What the Scores Mean
These scores are calculated as a percentage of the possible points your employee could have scored for each attribute. This can help you understand how strong their leanings are towards a specific trait. As you might guess, a higher score means they identify with an attribute more. This isn't a right-or-wrong type of score- just an extra indicator of their preferences!
What is the Domain Breakdown?
This is a snapshot of what form of compensation matters most to your employee and the balance between them. The report is intentionally broad and should be used only as a guide as assess their fit with an opportunity. The three domains (Approach, Environment, and Outcomes) are presented as a diagram proportionally divided to correlate with their responses. We find it helps to see the forest before we focus on the trees.
Anna Willtrout Turner's Results
Your employee's results have been compiled below! You will see their High-low Report, which includes breakdowns of their top 3 and bottom 3 key indicators, as well as their Mid Report, which shows which attributes fall in the center of their workplace preferences.
Check out our guide on How to Read Your Results.
Domain Breakdown
What's this?The strength of the Domain scores indicates what class of compensation an individual values most. While not as specific as the individual results that follow, these results help us better understand the priorities and enable more productive conversations. Consider focusing negotiations and team-building discussions around the Domains that are strongest, even if you need to give a little on the side of the chart that is least represented. (For more tips on developing Domain-based strategies, contact our team of consultants.)
Attribute Results
High
The results of the assessment have resulted in a tie between one or more key indicator. When this happens in the High-Low Report, we provide you with the results for all results that tied. For this reason, you see more than three results in the High Report.
High Report
The following results represent the Attributes that contribute most to your employee or candidate's fit with employment opportunities. With the insights shared below, you should be able to develop a strategy that will effectively support evaluating a candidate, contract negotiation, performance evaluation, and aid with their self-discovery.
The results of the assessment have resulted in a tie between one or more key indicator. When this happens in the High-Low Report, we provide you with the results for all results that tied. For this reason, you see more than three results in the High Report.
Variety Highest Attribute
93%
What's this?Strategic Insights
A person with variety in their top attributes is ripe for jobs that don’t necessarily look the same from one month to the next, or even from day to day. One option for them could be jobs that are project-based. They may also enjoy working on a team where everyone needs to wear multiple hats from time to time (for instance, most startups). Variety comes with unpredictability, which might be a perk for these employees. They get to solve problems, and often thrive being thrown into situations in which they are not yet an expert. Variety creates opportunities to gain competency and experience in many different areas. This person will enjoy situations where others might be stressed.
Variety doesn’t necessarily mean a chaotic or unpredictable workplace (though it can in some fields and may be what some want). Some jobs, such as K-12 teaching, coaching, and construction, have variety built into them because of the different topics, lessons, projects, and people these professionals interact with every day.
This person is well suited for positions that have structural reasons for why their work varies. Does the position entail working for a variety of different clients on their various needs? From consulting to accounting to home remodeling, working with clients is one way that variety can be built in. Another often overlooked source of variety is working on a small team or in a small organization. As part of a smaller firm, day-to-day tasks and problems must be addressed by relatively few people, so an individual must pitch in across multiple areas for the venture to succeed.
Things to Consider for Fit with a Position
- Is this a position where they are working with different clients at any given time, and how different might the jobs be for various clients?
- What will their day-to-day work look like? (Often, in positions with high variety this will be a hard question to answer well, and that can actually be a good thing.)
- How big is the team that they will be working on and how do job assignments get handed out?
Evaluation Questions
This section provides a series of questions, tailored to the tested attributes, that will help you as you recruit top talent, work to retain valued team members, and develop a more effective work culture.
What steps would you take if you felt that your job was getting too monotonous?
Repetition is a comfort to some and agony for others. When a person craves variety the most important thing you can do to keep them engaged is to honor that need and build their work profile accordingly. Start a conversation that fuels a conversation around workload balance.
How do you keep yourself challenged at work?
