Tester Lester's Results

Strategic Insights

A person with collaboration high in their results is often an excellent match for roles where they get to be part of a team. In the sports world, they are more basketball than cross-country. They would rather be part of a band than a solo singer-songwriter. It is useful to find those who value high levels of collaboration because some of the jobs that people assume are the most mundane receive some of the highest levels of job satisfaction. Why? It’s often because the people in those jobs get to work closely with others as part of a team, and that’s what they end up enjoying the most.

Having collaboration in their top three means that this person wants to be part of a larger process and contributing to a team is a large part of what motivates them. They can get beyond some of the more mundane tasks if they feel connected to the larger team and process. Managers should make sure these employees are actually working on team projects rather than working alongside a bunch of people doing their own thing with very little interaction. We’re social creatures, and we love to achieve things together. This is especially true for those scoring high on collaboration.

Things to Consider for Fit with a Position

• Will the person in this position primarily work alone or will they work closely with others on a team?
• Find other people who have this position and ask them what they like most about their job. See if anything related to “the people they work with” shows up. If so, that’s an excellent clue that this is might be a good position for someone scoring high on collaboration.
• What do you know about the team they would be working on? How often do they see each other and work together? How socially functional is it?

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 workflow?

Collaboration can signal a high degree of value in the “process.” Often those who value collaboration describe their job as a series of tasks and responsibilities and how they interact with the overall operation of the business. They tend to be less focused on the outcome (that is not to say the outcome isn’t important to them). To ensure a candidate is a good fit with your team you need to learn how they like to work. This question can help with that.

When working on a team, who is ultimately responsible for the outcome? Who should receive credit or blame for the results of a project?

Ownership of an idea and its outcome is important. Those who value collaboration are often good contributors to group conversations. Their willingness to accept responsibility or share praise for coauthored work varies. Understanding these motivators will help you manage them more effectively.

If you were given a solo project that you did not know how to do, how would you get it done?

Sometimes those who value collaboration struggle to work solo. If you are looking for someone to perform tasks on their own, you need to understand how they’ll go about accomplishing the task at hand. Collaboration signals a propensity to work with others, but it is also a common attribute of great networkers. Asking this question will help you strategize with the employee and understand how their skill set can be used to bring others together to solve a problem.

Strategic Insights

Sociability relates to the importance of one’s relationship with coworkers, clients, vendors, or customers. The people that we work with are often those with whom we spend the most time. Someone with sociability high in their results is particularly attuned to these relationships, whether positive or negative. Therefore, they do their best in environments that fulfill their social needs, on the clock and maybe even off.

Every workplace has an organizational culture. Even within the same industry, one firm might be very professional and another more laid back. An employee’s ability to fit in and be a valuable part of the team may depend on their innate connection to the organization’s culture and the team. Sociable employees avoid negative social situations, and for good reason! Studies have estimated that between turnover, loss of productivity, loss of commitment to the company, and decreased creativity, having one major jerk on staff can cost a company over $100,000 annually.

There are situations, such as highly competitive jobs/cultures, where being intimidating or putting others down can appear to help people gain power. The effectiveness of the organization and team, however, will suffer as those same individuals have built no goodwill or trust, yet they will continue thinking that their cutthroat ways are the key to their success. Numerous studies show that this is false, but they still believe it, and so will others which is likely a big turnoff to those scoring high in sociability. Everyone experiences some amount of competitiveness in their workplace, and that’s ok! For those who score high on sociability, it’s a red flag if the entire organizational culture is competition-based.

They’re also looking for something beyond just, ‘people don’t fight.’ These employees want good connections at work that allow people to socially bond as well as professionally. Being high in sociability does NOT mean that they are emotionally dependent; it means that they appreciate the relationships they have with people at work. It also doesn’t mean that they can’t handle having a jerk around, especially if there are others that they bond with, and the jerk is not in a position of power over them or constantly making their life miserable.

These employees aren’t necessarily doomed because of less than ideal social situations at work, they’re just more aware of them, and hoping for something better. They can also gain great satisfaction from being a force for goodwill, forgiveness, and service in a previously less-functional group. No one is ever going to find a job with perfect people who are always perfect to each other.

Things to Consider for Fit with a Position

• Let them meet so people that they will be working closest with, or even let them spend a day shadowing the team. Ask both them and the team how it worked out. You need honest feedback, but if it looks promising, and the worker is excited by it, that’s great. Those connections, if good, can also become a large part of why they will choose this job over others.
• As them about their favorite people they ever worked with, and why. Use this as some insight into what sort of work and connections really resonated with them and analyze how likely it is that they might be able to find in this position.

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 tell me about your favorite coworker?

This can be about their current company or their past. Probe into why they enjoyed working with them so much. Companies have a culture or “vibe” and knowing who people like to work and why with will help you know if they’ll fit in with yours.

How important to you is making friends at work?

Some people want friends at work, others just want coworkers. Both are great! You know what you have to offer. Assessing fit is important. If you can’t meet an employee’s social expectations then odds are they won’t be happy at work.

What is the right balance between “getting work done” and socializing with your coworkers?

This will seem like a trick question, (and you might want to say, “this is not a trick question.”) but leading research suggests that productivity requires a balance of socializing and production. The proper balance varies from person to person.

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.

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.

Strategic Insights

When someone scores low on their desire for autonomy, it does not mean that they aren’t self-motivated or independent. The opposite of autonomy is coordination. This indicates that this person likes being part of a team. They enjoy the interactions and the feeling of being an important part of a multi-faceted team or process. Many high-profile careers are relatively low autonomy (acting, professional sports, politics, etc) because their outcome and processes are deeply intertwined with the work of others. Low autonomy is not a negative, and it doesn’t mean that these employees need their hands held more than others. Not at all.

That said, nobody likes to be micromanaged. Even in the most interdependent positions, how the managers oversee and correct their employees matters a lot. Micromanaging drives everyone crazy and makes it harder to do great work. Low autonomy demands mean this person is happy working with others, not that they want to be micromanaged and nitpicked. Also, people who score low on autonomy can make incredible managers because they enjoy the processes of coordination and negotiation and take more care on this front than others. They may need a little training early on, and some occasional reminders that giving people as much discretion as they can within the needs of the project has vastly better outcomes than micromanaging. For all their strengths, they may do well with some occasional reminders that others still want their autonomy. What feels to the manager like high involvement and giving frequent helpful input (which they love) can to their subordinates feel more like a lack of trust and micromanaging. Reducing the autonomy of others unnecessarily can obliterate intrinsic motivation.

Strategic Insights

Having status-seeking relatively low in their motivations means that this person can more easily find value and meaning without being constantly recognized by others, (though it always feels good to be admired). It can also mean that even in less meaningful/enjoyable work they are getting enough respect and esteem in their life outside of work that they don’t need as much affirmation from their job and co-workers.

These employees can often do better than others in work that they are proud to have done even if few ever see or recognize that they did it. Not needing as much external validation opens up good opportunities that others might not enjoy. It has the side benefit of helping to keep them away from some of the potential pitfalls and temptations of self-aggrandizement and self-promotion that can sometimes make it more difficult for managers to clearly evaluate other, more status-oriented, employees.

On the flip side, they might not do a good enough job of self-promotion and might even downplay their own accomplishments. This is one case where you might want to look a little deeper and see if the work they have done is better than what they are giving it credit for. Because they don’t get as much satisfaction as others from external affirmation, it might not occur to them how important it is to recognize their own achievements.

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.

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.