looking at people anymore. We have our heads in our phones. We're looking down. We are doing interviews on Zoom. We are meeting people, potential romantic partners through a profile and a picture on an app. These are not good ways of making decisions about people. I believe that we need to collectively look up and pay attention to people. Have in person meetings with people again. Exercise this cognitive muscle called perceptivity, and use it, or you'll lose it.
BH: That's a great and timely message, especially as we seem to be settling into a new world of hybrid work and email, Zoom, Slack - all these modes that are disintermediating us from the people in our lives. Richard, congratulations on the book. Thank you for being here at Rotman and for sharing these insights with us today.
RD: Thank you so much. Great conversation. I appreciate it.
BH: The book, again, is Good Judgment: Making Better Business Decisions with the Science of Human Personality, by Richard Davis,
This has been Visiting Experts, a Rotman School podcast for lifelong learners, exploring transformative ideas about business and society with the influential scholars, thinkers and leaders featured in our acclaimed speaker series to find out about upcoming speakers and events visiting us here at Canada's leading business school, please visit rotman.utoronto.ca/events this episode was produced by Megan Haynes, recorded by Dan Mazzotta, and edited by Damien Kearns. For more innovative thinking, head over to the Rotman insights hub and please subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts, thanks for tuning in.