Helping your team feel a sense of ownership for their own progress is important. A need for variety highlights the importance of constantly creating personal benchmarks. Helping your team members challenge themselves will help you keep them engaged.
Describe the project that you most enjoyed working on in the past ten years (not the project that was the most meaningful, but the most enjoyable) Why was it your favorite?
A happy employee is a productive employee, and a productive employee is more likely to be a happy employee. It’s a virtuous circle. Starting a conversation around a good memory will help you learn how to structure their list of tasks in a more compelling way to maximize enjoyment and performance.
Leadership
80%
What's this?Strategic Insights
Someone who values leadership does not necessarily want to be the boss (though it may indicate that they are well suited to taking a leadership role eventually). Valuing leadership suggests that who is in charge matters to them, and there’s good reason for that. Believing in the organization’s leadership and their vision will play a large factor in if these employees succeed and increase their satisfaction at work.
It is also useful to be aware that a direct manager and top leadership are two distinct things. Surprisingly, evidence suggests that organizational leadership is generally more responsible for people quitting than their direct managers are. In situations with great managers, but poor top leadership, only 38% of employees intend to stay with the company. However, in situations with poor managers, but great top leaders, 60% intend to stay! In situations with great management AND leaders, a full 89% intend to stay. So, leadership matters a lot and people can, and often do, overlook flaws in middle management when the organization’s leadership is great.
Studies also show that in “good” companies managers make a big difference in whether or not people leave their jobs, but in “bad” companies, having good or bad managers makes little difference in a person’s decision to leave (they just leave). This is magnified with those who desire positive leadership.
Also, people scoring high in leadership are often ripe for eventual training into leadership positions. This is not necessarily because they are inherently skilled at leadership. Rather, because they see the value and importance of good leadership, they are often intrinsically motivated to become good leaders and are open to taking developmental opportunities when they arise. On the flip side, a crisis in leadership will often create especially low levels of job satisfaction among those who are particularly attuned to it.
Things to Consider for Fit with a Position
- Ask them what a good leader is to them at various levels of the organization. See if that matches well with what you feel your organization offers.
- What organizational leaders have they most looked up to, either from personal experience or from a distance, and why?
Evaluation Questions
This section provides a series of questions, tailored to the tested attributes, that will help you as you recruit top talent, work to retain valued team members, and develop a more effective work culture.
Describe your ideal working relationship with an employer?
Our perceptions determine our reality. Knowing what your team thinks is good leadership will help you tailor your approach so that they see you as a good leader.
Who is a public figure you admire? Why?
Analogies are powerful. Even more so when they are accompanied by analysis. Learning what and whom your team admires will help you emulate similar behaviors and more effectively manage your staff. This is likely to be beneficial for many people.
What makes a person a good leader?
This is a bit on the nose but just asking what they need, particularly more experienced employees, is a sign of respect and denotes confidence.
Clarity
73%
What's this?Strategic Insights
Someone with clarity high in their results is looking for positions that have clearly defined processes, outcomes, and expectations. Many of the most satisfied employees are so happy because they can see that they have become very good, even expert, at something. The feeling of mastery, and making progress toward mastery, is one of the greatest gifts work can offer.
This doesn’t mean that this person needs their hands held to succeed, far from it. It simply means that success must be clearly defined. Through hard work and ingenuity, with clear benchmarks and expectations, they can become more successful in their role every day. They will do best in jobs where there is little mystery to how success is measured or achieved. They want to spend their time becoming great instead of guessing what they’re supposed to do.
One great way to add some clarity to their role is to provide clear benchmarks of success and failure, and especially, benchmarks for promotion. This helps them and others keep track of what they are capable of doing. Clarity in what these employees need to know lends itself to clarity in what they need to do, which is something they appreciate, and for good reason.
Also remember that, as with predictability, many times you can increase the clarity of a position by encouraging management to set clear, realistic expectations for success up front. Nearly all will benefit from moves in that direction, whatever the case.
Things to Consider for Fit with a Position
- What would their typical day at work look like, and how will they know if they’ve done well that day?
- What would your dream employee for this position eventually become excellent at? Is this a match with what the applicant wants? Be open about this in the interview process.
- How clear are the expectations for how success is measured in this role?
Evaluation Questions
This section provides a series of questions, tailored to the tested attributes, that will help you as you recruit top talent, work to retain valued team members, and develop a more effective work culture.
What questions do you have about the job description or this role?
The job description frames the job to be done but also sets the employee's expectations for performance review. Benchmarking is important for a person who values clarity highly. Unfortunately, most job descriptions are poorly written or only capture the minimum standard. A conversation about the job will help you and your candidates get on the same page.
Tell me about a time when you were asked to do a job but weren’t given directions on how to do it?
Perfect clarity is impossible. But those who value clarity are often good at self-direction, particularly when they know the parameters of the task to be done and their latitude for discussion making. This question will help you assess their judgment.
What are the responsibilities of the manager and the employee in clarifying how a job should be done or a problem solved?
Employment is a relationship. Learning a candidate's views on the roles you and they will play in that relationship is important – particularly if the candidate values clearly defined roles.
Autonomy
73%
What's this?Autonomy is an APPROACH
Employee satisfaction in careers depends on how work gets done, not just the nature of the work performed. The same job at different organizations or in different situations can lead to drastically different levels of productivity and worker satisfaction. Understanding how employees want to do their work is key to maximizing productivity, satisfaction, and retention.
Two people can fill a role effectively but can approach their work very differently. Their success and happiness depend largely on their ability to work in the most effective way for them. As an employer, you are looking for a good fit between how potential employees like to approach their work, and how the job at your organization actually gets done, or how much room (or responsibility) the employee has in shaping how their work gets done.
Strategic Insights
Someone with autonomy high in their results values being trusted and appreciates having room to figure out their own way of getting things done. Autonomy can lead to a virtuous cycle with intrinsic motivation – intrinsically motivated employees respond most positively to autonomy, and when given that autonomy they then become more motivated.
Autonomy is deeply intertwined with ownership and trust. Autonomy is the level of discretion employees have over their work and how they do it. The higher the skill level needed for a job, the more autonomy the employee has. Being an expert at something has many perks, and one of them is higher levels of autonomy. Studies show that workers who have high levels of autonomy in their job tend to have better job performance and satisfaction, organizational commitment, lower work-related stress, less fatigue, and more intrinsic motivation.
Autonomy is largely decided by three things: what position an employee occupies within the organization, what type of work they do (surgeon, firefighter, customer service rep, etc.), and who their manager is. Some jobs and positions tend to naturally allow more autonomy, but even in the seemingly best of positions, a micromanaging manager can destroy an employee’s sense of autonomy.
Workers who have autonomy very high in their wants are likely to succeed in jobs where their performance is outcome-based, and their work processes don’t rely on high levels of constant coordination. It’s also worth noting that autonomy doesn’t necessarily mean working alone (though it can). High functioning and close-knit teams can still have high levels of individual, and team, autonomy. Employees who desire autonomy are looking for a role where their tasks are relatively self-contained, and levels of trust are high.
Things to Consider for Fit with a Position
- How is success measured in this role?
- Who else would the worker in this role need to work with to be successful?
- Who else in the organization can do this role? (Often roles that cannot be done by others have higher levels of autonomy—whether that’s being the organization data-wizard, tax accountant, or courier. If nobody else can/will do it, it’s harder to micromanage them.)
Evaluation Questions
This section provides a series of questions, tailored to the tested attributes, that will help you as you recruit top talent, work to retain valued team members, and develop a more effective work culture.
Tell me about your ideal boss?
Candidates who value autonomy highly often recognize the need for leadership, but it is worth understanding how they see themselves interacting with management. Their answer will help you assess their fit within your organization.
How would you (insert task here)?
People who value autonomy need the latitude to do things their way but that doesn’t always mean that everyone understands how to do things well. Gaining insight into how they would approach their job and problem-solve will help you evaluate their ability to be productively self-directed.
Can you describe a situation when you realized that you needed support or direction from a supervisor, and how did you recognize the need for help? How did you get it?
It is imperative for workers who prize autonomy to be able to recognize when they are in over their heads. Probing to see if a candidate possesses that ability will help you make better hiring decisions.
Low Report
These Attributes are the least correlated with “fit" for your employee or candidate. In any relationship or negotiation, it is helpful to know what each side might be able to give in exchange for what you need. Where a low need from an employee or candidate aligns with a high need on your part, a mutually beneficial arrangement can likely be made.
Remuneration
53%
What's this?Strategic Insights
Having remuneration at the bottom of their results table does not mean that this person doesn’t care about money. We all need money. What is suggested by this result is that after meeting their basic needs and personal financial goals, how much money they make takes a backseat to other forms of compensation. They might prefer to be “paid” with more time with family, a friendly work environment, or a prestigious title.
A study from Princeton University found that having a higher income increases happiness only up to about $80,000 per year. Beyond that, higher pay doesn’t influence our happiness very much, and other things start to matter more. This finding has been replicated multiple times. Most people think that being rich will make them happy. Relatedly, most people making $80,000 a year don’t feel rich, but studies show they are just as likely to be happy as people who are making much more money. A person with remuneration low on their list is free to prioritize other values.
Employers often love the idea of having remuneration low in their report, for obvious reasons. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it just means you can pay them less. It primarily means that they care about other things more, so if you’re able to provide the things that are high on their list, enjoy the fact that right now they don’t require as much money to be satisfied.
Location
47%
What's this?Strategic Insights
A person with location low in their results can confidently pursue the best opportunities regardless of their location. They are highly adaptable and can adjust to life in the big city, small town, near family, or far from it. This does not mean that they don't have preferences, just that those preferences do not strongly determine their level of satisfaction at work.
Location agility can be a very powerful advantage when job hunting. (Note: Location preference is a domain that often changes over the course of a career. It may be in their top three at one stage of their career and in the bottom at another. Don't assume because it’s at the bottom now, which suggests that they can be happy working anywhere, that they will always be so locationally versatile).
Predictability Lowest Attribute
37%
What's this?Strategic Insights
When someone has predictability toward the bottom of their test results, it means that structure and clarity are less necessary for them to succeed. While most jobs offer a job description, some of the most exciting opportunities with the greatest upside are more fluid. People with low predictability demands thrive in startups or relatively new and fast-growing companies. They can handle a little more chaos than most. In these situations, everyone comes into work every day prepared to help pitch in on just about anything. Done right, this can be very exciting.
Even if someone has predictability low in their values, it does not mean that they can fully thrive in a situation with terrible communication and vague expectations. For instance, being a writer often comes with very low levels of predictability—it’s built into the job. Imagine, however, that their editor simply gives feedback to “make this better.” This is unhelpful and can even be counterproductive, even for the most chaos-loving employees. So whatever situation these employees are in, work with their managers to make sure they have a good sense of what to expect.
Mid Report
These key-indicators, while not as relevant to negotiation strategies or culture building, but should be studied and understood because, over the course of an employee’s career, it is likely that one or more of these results will increase in importance. There also might be an insight or question that will be of value, particularly as you compare this employee to others.
Flexibility
73%
What's this?Strategic Insights
Someone with flexibility high in their results wants to be able to blend their work life more seamlessly with the needs and desires they have for the rest of their life. Research shows that those who value flexibility and free time tend to be the happiest and most satisfied with their lives. Why? Because it's a signal that they are overcoming some of the '(un)happiness traps’ of spending too much time focusing on the wrong things, and this makes for better, happier, and more productive employees.
People scoring very high on flexibility often do very well in jobs that are outcome-oriented, perhaps project-based, and where strict, in-person face-to-face time is not frequently demanded. More and more employers are making ways for people to be more flexible with their work, and this is becoming a great differentiator in the job marketplace. Flexibility can be offered in hourly jobs, salaried positions, and production-based work. Management is the single most important factor in determining the flexibility of the organization’s operations. More significant even than the industry or organization.
Covid-19 has lead to dramatic changes regarding flexibility and work. A 2021 Harvard study found that of the workers who switched to working remotely, only 12% wanted to go back to work every day in the office as they did before. The rest wanted to either stay fully remote or return to a hybrid situation with some days remote and some in-office every week. Why? The main reason: flexibility. It turns out that feeling like they are under the constant watchful eyes of their employers and co-workers can dramatically curtail how flexible they feel and act with their time. After the first three to four months of remote work in 2020, productivity return to pre-pandemic levels or higher and has remained high, (though some employers have a hard time believing that, and some jobs obviously require more in-person presence). With a little distance, trust, and freedom people have successfully balanced their work with the most important things in their lives. Some managers and CEOs have a hard time with this and may not be a great match for people scoring very high in flexibility.
This is a fast-moving situation, but things will not just go back to how they were before. The overwhelming majority of workers have tasted flexibility and don’t want to give it up. Among workers who have children, men or women (that’s most of the workforce), only 2% want to return to in-person full time work. Increasingly, the companies that offer the most flexibility will be able to get the best talent. With good trust, good management, and good systems, flexibility can be increased in virtually all jobs to some extent.
Things to Consider for Fit with a Position
- Is there a set time that they absolutely must arrive and leave every day? Is there a good reason for this?
- Are there social pressures to be present even when there is no work to be done?
- What is the organization’s sick day/vacation policy?
Evaluation Questions
This section provides a series of questions, tailored to the tested attributes, that will help you as you recruit top talent, work to retain valued team members, and develop a more effective work culture.
Can you give me an example of a day where you were able to get a lot done but still had a lot of flexibility?
A need for flexibility is not the inability to accept structure, it is a desire for fluidity within that structure. You can learn a lot about a person and how they manage their own time by simply asking how they would like to spend their time. The ability to effectively use unstructured time is a huge asset to an employer
Why can policies and procedures be important?
Managing someone with a high need for flexibility is about having a good fence rather than a strong leash. It is important that the boundaries are well understood. So, asking how they view policies will facilitate a conversation about boundaries and help you both understand where to build the fence.
Does a good manager give very clear directions or train their people and just trust them to get the job done?
This question is obviously a false binary. A good manager can give good high-level direction and trust them to make decisions on how to get there. The purpose of asking it is to force them to choose one over the other and explain why. There is more than one way to lead. If you are going to support a flexible employment relationship it is important to understand what leadership style your team members respond to best.
Status
73%
What's this?Strategic Insights
Status is different from power or financial reward. With status high on their list this person likely values respect/admiration, voluntary deference by others, prestige, or having their advice sought by others. Status-seeking is universal and, done right, can lead to considerable long-term benefits for employee and employer alike.
It is important to understand that status-seeking is not necessarily inherently selfish. Rather than calling it status, call it “earned respect.” It’s social feedback that helps measure the success of one’s endeavors. Earned respect distinguishes employees who have exceeded expectations. This means that they are particularly attuned to the value of the evaluations of other humans. Caring about others, and what they think, is a great thing! It can obviously be overdone, and these employees need to be willing to do the right thing even if it won’t help them socially/politically. However, many times, those social signals are helping to point them in the right direction.
They might benefit from a position where they will be able to stand out quickly. One way this often happens is in “big fish, small pond” situations where from the get-go their employer is grateful, and even a little surprised, to have someone like them joining their team. Their title and responsibilities might be a little more prestigious than they would be at a larger organization. This is meaningful to these employees and often drives them to do even better work and take their job even more seriously than others who care less about status.
Being the expert of something on a team is also a great way to enjoy earned respect. Getting to utilize valuable skills that they may hold (or develop) on a team where their contributions are vital can be very rewarding to them, even without a title. And if they enjoy a little more competition, find them a job that focuses largely on individual contributions and recognizes them.
Things to Consider for Fit with a Position
- Is there a clear path to promotion? What does that look like? Be very clear on this upfront and stand by your word.
- Tell them a little bit about some of their top performers and what makes them stand out.
- If you are hoping to woo them over, tell them a little about what stands out to you in their application. (NOTE: this isn’t just for ego-boosting, this is to give them a sense of how much you value/are impressed by them from the get-go.)
Evaluation Questions
This section provides a series of questions, tailored to the tested attributes, that will help you as you recruit top talent, work to retain valued team members, and develop a more effective work culture.
In one sentence describe how you want people to see you professionally?
Status or influence can be a powerful motivator. From the answers to this question, you can gain insight into whether you can help the interviewee reach their goals
If you are looking back over your career in 5 years from now, how will you know if you have been successful?
Success looks different to each of us. Having a personalized definition from a team member will help you with your review process.
Five years from now what does your ideal job look like? What title do you have?
The ability to forecast a career path is critical to motivating a person who is seeking influence. Answers to this question will help you determine the likelihood of satisfaction (and longevity) for an individual within your organization.
Excitement
67%
What's this?Strategic Insights
Someone with excitement high in their results is looking for something that provides them with a literal physical/psychological reaction, at least from time to time. Excitement and work are not often spoken of together because most jobs, even great ones that people enjoy, aren't usually 'exciting'. Nobody wants a monotonous job, but they would probably prefer something beyond just ‘not monotonous.’
Excitement is mental, but it has effects on the whole body. It is motivating, thrilling, and can enliven the senses. Excitement is associated with perceived danger, and there are many jobs with a risk of physical danger (firefighter, etc.). These important jobs require people who thrive in dangerous situations. [A caution: ‘thriving’ in dangerous situations is not the same as good decision-making in dangerous situations. Make sure you pick for, and train for, both]. Physical danger, however, is not the only form of perceived danger. Social danger can also be exhilarating. Virtually any type of performance in front of a crowd is exciting, from arts to athletics, to public speaking, sales, or even teaching.
Excitement at work often overlaps with unpredictability. A hallmark of exciting work is solving unexpected problems on the fly, even problems outside of their job description or skill set. When done right this can lead to a lot of growth and personal development. People who can make things happen AND make good decisions on the fly in high-stress situations are diamonds in the rough.
Forging a new path is also exciting. When a worker can go to bed at night knowing that something new was created today because of the work that they did, that's exciting. While some of the jobs listed above may provide a thrill, unpredictability and urgency also go hand in hand with excitement and can be found in many positions. Those who don’t value excitement will often pass up on such jobs because of their unpredictability and urgency.
Things to Consider for Fit with a Position
- What parts of this job will they think are the most exciting?
- What are the most tedious parts of this job? Be very open and upfront about those. The new firefighter who understands up front that a lot of the job is waiting and cleaning things up at the station, interspersed with moments of high intensity is much happier than the firefighter who comes in imagining nonstop excitement and is met with a different reality. Create accurate expectations.
Evaluation Questions
This section provides a series of questions, tailored to the tested attributes, that will help you as you recruit top talent, work to retain valued team members, and develop a more effective work culture.
If work is not exciting who all is responsible for changing that, and how?
Boredom leads to underproductivity and resentment, particularly for those who value excitement in their work. Knowing how someone copes with these inevitable feelings will be critical to managing them effectively.
What do you do to keep from getting bored at work?
While managers and leadership certainly play a vital role in how work feels, ultimately we feel the most empowered when we feel that our success is our responsibility. This question is designed to help your team or recruits see how they can take ownership of their approach to work.
How will I know when you are ready for a new challenge or more responsibility?
The goal here is to see the interviewee's self-awareness. Do they know when they are bored? Can you help lay the groundwork for open dialogue in the future?
Purpose
63%
What's this?Strategic Insights
With purpose high in a person’s results, they are likely to do well in positions that connect their efforts with their employer's mission, or even to a deeper purpose. They will likely find the greatest satisfaction in their work if they are part of a cause or have a clear sense of who they are serving and are not just collecting a paycheck or working up the corporate ladder. They want to focus on what they feel matters most and they are looking to connect with organizations that share their passions. That doesn’t mean that purpose must come at the organizational level. They can find purpose in many different areas, including in their contribution to clients, their co-workers/team, or the overarching goal/mission of the organization.
The trend over the last decades has been for people to come into the workforce hoping to receive more purpose from their jobs than previous generations did. This is tricky because satisfaction is based on expectations, and high, but unmet, expectations can lead to disillusionment, which is devastating to intrinsic motivation. Some people feel that their labor and their life is intrinsically valuable, so they want their hours of effort each day to contribute to making a difference to something they care about. They can achieve this by using their resources to support their relationships and hobbies outside of work. But if they scored high in purpose, it means that at this time in their life they want to also feel that the work they are doing is also making a difference.
Many accountants, for instance, find high levels of meaning in their work. An in-depth study discovered more than 14 different ways that they found that meaning. Some felt meaning in their role as the referee for the financial marketplace, others found great meaning in helping their companies organize their resources, while others loved being a vital part of their team.
Not everyone is looking for this from their work. Many people won't feel deeply connected an organization’s mission or will simply consider it a nice side benefit to the job. That approach is also just fine. A perk of employees who do find purpose in their work is that their intrinsic motivation goes through the roof.
In the end, there are more ways to find meaning in one’s work than most realize. However, it’s important that everyone understand that virtually no job will feel meaningful all of the time. Doctors spend a lot of time doing paperwork, firefighters spend a lot of time on false alarms and waiting in the station. Do your best to help employees connect with the meaningful parts of their work, but be realistic upfront about the parts that are not as sexy. Help employees create those moments and savor them. Traditions, celebrations, time spent with the end user all have been shown to increase meaning of work.
In the end, purpose comes from relationships and service. People scoring high on meaning will do best in positions that resonate with contributions that they want to make, and that don’t force them to forsake their life and relationships outside of work. Research shows that longer-term purpose and life satisfaction comes to workers who are better able to balance their work and non-work lives. Research also shows that’s better for their companies too.
Things to Consider for Fit with a Position
- What aspects of the work do they think they will find the most meaningful? This is a good insight into what they’re hoping the job will be like, and a good chance for you to know if they are likely to be satisfied or disappointed, or if perhaps they can be shown other ways of meaning.
- Why did the founders start the organization? A good (true) origin story can help people see how they are part of something.
- Share how you feel about the mission of the organization, and what you find most meaningful about the job.
- If you have an employee who finds a lot of meaning in their job and whose position is the same or similar to the position you are considering for someone else, it might be well worth it to set up a time for the two to meet and talk away from the watchful eyes and ears of others.
Evaluation Questions
This section provides a series of questions, tailored to the tested attributes, that will help you as you recruit top talent, work to retain valued team members, and develop a more effective work culture.
What matters most to you?
Exploring what a person values most will help you determine how to best motivate them. Their purpose might be social, familial, personal, environmental, religious, or other. To best assess fit you need to make sure that you can align their tasks and other forms of compensation to help them live a more satisfying work life.
What excites you about working with us?
This is a question designed to flip the script. If purpose is important to the person you are interviewing, one of the best ways to improve or assess “fit” is to see how strongly they align with your core mission or culture.
If you had all the money, you would ever need, how would you spend your time?
If you remove social and financial constraints, you can learn about a person's interests and values. At the end of the day, a person who is motivated by purpose can only thrive when they are supporting that purpose. Allowing them to talk about themselves and their dreams will help you see what motives them and how that might fit with the role you are considering.
Collaboration
60%
What's this?Strategic Insights
An individual with collaboration at the bottom of their results enjoys jobs that others might find too isolating. This might be because they just happen to like it that way or because they feel that their social needs are being met outside of their job through their bowling team, chess club, gaggle of kids, partner, and the hobby farm they come home to every day. Great! Most Organizations need people who can thrive in jobs where they are self-directed and independent.
Although these workers enjoy captaining their own boat, that doesn’t mean that they (or any human) will thrive in isolation. So even if they seem to be doing a great job as a lone wolf, make sure they can still find ways to connect with others in meaningful ways. Taking lunch with friends or coworkers, getting drinks after work, giving everyone a paid day off to do a service project together, inviting employees and their families to join a hike on the weekend, or even participating in a thriving meme-sharing culture on Slack can go a long way toward keeping independent workers socially tethered to the organization.
Sociability
60%
What's this?Strategic Insights
A person scoring low in sociability is not necessarily bad at socializing. This score does not give you secret insight into who might be a jerk. Nor does it mean that this person works best alone. What it means is that they do not require as much social interaction to be fulfilled at work. With sociability low in their rankings this person might not be greatly impacted by relationships with their co-workers or is ok working more independently. Office politics are likely to have less impact on their life unless it makes getting the job done more difficult. They can be considered for employment that is remote, or independent, with more confidence than most.
Sociability is one of the rarest attributes to find in the bottom of someone’s results. Interacting with others helps us achieve a degree of personal satisfaction. This person is likely getting their social connections elsewhere. That said, there may be some benefit to occasionally going out of your way to help them feel welcomed and valued as a member of the team. Even those who aren’t looking for a lot of sociability at work want to feel respected and valued. This is particularly true if they are in a leadership position.
Training
57%
What's this?Strategic Insights
With training at the bottom of their results, this person is likely comfortable figuring it out as they go, or they are at a point in their careers where they already have a lot to offer. Since they don’t feel a great need for new training, there’s a good chance that they want to make significant contributions now. Look at what IS meaningful for them, and you’ll get much better insight into what they want out of a job right now, and it’s likely to include making a meaningful impact.
For these employees, opportunities for training become fewer and fewer as their responsibilities increase and they work independently. That said, we all need training, and the best are constantly learning. Just because this person scored low on a desire for training right now doesn’t mean that they are untrainable, it just means that learning new things isn’t a large value-add to them. This is often the case with seasoned managers or those who have already earned the title of “expert” in something. Figure out what they feel they are expert in.
Specialization
53%
What's this?Strategic Insights
Scholars often delineate between ‘generalists’ and ‘specialists.’ Because this person cares less about being a specialist, they can focus all of their efforts on being an excellent generalist. Great generalists are extremely valuable, and generally make excellent managers, because they can “speak the language” of different areas of expertise and help them work together. The best generalists are excellent at making connections between different specialties because they have some familiarity with all of them. Specialists are generally less equipped to do this and must rely on generalists to bridge the gap between different groups. A team of all specialists, with no generalists, is likely to be producing at far below their capacity because they are short of people who understand the various parts well enough to effectively combine them. This is why generalists often become the best managers (and specialists are somewhat less likely to excel in management positions).
The generalists who thrive are often, in reality, specialists in organization and social politics. What this means is that they are particularly good at helping teams work together, organizing their efforts, smoothing over social mismatches between various factions, and helping everyone get the most from their work. They can be helped tremendously by being given the vision of themself as a generalist who needs to get pretty good at lots of things but doesn’t necessarily have to be the very best in any one thing. This can be extremely valuable.